FOOTNOTE:

FOOTNOTE:[98]Contemporary Review, Dec., 1887.

[98]Contemporary Review, Dec., 1887.

Hugh Miller: His Work and Influence[99]

Among the picturesque figures that walked the streets of Edinburgh in the middle of last century, one that often caught the notice of the passer-by was that of a man of good height and broad shoulders, clad in a suit of rough tweed, with a shepherd's plaid across his chest and a stout stick in his hand. His shock of sandy-coloured hair escaped from under a soft felt-hat; his blue eyes, either fixed on the ground or gazing dreamily ahead, seemed to take no heed of their surroundings. His rugged features wore an expression of earnest gravity, softening sometimes into a smile and often suffused with a look of wistful sadness, while the firmly compressed lips betokened strength and determination of character. The springy elastic step with which he moved swiftly along the crowded pavement was that of the mountaineer rather than of the native of a populous city. A stranger would pause to look after him and to wonder what manner of man this could be. If such a visitorventured to question one of the passing townsmen, he would be told promptly and with no little pride 'That is Hugh Miller.' No further description or explanation would be deemed necessary, for the name had not only grown to be a household word in Edinburgh and over the whole of Scotland, but had now become familiar wherever the English language was spoken, even to the furthest western wilds of Canada and the United States.

A hundred years have passed since this notable man was born, and nearly half that interval has elapsed since he was laid in the grave. The hand of time, that resistlessly winnows the wheat from the chaff of human achievement, has been quietly shaping what will remain as the permanent sum of his work and influence. The temporary and transitory events in his career have already, in large measure, receded into the background. The minor contests in which, from his official position, he was so often forced to engage are mostly forgotten; the greater battles that he fought and won are remembered rather for their broad and brilliant results than for the crowded incidents that gave them such vivid interest at the time. His contemporaries who still survive him—every year a sadly diminishing number—can look back across the half century and mark how the active and strenuous nature whose memory they so fondly cherish, now

'Orbs into the perfect starWe saw not when we moved therein.'

'Orbs into the perfect star

We saw not when we moved therein.'

A juster estimate can doubtless be formed to-day of what we owe to him than was possible in his life-time.That the debt is great admits of no dispute, and that it is acknowledged to be due could hardly be more fittingly shown than by the wide-spread desire which has brought us here to-day from so many distant places in order to raise in the town of his birth, which he has made a place of pilgrimage to many a lover of English literature, a visible memorial of him in an institution of which he would himself have heartily approved.

In order adequately to realise the nature and extent of the work achieved by Hugh Miller during his too brief career, we should clearly picture to ourselves the peculiar conditions in which he grew up. Happily he has himself, in one of the most charming pieces of autobiography in the language, told the story of his youth and early manhood. Descended from both a Highland and a Lowland ancestry, he combined in his nature the vivid imagination and poetic impulse of the Celt with the more staid and logical temperament of the Teuton. He was born amidst an English-speaking community, but at a distance of only a few miles from the fringe of the mountainous region within which men use the Gaelic tongue. He knew some survivors of Culloden, and had heard his own grandfather tell how, when a stripling, he watched, from the hills above Cromarty, the smoke wreaths of the battle as they drifted along the ridge on the further side of the Moray Firth. From infancy he was personally familiar with the people of the hills and their traditions, as well as with the ways of the hardy fisher-folk and farmers of the plains. The hereditary predispositions of his mind were in this way fostered by contact with the two races from which they sprang.

Happy in the possession of this racial blending, he was still more fortunate in the place of his birth. He used to remark with satisfaction that both Sir Roderick Murchison and he had been born on the Old Red Sandstone of the Black Isle; but while the career of the author of theSilurian Systemowed practically nothing to his birth-place, which he left while still an infant, Miller's life from beginning to end bore the impress of the surroundings amid which he was born and educated. It would hardly be possible to choose in this country a place of which the varied features are more admirably fitted to stimulate the observing faculties, to foster a love of nature, and to appeal to the poetic imagination than the winding shores, the scarped cliffs, the tangled woods, the wild boulder-strewn moors and distant sweep of blue mountains around Cromarty. And how often and lovingly are these scenes portrayed by him under every varying phase of weather and season! They had stamped themselves into his very soul and had become an integral part of his being.

'The sounding cataractHaunted him like a passion; the tall rock,The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,Their colours and their forms were then to himAn appetite, a feeling, and a love.'

