ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 
159 
If then all sciences are thus connected, perhaps a study of the 
characters, the actions, and the government of men may after all 
have some connexion with those studies which it is the province of 
our Society to encourage. It would be hopeless for me to attempt 
to show the connexion, hut there is a tendency which we all have, 
and which I confess I have very strongly myself, calculated if we 
give ourselves up to it to furnish us with some hints towards the 
manner in which the connecting point may be approached. I mean 
the tendency to comparison—the impulse to illustrate one science 
by another—the habit of groping after some sort of resemblance 
between things apparently the most unlike one another — the 
tendency to make similes and to follow analogies. 
I propose this evening, in the few words which I have to say to 
you, to let my fancy run upon those points of resemblance to human 
actions which are presented by some of the commonest and most 
obvious objects which occur to us in the study of natural history. 
I will begin with an animal of which we are none of us particu¬ 
larly fond, and with which it is perhaps not pleasant to be com¬ 
pared—I mean the rat. One idea of the history of England is that 
the island was first occupied by the Ancient Britons, then by the 
Homans for some years, that then the Saxons drove out the original 
inhabitants, and that they were in their turn conquered though 
not driven out by the Normans, and that we have never been con¬ 
quered since and never mean to be. All this time the rats have 
been having a little English history of their own quite independent 
of ours, and quite as important to them as ours has been to us. 
The old English black rat is thought by some to have been indi¬ 
genous to our country ; by others he is said to have come over from 
abroad, and they go so far as to fix the time of his arrival at 
about the date of the Norman Conquest. He does not, according 
to this last theory, appear to have found any previous rats to drive 
out, so that if he was not an original inhabitant he may be con¬ 
sidered as an immigrant rather than an invader. For many centuries 
he remained undisputed tenant behind our wainscots and in our 
barns and our drains. But about two hundred years ago the 
Norwegian brown rat found his way over, and has been gradually 
driving out the other ever since. The struggle has been curiously 
like the old struggle between the Saxons and the Celts. The little 
black rat still holds his own in certain places. He still maintains 
his existence and his independence in the neighbourhood of the 
Tower of London, and in certain of our breweries, and if one of 
the large brown rats appears there he is set upon by overwhelming- 
numbers and destroyed. But the stronger race is gradually 
VOL. III.—PART V. 
11 
