PRESIDENT'S RETIRING ADDRESS, 



BY JOHN AIRMAN, M.D. 



It does not fall to the lot of everyone to be a President. 

 John o' Groats' experiment may have satisfied his family, 

 but must have had its inconveniences. The Round Table of 

 the Knights is a nearer symbol for the quest on which we are 

 engaged, for it starts each on his way in search of the truth 

 which we all seek. But in all scientific work there is an early 

 bifurcation of roads, and a separation of those who travel by 

 them. Very specially is this the case in a Society with such 

 a comprehensive title as that to which we belong. Our 

 common board, the round table at which we all sit, is Nature ; 

 our diversity is as the diversity of Nature. Behind each 

 man's place, as in John o' Groat's House, there is a door by 

 which he may proceed to his work, or his idling, but if it is 

 idling, it is what Stevenson calls the " richest form of Idling." 

 Some men spend their lives in the endeavour to acquire, for 

 possession, large tracts of beautiful country ; others, of whom 

 our members should be a type, work to acquire the faculty of 

 understanding and enjoying Nature — therein is the richness 

 of our idling. Gladstone's ideal heritage of three acres and 

 a cow holds secrets which are only partially hidden from our 

 search ; its Botany alone is a wealth of study, " the cleanest, 

 the gentlest and the least costly of all the branches of science." 

 You place your President in the position of the large 

 land-owner possessed of treasure, which, without your help, 

 he cannot fully enjoy ; and the help which you render is so 

 ready, so sterling, so abundant, as to raise feelings of wonder, 

 amazement and gratitude. There have been men in this 

 chair who could dip deeper than any of their hearers into 

 one or more of the branches of special study ; I shall content 

 myself if I secure your attention for some consideration of 

 the pathways of knowledge. First of all, I wish to congra- 

 tulate you on a new departure of the past session — the 

 establishment of lecturettes on elementary subjects. As a 

 recruiting agency, they should increase the number of our 

 workers ; from an educational standpoint their value is beyond 

 computation. They give beginners a place at the round 

 table, and they open a door at each man's back by which he 

 may proceed silently and unnoticed upon his special quest. 