'The sounding cataract

Haunted him like a passion; the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colours and their forms were then to him

An appetite, a feeling, and a love.'

But while Nature was his first and best teacher, he has told us in grateful words how much he owed to two uncles—hard-working, sagacious, and observant men, by whom his young eyes were trained to discriminate flower and tree, bird and insect, together with the teeming organisms of the shore, and whosehigh moral worth he, even as a boy, could appreciate. Having learnt to read while still of tender years, he developed an insatiable thirst for books. What he acquired in this way for himself seems to have been at least as useful as the training gained during the rather desultory years spent by him at the town grammar-school. He was an intelligent but wayward boy, as much ahead of his schoolmates in general information as in all madcap adventures among the crags and woods. When the time arrived at which he had to choose his calling in life, he selected an occupation that would still enable him to spend his days in the open air and gratify his overmastering propensity for natural history pursuits. Much to the chagrin of his family he determined to be a stone-mason, and at the age of 17 was apprenticed to that trade. For some fifteen years he continued to work in quarries and in the erection of buildings in various districts of the north country, and even extended his experience for a short time into Midlothian. Deeply interesting and instructive is the record he has left of these years of mechanical toil. But amidst all the hardships and temptations of the life, the purity and strength of his character bore him nobly through. His keen love of nature and his intense enjoyment of books were a never-failing solace. He continued to gain access to, and even by degrees to possess, a considerable body of the best literature in our language, reading some of his favourite authors over twice in a year. He thus laid up a store of information and allusion which his retentive memory enabled him eventually to turn to excellent advantage.

While still at school he had gained some notice for the verses which he wrote. In the intervals of his subsequent labours with mallet and chisel, he continued to amuse himself in giving metrical expression to his feelings and reflections, grave or gay. Conscious of his power, though hardly yet aware in what direction it could best be used, he resolved to collect and publish his verses. At the age of seven-and-twenty he accordingly gave to the world a little volume with the titlePoems written in the leisure hours of a Journeyman Mason. Not without some misgiving, however, did he make this first literary venture. Even before the voices of the 'chorus of indolent reviewers' could travel up from the south country, with their sententious judgments of the merits and defects of this new peasant-poet, he set himself to prepare some contributions in prose which might perchance afford a better measure of his quality. Some years before that time he had been out all night with the herring fleet, and he now sent to theInverness Couriersome letters descriptive of what he had then seen. These made so favourable an impression that they were soon afterwards reprinted separately. They marked the advent of a writer gifted with no ordinary powers of narration and with the command of a pure, nervous, and masculine style. The reception which these letters met with from men in whose judgment and taste he had confidence formed a turning point in his career. He now realised that his true strength lay not in the writing of verses, but in descriptive prose. Some years, however, still passed before he found the class of subjectson which his pen could most effectively be exercised. In the meantime he began to record the legends and traditions of his native district. Most of these had been familiar to him from childhood, when he heard them from the lips of old grey-headed men and women, but they were dying out of remembrance as the older generations passed away. Part of his leisure for several years was given to this pleasant task, until there grew up under his hand a bulky volume of manuscript. This time he was in no hurry to publish; the book did not make its appearance until 1835, as his charmingScenes and Legends of the North of Scotland. In this work some of the most striking passages were to be found, not so much in the tales themselves which were narrated, as in the local colouring and graphic setting that were given to them. The writer displayed a singularly vivid power in the delineation of scenery, and his allusions to the geology of the district, then almost wholly unknown, attracted attention, since they showed that besides his keen eye for the picturesque above ground, he knew something of the marvels that lay beneath. He was feeling his way to what ultimately became his most cherished and most useful task. He had realised that his main object should be to know what was not generally known, 'to stand as an interpreter between nature and the public,' and to perform the service of narrating as pleasingly as he could, the facts which he culled in walks not previously trodden, and of describing, as graphically as might be, the inferences which he drew from them.

