PROCEEDINGS OF THE MEETING. 
29 
the skin or fur, and from minute anatomical distinctions; and 
I heard the error of the Zoologist corrected by a Botanist, one 
of the most eminent in Europe, who illuminated the whole 
subject of generic, specific and individual difference, by the 
light of a powerful mind which had been directed to the study 
of the question, considered in a different aspect, and with a 
more extensive survey. In like manner it is easy to conceive 
on the one hand, how much advantage might be derived to 
geological debates from the presence of a sober and rigorous 
mathematician; and how, on the other hand, the abstract analyst 
and geometer might have his calculations restricted or promoted 
by listening to the detail of facts, which those could give him 
who cultivate the sciences more directly dependent on observa¬ 
tion and experiment. 
“ But there is a defect in these separate Societies, in respect 
to their own immediate objects, which I am sure no member of 
them would wish to dissemble, and which arises from the narrow 
basis on which they are of necessity built. It is not only that 
the constant converse of men, who, to borrow the expression 
of Goldsmith, have often travelled over each other’s minds, is 
not half so effectual in striking out great and unexpected lights, 
as the occasional intercourse of those who have studied nature 
at a distance from each other, under various circumstances and 
in different views ; but it is also, Gentlemen, that none of our 
existing Societies is able to concentrate the scattered forces 
even of its own science: they do not know, much less can they 
connect or employ that extensive and growing body of humble 
labourers who are ready, whenever they shall be called upon, 
to render their assistance. I have the pleasure of seeing here 
the President of the Geological Society of London; and I beg 
leave to ask him, whether in a science, the most complex of all 
sciences in its object, because it aims at deciphering the history 
of nature not only as it is but as it has been, in a science of 
which very few even among the lowest generalizations are as 
yet so settled as to be able to bear the weight of any theoretical 
superstructure whatever,—I ask him whether in the science of 
Geology there is not a multitude of facts to be ascertained in 
every district, on which he would be glad to see a much greater 
number of observers employed? And if it be so, let me remind 
him that we have heard today of nine Philosophical Societies 
in this county alone, which could doubtless find members ready 
to prosecute any local inquiry that this Meeting might, at his 
suggestion, request them to undertake. It is the same with all 
parts of Natural History, with Meteorology, and indeed with 
every science which is founded upon observation, or even upon 
