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naturalist. The collection of specimens is a very good thing,
the study of other men's work is a very good thing, but if we
could only find more enthusiasts who would carry on research,
it would undoubtedly bear fruit to a far greater extent than
would be imagined by a casual observer. It is the long and
patient study of those minute variations, whether of plants
or animals, the persistent observation of their development
and growth, or it may be of some organisms, such as fungi,
very low down in the scale of life, which ultimately bore
fruit in important discoveries. And then as a reward of
such work there is, from time to time, a sudden blossoming
out of results of painstaking investigation. Perhaps the
most brilliant example in biological science has been the
sudden outburst of Bacteriology. Did that science suddenly
arise? Was it by accident discovered that bacteria played a
most important part in physiology? No, it was the outcome
of minute investigation, and of patient microscopic work.
It has struck me as an example of how imperfect the work of
some very skilful men is, that we constantly find reference to
hybridisation with little or no notice being taken as to which
of the parent species bears the seed ; and here again is a most
promising opening for careful observation.
As to the lower forms of life, there is infinite field for
labour there. Those who followed—as we all did with interest
— Mr. Lister's investigations of the life-history of the
Mycetozoa—and have followed a mass of slime developing into
individuals, and the individuals suddenly reverting into a
mass of formless slime, will have realised that there we have
a problem of the obscurest character open to us.2 Of the
papers read I would specially call attention to the very
interesting review—time only allowed it to be a very small
corner of a great subject—that Professor Boulger brought
before us, on Symbiosis. There we have again a problem of
great practical importance. That certain small parasitic growths
on the fibrous rootlets of papilionaceous plants should be a
means of fertilizing the soil, that these recently unknown
entities, these inconspicuous parasites, should solve a problem
which had been of the greatest obscurity to scientific men, that
of the origin of the nitrogenous constituents of soils—that by
their action a vast proportion of the fertility of the fields was
2 See Mr. Lister's "Practical Hints on the Study of the Mycetozoa, with Note on the
Epping Forest Species," Essex Naturalist, Vol, X,, pp. 23-27.