AXXrVERSATiY ADDRESS 0E THE PRESIDEXI. 



57 



The realm of Xature has been recognized from time immemorial 

 as consisting of three kingdoms : dealing with the affairs of these 

 three kingdoms, respectively, there have grown up side by side three 

 departments of natural knowledge — Zoology, Botany, and iline- 

 ralogy. But in recent years new and, I cannot help thinking, 

 regrettable relations have sprung up between these sister sciences. 

 Zoology and Botany, having developed a method, a classification, 

 and a nomenclature, based on common principles, have been drawn 

 together by bonds so close and firm that many regard them as in- 

 dissolublv one — the science of Biolosw. A[ineralo2:v, thus isolated, 

 has been driven to seek new and unnatural alliances, — with 

 Chemistry, with Physics, or with the Mathematical Sciences. For 

 my own part I confess that I regard this threatened " Bepeal of the 

 Union " of the natural sciences as alike a misfortune and a mistake. 



It is sometimes assumed that the objects dealt with by Zoology 

 and Botany are so different in their essential characters from those 

 treated of bv Mineralogv. that the science of 44 Organic " nature must 

 always follow a different path from that pursued by the science of 

 14 Inorganic " nature. The structures commonly known as organic, 

 and the processes usually called vital, are asserted to be so entirely 

 different. alike in their origin and in their essence, from anything 

 existing in the Mineral kingdom, as to -warrant the establishment 

 and perpetuation of a fundamental distinction between the sciences 

 dealing with ,4 living" and 44 non-living " matter respectively. 



In the year 1S5-A a very acute thinker, who at one time occupied 

 this Chair, made a serious attempt to formulate the distinctions 

 which are supposed to divide living from non-living matter ; but 

 at a subsequent date, admitting with characteristic candour that he 

 had altogether outgrown these ideas, Professor Huxley argued, with 

 great skill and cogency, that •'•vitality " is merely a general term 

 for a set of purely physical processes, differing only in their com- 

 plexity from those to which 44 inorganic " matter is subject. 



It is a circumstance of no small significance that no definition of 

 life which has yet been proposed will exclude the kind of processes 

 which we can now show to be continually going on in mineral 

 bodies. 44 Life,"'" said the late George Henry Lewes, 44 is a series of 

 definite and successive changes, both of structure and composition, 

 which take place in an individual without changing its identity." 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer prefers to define life as 44 the definite combi- 

 nation of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, 

 in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences." 



