GUPPY — VICTORIA INSTITUTE, ETC. 
173 
ON THE WORK OF THE SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION OF 
TRINIDAD AND ON THE RELATION OF THE VIC- 
TORIA INSTITUTE TO THE FIELD NATURALISTS’ 
CLUB AND THE PUBLIC LIBRARY. 
By R. J. Lechmere Guppy. 
I HEARD it said in this room by one of the most prominent 
members of the Field Naturalists’ Club that nothin" of a 
scientific kind had ever been done in Trinidad previous to the 
formation of that Club, or that if anything of the kind had 
been done it was now a dead letter. With regard to the last 
part of the remark it is no doubt true that in this Colony 
anything good that is done is soon forgotten. It is 
likely that in Europe and North America more is known among 
scientific men of the work of the Scientific Association of Trinidad 
than is known here. But all this applies as much to the 
work of the Field Naturalists’ Club as to the work of its pre- 
decessor, the Scientific Association. As to the former assertion I 
shall enter upon a few particulars to show its baselessness. It 
is, however, difficult to estimate the value of the results of 
scientific papers— in their effects they resemble the “ gentle dew 
of heaven ” permeating and blessing the growths and the soil on 
which they alight. I shall not therefore dwell so much upon 
these as upon the actual results which have followed upon the 
publication of those papers intended to be of a purely practical 
character. These will be sufficient for my purpose while appeal- 
ing no doubt more directly to minds which appreciate results of 
a strictly practical character and which are not so ready to admit 
the beneficial effects of a cultivation of natural knowledge not 
immediately or obviously tending to the production of wealth. 
In my paper on the Cultivation of Scientific Knowledge in 
Trinidad, following G. H. Lewes, I pointed out some of the 
benefits attending the cultivation of such knowledge and the 
fact that those nations and communities which neglected it 
perished or continued barbarous while those who cherished it 
flourished and became greater (See Proceedings Scientific Associ- 
ation, 1867, page 75). 
