14 
HEPORT. 
a high degree interesting and instructive. Such Lectures 
v/ould have more numerous audiences, if they could be more 
conveniently heard. In the mean time, the Council have not 
felt justified in making any engagement for the current year, 
except so far as to request the Keeper of the Museum to 
prepare a course of Lectures on the Aquatic Animals of this 
neighbourhood, to be delivered either in the ensuing or the 
succeeding summer. 
It is one of the principal objects of the Society to encourage 
a taste for Natural History ; and it has always proposed to 
effect this, both by means of Lectures on the various divisions 
of Nature, and by Collections in its Museum, without which 
lectures of this description can scarcely be given. The value 
of such collections is not perhaps in general sufficiently 
understood ; and the Naturalist by whom they are formed, is 
sometimes suspected of claiming the dignity of a science, for 
pursuits little'higher than the amusements of children. If the 
object of a collector be no more than to accumulate and 
♦ 
to display, he is indeed very idly employed ; but if his object 
be to acquire or to diffuse a more perfect knowledge of the 
works of creation, there cannot be a more rational or a more 
noble pursuit. To investigate the wisdom of Nature, is an 
employment worthy of the most exalted understanding, 
whether that wisdom be displayed in the configuration of a 
planet, or in the structure of a butterfly’s wing. There are 
some, however, who imagine that nothing is to be learned from 
a Museum except a catalogue of names; but this, even were 
the statement true, is surely an unreasonable complaint» If the 
volume of Nature is wort])y of being read, its vocabulary must 