Ever after his first day's experience as an apprenticed mason in a stone-quarry, of which he has left more than one impressive account, he was led to interest himself in the diversified characters of the rocks of the district. Even as a boy he had been familiar with the more obvious varieties of stone to be met with in a tract of country wherein the sedimentary formations of the Lowlands and the crystalline masses of the Highlands have been thrown side by side. But he had been attracted to them rather on account of their singular shapes or brilliant colours, than from any regard to what might have been their different modes of origin. Now, however, he had discovered that these rocks are really monuments, wherein are recorded portions of the past history of the earth, and he was full of hope that by patient study he might yet be able to decipher them. The supply of elementary treatises and text-books of science, in the present day so abundant, had hardly at that time begun to come into existence. Geology, indeed, had but recently attained a recognised position as a distinct branch of science. And even had the young stone-mason been able to possess himself of the whole of the scanty geological literature of the time, it included no book that would have solved for him the problems that daily confronted him as he pursued his labours in the quarry, or rambled in leisure hours along the shore. The best treatise which could have fallen into his hands and which would have been full of enlightenment and suggestion for him—Playfair's immortalIllustrations of the Huttonian Theory—had appeared seventeen years before; but we have noevidence that it came in his way. He had laboriously to work out his problems for himself.

Innumerable as are the subjects for geological enquiry offered by the district of Cromarty, it was fortunate for Hugh Miller, and not less so for the cause of science, that chance placed him face to face in the most practical way with the Old Red Sandstone, and that he was, as it were, compelled to attempt to understand its history. While the lessons taught by the strata of the quarry had greatly impressed him, the abundant and well-preserved fossils among the Lias shales of the Eathie shore, which at spare moments he visited, had deepened that impression. It was while endeavouring to find these shales nearer home, on the western side of the Southern Sutor, that he stumbled upon the clays which contain the fish-bearing nodules of the Old Red Sandstone. This happy discovery, which was made in the autumn of 1830, the year after the publication of hisPoems, marks an eventful epoch in his life, as well as an important date in the history of geological investigation.

At that time comparatively little was known of the Old Red Sandstone. Its very existence as a distinct geological system was disputed on the Continent, where no equivalent for it had been recognised. It was alleged to be a mere local and accidental accumulation, which could hardly be considered as of much historical importance, seeing that no representative of it had been found beyond the British Islands. Yet within the limits of these islands it was certainly known to bulk in no inconsiderable dimensions, covering manyhundreds of square miles, and attaining a thickness of more than 10,000 feet. It had been clearly shown by William Smith, the Father of English Geology, to occupy a definite position beneath the Mountain Limestone, and above the ancient 'greywacke' which lay at the base of all the sedimentary series, and he had indicated its range over England and Wales on his map published as far back as 1815. In Scotland, too, its existence and importance as a mere mass of rock in the general framework of the country had long been recognised. Ami Boué had published in 1820 an excellent account of its igneous rocks, but without any allusion to the organic wonders for which it was yet to become famous. The extraordinary abundance of its fossil fishes, where it spreads over Caithness, had been made known to the world by Murchison in 1826, and in more detail the following year when Sedgwick and he read their conjoint paper on the conglomerates and other formations of the north of Scotland. But it may be doubted if any of these publications had found their way to Cromarty when Miller was gathering his first harvest of ichthyolites in the little bay within half-a-mile of the town. He had passed over that beach many hundreds of times in his boyhood without a suspicion of the treasures wrapped up in the grey concretions that lay tossing in the tideway. On breaking these stones, hoping to meet with a repetition of the Liassic organisms with which he had grown familiar at Eathie, he found a group of forms wholly different. At each interval of leisure he would repair to the spot, and, digging out the nodules from their matrix of clay, wouldpatiently split them open and arrange them along the higher part of the beach, according to what seemed to be the natural affinities of the fossils enclosed within them. Scouring the parish for fresh exposures of the nodule-bearing clay, he was soon rewarded by the discovery of some six or eight additional deposits charged with the same remains. There was a strange fascination in this pursuit. He had, as it were, discovered a new world. No human eye had ever before beheld these strange types of creation. Though he was well acquainted with the marine life of the adjacent sea, he had never seen any creature that in the least resembled them, or served to throw light on their structure.

With no chart or landmark to guide him into this new domain of nature, he continued for years quietly to collect and compare. The first imperfect knowledge which he was able to acquire regarding the few modern representatives of the creatures disinterred by him at Cromarty was derived in 1836 from a perusal of the well-known memoir by Hibbert on the limestone of Burdiehouse. Next year, however, he made the acquaintance of Dr. Malcolmson, who eventually carried some of his specimens to London and the Continent, and was the means of bringing him into correspondence with Murchison and Agassiz. Hugh Miller was thus at last placed in direct communication with the world of science and into relation with the men who were most thoroughly versed in the subjects that had so long engrossed his thoughts, and most capable of helping him to clear away the difficulties that beset his progress.

