330 president's address. 



I lay stress upon the term " his special quest," for there is a 

 slough of despond around the ways of even the most earnest 

 students which is apt to damp the ardour of beginners, and 

 to soothe the consciences of the more experienced — 



" Does the road wind up-hill all the way ? " 



' Yes, to the very end.' 

 " Will the day's journey take the whole long day ? " 



' From morn to night, my friend.' 



Classification might be said to be the object of all Natural 

 Science Societies ; and the satire upon their work which 

 brings it under the title of " idling " is that you explain 

 everything by giving it a name, and then you have done 

 with it. Your lecturettes should exorcise that ghost. No 

 matter in what domain, the student of Nature is a devotee of 

 arrangement ; kingdoms, classes, orders, tribes, genera and 

 species are words which are ever in his mind and on his lips. 

 To the ignorant such words are a mere shibboleth, to the 

 more informed an inexhaustible mine. A few words on that 

 bifurcation of our roads. Deductive logic is that form of 

 reasoning in which we first present a greater and proven 

 statement, which we call the major premiss. Then follows 

 an endeavour to bring a lesser statement, the minor premiss, 

 into harmony with the greater, and the conclusion inevitably 

 follows. The whole is called a syllogism. 



The defect in deductive logic for ordinary purposes is that 

 the main force is spent in proving the major premiss ; but in 

 classification the major premiss is already proven, and the 

 worker spends his energies on bringing the minor premiss 

 into harmony with it. The life-work of generations of men 

 has written in indelible lines the characteristics of kingdoms, 

 classes, orders, tribes, genera and species ; their locations, 

 needs and functions ; the observer is required to shew that 

 the object under examination falls within these lines and the 

 name which forms the conclusion is a record of its attributes. 



Classification is not the work of one syllogism ; a new 

 procedure is required for each step in the process. There is 

 a major premiss for each new step as we pass into finer detail 

 from kingdoms to classes, orders, tribes, &c, but each 

 involves the complete proof of its predecessor, or the series 

 fails. Such a succession is called a sorites, a plural noun 

 from a Greek word signifying a heap. What a heap of 

 knowledge it signifies. That wealth has come to us from, it 

 may be, millions of observations which record the experience 

 of those whose work is as true to its order, as the flowers 

 which they loved are to theirs. Our work is still in the stage 



