16 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
Geological Structure.” How far tlie plants and trees affect not merely 
tlie general beauty, the richness or barrenness of a country, but also its 
very shape; the rate at which the hills are destroyed and washed into 
the lowland; the rate at which the seaboard is being removed by the 
action of waves—all these are branches of study which is becoming 
more and more important. 
And even in the study of animals and their effects on the vegetation, 
questions of really deep interest will arise. You will find that certain 
plants and trees cannot thrive in a district, while others can, because 
the former are browsed down by cattle, or their seeds eaten by birds, 
and the latter are not; that certain seeds are carried in the coats of 
animals, or wafted abroad by winds—others are not; certain trees 
destroyed wholesale by insects, while others are not; that in a hundred 
ways the animal and vegetable life of a district act and react upon each 
other, and that the climate, the average temperature, the maximum 
and minimum temperatures, the rainfall, act on them, and in the case 
of the vegetation, are reacted on again by them. The diminution of 
rainfall by the destruction of forests, its increase by re-planting them, 
and the effect of both on the healthiness or unhealthiness of a place 
—as in the case of the Mauritius, where a once healthy island has become 
pestilential, seemingly from the clearing away of the vegetation on the 
banks of streams—all this, though to study it deeply requires a fair 
knowledge of meteorology, and even a science or two more, is surely 
well worth the attention of any educated man who is put in charge of 
the health and lives of human beings. 
You will surely agree with me that the habit of mind required for 
such a study as this, is the very same as is required for successful 
military study. In fact, I should say that the same intellect which 
would develop into a great military man, would develop also into a 
great naturalist. I say, intellect. The military man would require 
—what the naturalist would not—over and above his intellect, a 
special force of will, in order to translate his theories into fact, 
and make his campaigns in the field and not merely on paper. But 
I am speaking only of the habit of mind required for study; of 
that inductive habit of mind which works, steadily and by rule, from 
the known to the unknown—that habit of mind of which it has been 
said:—“The habit of seeing; the habit of knowing what we see; the habit 
of discerning differences and likenesses; the habit of classifying accord¬ 
ingly ; the habit of searching for hypotheses which shall connect 
and explain those classified facts; the habit of verifying these hypotheses 
by applying them to fresh facts; the habit of throwing them away 
bravely if they will not fit; the habit of general patience, diligence, 
accuracy, reverence for facts for their own sake, and love of truth for 
its own sake; in one word, the habit of reverent and implicit obedience 
to the laws of Nature, whatever they maybe—these are not merely 
intellectual, but also moral habits, which will stand men in practical 
good stead in every affair of life, and in every question, even the most 
awful, which may come before us as rational and social beings.” And 
specially valuable are they, surely, to the military man, the very essence 
of whose study, to be successful, lies first in continuous and accurate 
observation^ and then in calm and judicious arrangement. 