Meanwhile an important change had taken place in his condition of life. During the year 1834, after having worked for fifteen years in his calling of stone-mason, he was offered the accountantship of the Commercial Bank agency to be opened at Cromarty. This offer, which came to him unasked and unexpected, was a gratifying mark of the esteem and confidence with which his character was regarded. He accepted it, not without some diffidence as to his competence for the duties required. It would, however, retain him in his native town, enable him to marry the accomplished girl to whom he had for years been attached, and afford him opportunity to prosecute the researches in the Old Red Sandstone of which he had now come to realise the importance. It likewise provided him with leisure to prepare contributions to different periodicals, which, though of no great consequence to his reputation, were of service in adding to an income narrow enough for the support of a wife and family. These writings had this further advantage, that they gave him a readier command of the pen, and accustomed him to deal with lighter as well as graver subjects of discussion, thus furnishing a useful training for what was ultimately to be the main business of his later life.

At this time ecclesiastical questions occupied public attention in Scotland to the exclusion of almost everything else. The Church was entering on that stormy period which culminated in the great Disruption of 1843. Hugh Miller, who was at once an earnest Christian and a devoted son of the Church, watched the march of events with the deepest sympathy. As athoroughly 'Establishment man' he had taken but slender interest in the previous Voluntary controversy, but the larger and more vital conflict now in progress filled him with concern. It was his firm conviction that the country contained 'no other institution half so valuable as the Church, or in which the people had so large a stake.' The anxiety with which the situation impressed him affected his sleep, and he would ask himself, 'Can I do nothing for my Church in her hour of peril?' The answer which he found was to write his famousLetter from one of the Scotch people to Lord Brougham. This pamphlet was soon after followed by another entitled,The Whiggism of the Old School, as exemplified in the past history and present position of the Church of Scotland. These writings, so cogent in argument and so vigorous in style, had a wide circulation, and undoubtedly exercised much influence on the progress of the ecclesiastical controversy throughout the country. The leaders of the non-intrusion party, with whose cause he showed such keen and helpful sympathy, soon after the appearance of the first pamphlet invited Miller to confer with them in Edinburgh, and offered him the editorship of their projected newspaper, theWitness. With some misgiving as to his competence to meet all the various demands of a journal that was to appear twice a week, he accepted the proposal. Thus, after his five years' experience as a bank-accountant, he became at the beginning of 1840, when he was thirty-seven years of age, the editor of an important newspaper, and he retained that position until his death.

Up to this time the name of Hugh Miller was butlittle known beyond his native district. His political pamphlets first gave it a wide reputation, and thenceforth his conduct of a journal that represented the interests of one of the great parties into which his country was divided kept him constantly before the eyes of the public. TheWitnessrapidly attained a large circulation. It appealed not merely to the churchmen whose views it advocated, but to a wide class of readers, who, apart from ecclesiastical polemics, could appreciate its high tone, its sturdy independence, its honesty and candour, and the unusual literary excellence of its leading articles. It not only upheld but raised the standard of journalism in Scotland. As a great moral force it exercised a healthy influence on the community. There cannot be any doubt that the powerful advocacy of theWitnesswas one of the main agencies in sustaining the energies of the non-intrusion party and in consolidating the position of the young Free Church. It is my own deep conviction that the debt which that Church owes to Hugh Miller has never yet been adequately acknowledged.

Before he had been many months in the editorial chair he began to publish in the columns of his paper the first of that brilliant succession of geological articles which attracted the attention of men of science, as well as of the general public, and which continued to be a characteristic feature of theWitnessup to the end of his life. The first articles, describing his discoveries in the Old Red Sandstone of Cromarty, created not a little sensation among the geologists who had gathered in the year 1840 at the memorablemeeting of the British Association in Glasgow. It was there that Agassiz, who had come fresh from the study of Swiss glaciers to the Scottish Highlands, announced that he had found clear evidence that the mountains of this country had once also nourished their glaciers and snow-fields. It was then, too, that the same illustrious naturalist gave the first account of the fossils found by Hugh Miller at Cromarty, one of which he named after its discoverer. In that gathering of eminent men, Murchison declared that the articles which had been appearing in theWitnesswere 'written in a style so beautiful and poetical as to throw plain geologists like himself into the shade.' Buckland, famous for his own eloquent pages in the Bridgewater Treatise, expressed his unbounded astonishment and admiration, affirming that 'he would give his left hand to possess such powers of description.' The articles were next year collected and expanded into hisOld Red Sandstone, or New Walks in an Old Field—the first and, in some respects, the freshest and most delightful of all his scientific volumes.

