141 
The President's Address. By Dr. C. T. Hudson. 
efficient guides, to indulge us with the main results, in the simplest 
language. Surely one of the most charming subjects that can interest 
human beings, admits of being so treated ; and there can be no good 
reason why the Muse of Natural History (for no doubt there is such 
a Muse) should resemble that curious nymph among the Oribatidse, 
whom Mr. Michael found lying under the moss of an old tree, half 
smothered in a heap of her cast-off skins, admirable types of successive 
classifications and abandoned nomenclature. 
Happily, however, books in such matters are of little importance ; 
and names and classifications of still less : both these latter, indeed, 
are of ephemeral interest ; they are the pride of to-day and the re- 
proach of to-morrow. It is to the living animals themselves that we 
must turn, fascinated not only with their beauty and their actions, but 
with the questions which the contemplation of them perpetually pro- 
vokes, and very rarely answers. 
For, in the long procession of the humbler creatures, who can tell 
where life first developes into consciousness, and why it does so ; where 
consciousness first stretches beyond the present so as to include the 
past, and why that happens ; or at what point, and why, memory and 
consciousness themselves are lighted up by the first faint flashes of 
reason ? 
We know nothing now of such matters, and probably we never 
shall know much ; but the mere fact, that the study of natural history 
irresistibly draws us to the consideration of these questions, gives to 
her pleasant features an undoubted dignity, and raises the charming 
companion of our leisure hours to the rank of an intimate sharer of 
some of our gravest thoughts. 
