15 
next day, and confess their ignorance of chemistry. Tliey had studied 
their own particular topic, hut had not studied its relation to 
chemistry. I hope we have all got beyond that, and although we 
do not touch geological points particularly, still geology will be of 
assistance to us, and we to it. Our variety of pursuits will be our 
bond of union ; we have no narrowness, no separation in this 
room. Some of us may know a great deal upon one topic, some 
nothing, and some a little ; and we shall want patience and perse- 
verance — patience to learn to understand how our friends’ favourite 
topics bear upon our own special pursuits. As to that particular 
sin which still exists among scientific men as elsewhere — jealousy 
between one branch and another, we must consider that banished 
and never to enter here. 
As your president, there is one particular danger that I must 
warn you against, namely the tendency to indifference. Concholo- 
gists may not care to consider other branches, and entcpnologists or 
microscopists may not care much for alliance with their neigh- 
bours, whose special pm-suit is conchology or ornithology. One 
may be very learned in one branch, and show indifference towards 
the branches in which his neighbours are interested, but it is our 
duty to get rid of aU that, and to find that our several topics have 
connection one with the other. I hope to see Mr. Gunn here as 
head of the Geological Society, and that we shall have assistance 
from the geologists, for just as physical geography is only a phase 
of geology presenting the superficies and geological aspect of the 
earth, so there is no department of science which has not a relation 
to others as geology has to nearly all. I do not think our botanists 
will go far without claiming assistance from geologists to explain 
the existence and decay of plants that flourished in the past. So 
in regard to the other branches of our society. We shall start 
from our own district, as the geologists have done, and we shall 
have to ask, and I hope we shall get, papers and discussions on the 
botany of our district; and we must make a register of the plants 
growing in this district, their localities, and their conditions. I 
cannot conceive how you can have a proper understanding of the 
flora of this district without knowing something of the soil, and 
there we shall have to ask for the assistance of the geologists. At 
our very starting we ought to have it impressed upon all our mem- 
bers that we are not to be destructive in our hunting. We ought 