In subsequent years there appeared in the same columns hisCruise of the Betsy—a series of papers written among the Western Isles, and full of the poetry and geological charm of that marvellous region; hisRambles of a Geologist, in which he included the results of his wanderings over Scotland between 1840 and 1848, and other essays, the more important of which were collected with pious care by his widow, and published in a succession of volumes after his death. HisFirst Impressions of Englandand its Peopleappeared in 1846, and greatly increased the reputation of its writer as an observant traveller, an able critic, and an accomplished writer, possessing a wide and sympathetic acquaintance with English literature. TheFootprints of the Creator, which followed in 1847, was of a less popular character. Its detailed account of the structure of some of the fishes of the Old Red Sandstone is, however, of lasting value, though its controversy with theVestiges of Creationhas now little more than an historical interest. TheSchools and Schoolmasters, after running as usual through the pages of the newspaper, was issued as a separate volume in 1852, and was everywhere hailed as one of the most delightful and instructive of all his works. TheTestimony of the Rocks, with the final proofs of which he was engaged on the last day of his life, was issued a few months after he had been laid to rest beside his friend Chalmers. Altogether of his collected writings, including those that appeared in his lifetime, a series of twelve volumes has been published, but many hundreds of articles of less permanent interest, yet each marked by the distinctive charm of its writer, remain buried in the files of theWitness.

If, from his writings alone, we judge of the extent and value of the work achieved by Hugh Miller, we can have little hesitation in believing that it is mainly his contributions to the literature of science that will hand his name down to future generations. Like so many other men who have attained distinction in the same field, he from the beginning to the end made geology his recreation, in the midst of otherparamount pre-occupations. It furnished him with solace from the toils of the quarry and the building yard, it supplied him with a healthful relief from the labours of the bank, and when in later years he escaped each autumn for a few weeks of much needed leisure from the cares and responsibilities of the Editor's desk, it led him to ramble at will all over his native country, and brought him into acquaintance with every type of its rocks and its landscapes.

Unquestionably the most original part of his scientific work, that wherein he added most to the sum of acquired knowledge, is to be found in his reconstruction of the extinct types of fishes which he discovered in the Old Red Sandstone. The merit of these labours can hardly be properly appreciated unless it be borne in mind that he came to the study of the subject with no preliminary biological training, save what he could pick up for himself from an examination of such denizens of the waters of the neighbouring firths as he could meet with. But after prolonged search he could find in these northern seas no living creatures, the structure of which afforded him any clue to that of the fossil fishes of Cromarty. Some men had concluded that the organisms were ancient turtles, others that they were crustaceans, or even aquatic beetles. He had the sagacity, however, to surmise that they were probably all fishes, and he enjoyed the satisfaction afterwards of learning that Agassiz pronounced even the most bizarre amongst them to belong to that great division of the animal kingdom. He was guided by his own intuitive conception of what must have been the plan on whichthese long vanished types of organic structure had been fashioned. Huxley, who twenty years afterwards had occasion to subject the Old Red Sandstone fishes to critical study, and who brought to the inquiry all the resources of modern biology, has left on record the impression made on his mind by a minute revision of Hugh Miller's work. 'The more I study the fishes of the "Old Red,"' he remarks, 'the more am I struck with the patience and sagacity manifested in Hugh Miller's researches, and by the natural insight which in his case seems to have supplied the place of special anatomical knowledge.' He refers to the 'excellent restoration ofOsteolepis,' in which even some of the minute peculiarities had not escaped notice, and he declares that Hugh Miller had made known almost the whole organisation ofDipterus, and had thus anticipated the most important part of Professor Pander's labours in the same field, the distinguished Russian palæontologist not having been aware that the work had already been done in Scotland.

