THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
187 
The Science and Art Department would include all the usual 
adjuncts — painting rooms, lecture theatre, class rooms, and 
laboratory. 
Does all this seem beyond the reach of Plymouth ? I trust not. 
Let us aim high, and we shall strike high. Let us set the right 
thing before us, and we shall get, if not all that we want and ought 
to have, a near approach to it. 
Of course if we are content to permit things to remain as they 
are, to allow other towns with not a tenth part of our resources to 
be ahead and to keep ahead of us, if we neglect and despise 
the natural advantages with which we are surrounded, if we 
slumber on while others are up and doing, if we have no care for 
the proper training of those around us, or refuse to make some 
provision for those that are to succeed us, such considerations as I 
have urged, and arguments more weighty than mine, will be in vain. 
But I hope and believe better things. I sincerely hope that no 
more time will be lost, and that my successor, when he addresses 
you from this chair next year, will be able to congratulate you and 
the town on the progress of a Museum worthy of the neighbourhood, 
and worthy of the associations which cluster so thickly in and about 
these western counties. 
Perhaps the most generally interesting topic discussed during the 
past year has been that of " Animal Intelligence." Of course the 
subject has been one of great importance to naturalists for a con- 
siderable time past, but it has recently acquired a new interest. 
It was brought before the public in a popular way by Mr. J. G. 
Eomanes, in a lecture given during the Dublin meeting of the 
British Association, and later in another given by him in 
Manchester in March last ; and for some months past an active 
correspondence pro and con has gone on in the pages of Nature. 
Quoting from the last -mentioned lecture of Mr. Romanes, "The 
great interest which in these days attaches to the study of animal 
intelligence arises from the importance which the subject has 
acquired in relation to the theory of descent ; for when once this 
theory is accepted, as it now is by all competent persons, the 
science of comparative psychology, like the science of comparative 
anatomy, is placed on a completely new foundation. Groups of 
facts which previously seemed to be separated are now seen to be 
bound together in a most intimate manner, while the first principles 
