The President's Address. By Dr, G. T. Hudson. 
131 
wants to see ; or, if he does not know, to be able to make a shrewd 
guess ; and above all, when circumstances are not favourable, to have 
wit enough to invent some means of making them so. And yet when 
the place, the man, the animals, and the circumstances, all seem to 
promise a rich harvest of observations, how often it happens that some 
luckless accident, a snapped twig, a lost glass, a hovering kestrel, 
a sudden gust of wind, a roving dog, or a summer shower robs the 
unlucky naturalist of his due ; nay, it sometimes happens that, 
startled by some rare sight, or lost in admiration of it, he himself lets 
the happy moment slip, and is obliged to be contented with sketch 
from memory, when he might have had one from life. 
But I have not yet got to the bottom of my budget ; the heaviest 
trouble still remains, and that is, that the result of a day’s watching 
will often go into a few lines, or even into a few words ; and so it 
happens that the writer of the history, of a natural group of animals, 
is too frequently driven to fill up his space with minute analyses of 
structure, discussions on classification, disputes on the use of obscure 
organs, or descriptions of trifling varieties, which, exalted to the rank 
of species, fill his pages with wearisome repetitions : for were he, 
before he writes his book, to endeavour to make himself acquainted 
with the habits of all the creatures he describes, his own lifetime 
might be spent in the pursuit. 
We will now take a different case, and suppose that many years 
have been spent in the constant and successful study of the animals 
themselves ; and that the time has come when the naturalist may 
write his book, with the hope of treating, with due consideration, the 
most interesting portion of his subject. He is now beset with a new 
class of difficulties, and finds that publishers and scientific fashion 
alike combine to drive him into the old groove : for the former limit 
his space by naturally demurring to a constantly increasing number 
of plates, and an ever-lengthening text ; while the latter insists so 
strongly on having a complete record of the structure and points of 
difference of every species, however insignificant, that it is hardly 
possible to do much more than give that record — a mere dry shuck, 
emptied of nearly all that makes natural history delightful. 
And so we come round again to the point that I have already 
glanced at, viz. “ Ought natural history to be delightful? ” 
Ought it to be delightful ! Say, rather, ought it to exist ? What 
title has the greater part of natural history to any existence, but that 
it charms us ? It is true that this study may help — does help many 
— to worthier conceptions of the unseen, to loftier hopes, to higher 
praise ; that it gives us broader and sounder notions of the possible 
relation of animals, not only to one another, but also to ourselves ; that 
it provides us with the material for fascinating speculations on the 
embryology of our passions and mental powers ; and that it may even 
serve to suggest theories of the commencement and end of things, of 
matter, of life, of mind, and of consciousness — grave questions, 
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