But it is not, in my opinion, by the extent or value of his original contributions to geology that the importance of Hugh Miller's scientific labours and writings should be measured. Other men, who have left no conspicuous mark on their time, have surpassed him in these respects. What we more especially owe to him is the awakening of a wide-spread interest in the methods and results of scientific inquiry. More than any other author of his day, he taught men to recognise that beneath the technicalities and jargon of the schools, that are too apt to conceal the meaningof the facts and inferences which they express, there lie the most vital truths in regard to the world in which we live. He clothed the dry bones of science with living flesh and blood. He made the aspects of past ages to stand out picturesquely before us, as his vivid imagination conceived that they must once have been. He awakened an enthusiasm for geological questions, such as had never before existed, and this wave of popular appreciation which he set in motion has never since ceased to pulsate throughout the English-speaking peoples of the world. His genial ardour and irresistible eloquence swept away the last remnants of the barrier of orthodox prejudice against geology in this country. The present generation can hardly realise the former strength of that bigotry, or appreciate the merit of the service rendered in the breaking of it down. The well-known satirical criticism of the poet Cowper[100]expressed a prevalent feeling among the orthodox of his day, and this feeling was still far from extinct when Miller began to write. I can recall manifestations of it even within my own experience. No one, however, could doubt his absolute orthodoxy, and when the cause of the science was so vigorously espoused by him, the voices of the objectors were finally silenced. There was another class of cavillers who looked on geology as a mere collecting of minerals, a kind of laborious trifling concealed under a cover of uncouth technical terms. Their view was well expressed by Wordsworth when he singled out for contemptuous scorn the enthusiast who carried a pocket hammer with which he chippedoff splinters of the rocks, and left raw scars as marks of his progress.[101]

But a champion had now arisen who, as far as might be, discarding technicalities, made even the dullest reader feel that the geologist is the historian of the earth, that he deals with a series of chronicles as real and as decipherable as those that record human events, and that they can be made not only intelligible but attractive, as the subjects of simple and eloquent prose.

The absence of technical detail, which makes one of the charms of Hugh Miller's books to the non-scientific reader, may be regarded as a defect by the strict and formal geologist. Like every other branch of natural science, geology rests on a basis of observation, which frequently depends for its value upon the minuteness and accuracy of its details. To collect these details is often a laborious task, which is seldom undertaken save by those to whose department of the science they specially belong. A palæontologist cannot be expected to devote his time to the study of the microscopic characters of minerals and rocks. He leaves that research to the petrographer, who, on the other hand, will not readily embark on an investigation of the minute anatomy of fossil plants or animals. This specialisation, which has always to some extent existed, necessarily becomes more pronounced as science advances. The days are far past for Admirable Crichtons, and it is no longer possible for any one man to be equally versed in every branch of even a single department of natural knowledge.

Hugh Miller's researches among the Old Red Sandstone fishes showed him to be above all a naturalist and palæontologist, capable of expending any needful amount of patient labour in working out the minutest details of organic structure. In other fields of geological inquiry, while he was far from undervaluing the importance of detail, he avoided the recapitulation of it in his writings. It interested him, indeed, only in so far as it enabled him to reach some broad conclusion or to fill in the canvas of some striking picture of bygone aspects of the earth's surface. Hence he did not apply himself to the minute investigation of problems of geological structure, and when he undertook any inquiry in that direction he was apt to start rather from the palæontological than the physical side. Thus the work of his last years along the shores of the Firth of Forth, wherein he sought to accumulate proofs of the comparatively recent upheaval of the land, was mainly based on the position of shells with reference to their present habitat in the adjacent seas. As a youth enthusiastically geological, I was privileged to enjoy his friendship, sometimes accompanying him on an excursion, and always spending an evening with him after one of his autumn journeys, that we might exchange the results of our several peregrinations. Only a few weeks before his death, on the last of those memorable evenings, he had his trophy of shells spread on the table, which enabled him to prove that at no very distant date Scotland was cut in two by a sea-strait that connected the Firths of Forth and Clyde. He had found marine shells at Bucklyvie, on the flat ground about midway between the twoestuaries. Finding me not quite clear as to the precise geographical position of his shell-bed, he burst out triumphantly with the lines placed by Scott at the head of the chapter inRob Roy, which tells of the journey of Bailie Nicol Jarvie and Osbaldistone into the Highlands:

'Baron of BucklyvieMay the foul fiend drive ye,And a' to pieces rive ye,For building sic a toun,Where there's neither horse meat, nor man's meat, nor a chair to sit doun.'

'Baron of Bucklyvie

May the foul fiend drive ye,

And a' to pieces rive ye,

For building sic a toun,

Where there's neither horse meat, nor man's meat, nor a chair to sit doun.'

