JOUENAL 
OF THE 
ROYAL MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 
APEIL 1890. 
- «' 
TKANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY. 
III. — The President's Address on some Needless Difficidties in the 
Study of Natural History. 
By C. T. Hudson, LL.D., F.K.S. 
{Annual Meeting, 12th February, 1890.) 
A LITTLE -while ago I read in a preface to a work on natural history 
that the hook was “ of little value to the scientific reader, but that its 
various anecdotes, and its minute detail of observation, w^ould he 
found useful and entertaining.” 
What then may the ‘‘ Scientific Header ” be expected to desire ? 
He must he, in my opinion, a most unreasonable man, if he does not 
thankfully welcome anecdotes of the creatures he wishes to study, 
when those anecdotes are the result of patient and accurate observa- 
tion. For it is precisely such information that is conspicuously 
absent from many scientific memoirs and monographs, the author 
generally spending his main space and strength in examining the 
shape and structure of his animals, and in comparing one with 
another, hut giving the most meagre details of their lives and habits. 
Which, then, is the more scientific treatment of a group of 
animals— that which catalogues, classifies, measures, weighs, counts, 
and dissects, or that which simply observes and relates ? Or, to put 
it in another way, which is the better thing to do, to treat the 
animal as a dead specimen, or as a living one ? 
IMerely to state the question is to answer it. It is the living 
animal that is so intensely interesting, and the main use of the 
indexing, classifying, measuring, and counting . is to enable us to 
recognize it when alive, and to help us to understand its perplexing 
actions. 
But it may he objected, that because the study of the living 
animal is the more interesting, it is not necessarily the more scien- 
tific ; indeed, that the amount of entertainment which we may get 
out of the pursuit of natural history has nothing to do with the 
question at all ; that by science we mean accurate knowledge pre- 
1890. K 
