PROCEEDINGS OF THE PERTHSHIRE SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCE, 
67 
district were of no use, they considered, for museum pur¬ 
poses. “What !” they might have replied, had it been 
suggested to them to include such objects in their collec¬ 
tions,—“ What! stuff our rooms with thistles and grasses, 
White butterflies and sparrows, rabbits and cats,—which 
one may see any day for one’s self in the open air ! Do 
you suppose that any one will pay for admission to look at 
objects so familiar as these ?’’ 
Now, I am not sure that such an exclamation may 
not have been heard by some of us who are here 
to-day. Unless my ears deceived me, I surely have 
listened to something very like it much oftener than 
once, and certainly at a much more recent date than 
even twenty years ago. In fact, there is good reason to 
believe that the views with which I have supposed the 
originators of our old museums to have been imbued, still 
obtain among many intelligent and otherwise well-educated 
people. A somewhat general impression still prevails that 
a naturalist is merely a collector of specimens which he 
dubs with jaw-breakipg.names, and classifies and arranges 
according to some mysterious plan; and the collection so 
formed is to many people just about as interesting and in¬ 
telligible as a dictionary of terms with the meanings left 
out. Now, it is quite true that there are collectors who 
are that and nothing more. I have seen special collections 
in which the objects were all carefully named and 
arranged, but of which the ardent and enthusiastic collec¬ 
tor really knew little more than the half-interested folk to 
whom he exhibited his treasures. And I daresay most of you 
have known men with a mania for collecting books,—few of 
which they had ever read, and many of which were in 
languages they did not understand. This mania for col¬ 
lecting is, therefore, not confined to pseudo-naturalists, 
but is one which we see in many different kinds of people, 
—some of whom employ the shining hour in accumulating 
vast heaps of used postage-stamps,—or in filling box after 
box with old orange-skins,—or in gathering hotel-bills, 
railway-station labels, &c. 
To be a collector of specimens illustrative of Natural 
History is, therefore, not necessarily to be a naturalist 
any more than the fact of a man’s bookshelves being 
loaded with the literature of all countries is a proof 
that the man himself is an accomplished scholar. But 
it seldom happens that a true naturalist is not also 
more or less of a collector;—and the private collections 
formed by such students of Nature are as diverse 
in character as the individual minds of the naturalists 
themselves. For each, as his knowledge increases, must 
become more and more of a specialist,—not, let us hope, 
a mere one-idea’d man,—who has eyes and ears for nothing 
save one particular branch or line of study,—but a philo¬ 
sophical specialist, whose mind is open to light from all 
quarters in the hope of being able to see his own road more 
clearly, and of throwing back light from his own lamp to 
illuminate the paths of his fellow-students in adjacent fields 
of research. It is largely owing to this division of labour 
that so much has been accomplished by scientific men 
within so comparatively short a period. And doubtless as 
years advance and knowledge continues to increase, it will 
become more and more necessary for those who wish to do 
original work to restrict their attention to more or less 
limited spheres of labour. And herein, as it seems to me, 
lurk certain dangers which will have to be guarded against. 
For it is to be feared that as our work becomes more 
narrowly specialized, oursympathies with, and consequently 
our knowledge of, what is being done by others will be¬ 
come narrow in proportion. This tendency we must 
strenuously fight against, if we would not descend to the 
level of mere makers of pin-heads. By all means let us be 
specialists, but at the sametime may we devote no incon¬ 
siderable portion of our time towards the study of col¬ 
lateral subjects. And that we may do so intelligently, and 
with a view to increase our knowledge, and so to broaden 
our sympathies for all departments of Natural Science 
study, we ought to form as honest an estimate as we can 
of the relative importance of our own work. And this we 
can best do by keeping prominently before our eye what 
are the true aims and ends of the sciences which we are 
doing our utmost to advance. 
Now, when we take such a science as zoology, we find 
that it means much more to us than it did to our im¬ 
mediate predecessors. Zoology is not concerned merely 
with cataloguing the various species of animals which are 
met with throughout the world, and of collecting and pre¬ 
serving as many specimens of these as can be procured. 
Neither is its sole aim and end to acquire an adequate 
knowledge of how all these multitudinous hosts play their 
parts in the great drama of life. It must likewise take 
account of the anatomical structure of organisms, and be 
able to tell us how the various tissues are built up. In 
short, nothing connected with the origin and development 
of forms must be neglected. Aided by the microscope, 
the biologist has been able within only a few years to re¬ 
volutionise much of the sciences of zoology and botany. 
The study of embryology has thrown a flood of light upon 
life-history, and enabled us to trace organic connections 
between forms which in their adult state seem wide as the 
poles asunder. It is gradually being demonstrated that 
all the myriad forms of animal life have genetic relations 
which bind together into one great family not only the 