I remember, too, that on that occasion I had brought with me the detailed map of Arthur's Seat at Edinburgh, of which I had just completed the geological survey, and I explained to him in some detail what I had found to be the structure of the hill. Having grasped the main succession of the rocks, he with characteristic rapidity passed from the particulars which I had given him to the events of which they were the record, and turning to his daughter, who was sitting near, he exclaimed to her, 'There, Harriet, is material for such an essay as has been prescribed to you at school.' Then in a few graphic sentences he drew a picture of what seemed to him to have been the history of the old volcano.

While various causes no doubt contributed in this country to the remarkable and rapid increase in the general appreciation of the interest of geological investigation, I feel assured that one of the chief of them has been Hugh Miller's imaginative grasp of the subject, and his eloquent advocacy. The personalexperience of a single individual can count for little in an estimate of this kind; but for what it may be worth, I gladly avail myself of this opportunity to state mine. It was Hugh Miller'sOld Red Sandstonethat first revealed to me the ancient history that might lie concealed in the hills around me, and the meanings that might be hidden in the commonest stones beneath my feet. I had been interested in such objects, as boys are apt to be who spend much of their time in the open country. But it was that book which set me on the path of intelligent inquiry. And this experience must doubtless have been shared by many thousands of his readers, who never saw his living face and who never became geologists.

I have alluded to the excellence of his literary style—a characteristic which unfortunately is only too rare among writers in science. There can be little doubt that this feature of his work will constitute one of its claims to perpetual recognition. His early and wide acquaintance with our literature enabled him to intersperse through his pages many an apposite quotation and felicitous allusion. He had set before himself as models the best prose writers of the previous century, and the influence of Goldsmith upon him is especially notable. He thus acquired the command of pure, idiomatic and forcible language, wherein to clothe the arguments which he wished to enforce, to describe the landscapes which had imprinted themselves like photographs on his memory, and to present restorations of ancient lands and seas which his poetic temperament and powerful imagination called up before his eyes. Moreover, he had a keen sense ofhumour, which would show itself from time to time, even in the midst of a scientific discussion. He could not bear dulness in others, and strove to avoid it himself. Where his subject might have been apt to grow wearisome, he contrived to lighten it with unexpected flashes of pleasantry or with some pertinent words from a favourite author. This felicitous style seemed so spontaneous, and yet it was in reality the result of the most scrupulous attention. Even in his newspaper articles on the multifarious topics of the passing day, he continued to maintain the same high standard of composition. He has left as his literary monument a series of works that may serve as models of English writing.

In estimating a man's influence on the world we look not only at his work but on his character, often the more important and valuable of the two. Judged from this side, Hugh Miller's claims to our regard and admiration are not less strong for what he was than for what he did. Pious and pure-minded, full of generous sympathies, and alive to all that was noblest and best in human life, he was endowed with a manly independence of nature which kept his head erect in every changing phase of his career, and won for him the respect of all, gentle and simple, who came in contact with him. Though naturally robust, his occupation as a mason had left behind some seeds of disease. He was at different times attacked with inflammation of the lungs and other disorders of enfeebled health. His strong sense of duty, however, kept him at his post when prudence earnestly counselled rest. At last the strain becametoo great, and brought a noble and well-spent life to a sudden and tragic end.

It is to me a valued privilege to take part to-day in the centenary celebration of such a man. The years slip away, and I am probably the only geologist now alive who knew Hugh Miller well. He was my earliest scientific friend. Some boyish articles I had written in an Edinburgh newspaper on a geological excursion to the Isle of Arran had gained me his acquaintance, and ever thereafter I enjoyed his friendship and profited by his encouragement. To his helpful intervention I owed my introduction to Murchison, and thence my entry into the Geological Survey. His death was one of the great bereavements of my youth. It is therefore with heartfelt gratification that here, in his native town, so early familiar to me from his graphic descriptions, I find myself permitted on this public occasion gratefully to express my life-long indebtedness to him for his noble example, for the stimulus of his writings, and for the personal kindness which I received at his hands.

FOOTNOTES:[99]An Address given at the Centenary Celebration of his Birth held in Cromarty on 22nd August, 1902.[100]Seeante, p. 128.[101]The passage has been cited on p. 128.

[99]An Address given at the Centenary Celebration of his Birth held in Cromarty on 22nd August, 1902.

[100]Seeante, p. 128.

[101]The passage has been cited on p. 128.

