president's address. 331 



of observation and experiment, which is always the infancy 

 of experience. By sneh means we bring the present into 

 harmony with the past, and predict the future. Hence the 

 gibe becomes a glory, because we do explain everything when 

 we assign to a natural object its full name in classification. 

 But the road does wind up-hill all the way, and the comfort 

 is that — 



" Of labour you shall find the sum." 



The junior student finds the mastery of the major premiss 

 hard ; what shall I say to the senior ? The junior student is 

 satisfied when he makes a harmony in the minor premiss ; but 

 is it always harmony. If so, what of evolution ? 



When Darwin, Wallace, and those who tracked the process 

 of evolution, traced its story, they placed on record facts 

 which they gathered from disharmonies spread over immense 

 periods of time ; the survival of the fittest and the disappear- 

 ance of the less fit were great thoughts born of a vast 

 multitude of historical facts. They reached their theory by 

 a process of inductive logic which is quite the opposite of the 

 logic which we use in classification ; it is a building up of 

 the major premiss for service in the future. But in pointing 

 out to us what had occurred in the past, and in impressing on 

 us the large letters in which it was written, they also 

 demonstrated that the same agencies were still at work, and 

 gave us the eyes to see the smaller type in which it is now 

 written. The evolution which is in progress to-day is 

 indicated by trivial disharmonies between our major and 

 and minor premiss in classification. Mr. Marquand, Mr. 

 Luff, Mr. Collenette, Mr. Derrick and Mr. Sharp, to mention 

 only gentlemen who have filled this chair, have formulated 

 for us the flora, the fauna, the meteorology, the geology, and 

 all such features as make the Natural History of the Sarnian 

 group of islands. These same gentlemen, and others who are 

 qualifying to follow in their footsteps, bring before the 

 meetings of this Society new and rare specimens ; and surely 

 newness and rarity can mean nothing less than a want of 

 adaptability of the individual to its surroundings — in other 

 words, a disharmony. Harmony with surroundings favours 

 prolific growth ; rarity is the indication that the conditions 

 have become uncongenial and that growth is decaying ; or 

 that a change in surroundings has made new conditions 

 favourable to an invader. Each addition to our list necessi- 

 tates an alteration in the major premiss of our classification, 

 for it compels us to add the Sarnian group to the list of its 

 habitations. 