Science in Education[102]

When the history of Education during the nineteenth century comes to be written, one of its most striking features will be presented by the rise and growth of Science in the general educational arrangements of every civilised country. At the beginning of the century our schools and colleges were still following, with comparatively little change, the methods and subjects of tuition that had been in use from the time of the Middle Ages. But the extraordinary development of the physical and natural sciences, which has done so much to alter the ordinary conditions of life, has powerfully affected also our system of public instruction. The medieval circle of studies has been widely recognised not to supply all the mental training needed in the ampler range of modern requirement. Science has, step by step, gained a footing in the strongholds of the older learning. Not without vehement struggle, however, has shebeen able to intrench herself there. Even now, although her ultimate victory is assured, the warfare is by no means at an end. The jealousy of the older régime and the strenuous, if sometimes blatant, belligerency of the reformers have not yet been pacified; and, from time to time, within our public schools and universities, there may still be heard the growls of opposition and the shouts of conflict. But these sounds are growing fainter. Even the most conservative don hardly ventures nowadays openly to denounce science and all her works. Grudgingly, it may be, but yet perforce, he has to admit the teaching of modern science to a place among the subjects which the university embraces, and in which it grants degrees. In our public schools a 'modern side' has been introduced, and even on the classical side an increasing share of the curriculum is devoted to oral and practical teaching in science. New colleges have been founded in the more important centres of population, for the purpose, more particularly, of enabling the community to obtain a thorough education in modern science.

The mainspring of this remarkable educational revolution has, doubtless, been the earnest conviction that the older learning was no longer adequate in the changed and changing conditions of our time; that vast new fields of knowledge, opened up by the increased study of nature, ought to be included in any scheme of instruction intended to fit men for the struggle of modern life, and that in this newer knowledge much might be found to minister to the highest ends of education. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that utilitarian considerations have not been whollyabsent from the minds of the reformers. Science has many and far-reaching practical applications. It has called into existence many new trades and professions, and has greatly modified many of those of older date. In a thousand varied ways it has come into the ordinary affairs of every-day life. Its cultivation has brought innumerable material benefits; its neglect would obviously entail many serious industrial disadvantages, and could not fail to leave us behind in the commercial progress of the nations of the globe. So much have these considerations pressed upon the attention of the public in recent years that, besides all the other educational machinery to which I have referred, technical schools have been established in many towns for the purpose of teaching the theory as well as the practice of various arts and industries, and making artisans understand the nature of the processes with which their trades are concerned.

That this educational transformation, which has been advancing during the century, has resulted in great benefit to the community at large can hardly be denied. Besides the obvious material gains, there has been a widening of the whole range and methods of our teaching; the old subjects are better, because more scientifically, taught, and the new subjects enlist the attention and sympathy of large classes of pupils whom the earlier studies only languidly interested. Nevertheless, it is incumbent on those who have advocated and carried out this change to ask themselves whether it has brought with it no drawbacks. They may be sure that no such extensive reform could possibly be introduced without defects appearing in itsomewhere. And it is well to look these defects in the face, and, as far as may be possible, remove them. In considering how I might best discharge the duty with which I have been honoured of addressing the students of Mason College this evening, I have thought that it might not be inappropriate if, as a representative of science, I were to venture to point out some of the drawbacks as well as the advantages of the position which science has attained in our educational system.

At the outset no impartial onlooker can fail to notice that the natural reaction against the dominance of the older learning has tended to induce an undervaluing of the benefits which that learning afforded and can still bestow. In this College, indeed, and in other institutions more specially designed for instruction in science, provision has also been made for the teaching of Latin, Greek, and the more important modern languages and literatures. But in such institutions, these subjects usually hold only a subordinate place. It can hardly be denied that generally throughout the country, even although the literary side of education still maintains its pre-eminence in our public schools and universities, it is losing ground, and that every year it occupies less of the attention of students of science. The range of studies which the science examinations demand is always widening, while the academic period within which these studies must be crowded undergoes no extension. Those students, therefore, who, whether from necessity or choice, have taken their college education in science, naturally experience no littledifficulty in finding time for the absolutely essential subjects required for their degrees. Well may they declare that it is hopeless for them to attempt to engage in anything more, and especially in anything that will not tell directly on their places in the final class-lists. With the best will in the world, and with even, sometimes, a bent for literary pursuits, they may believe themselves compelled to devote their whole time and energies to the multifarious exactions of their science curriculum.

Such a result of our latest reformation in education may be unavoidable, but it is surely matter for regret. A training in science and scientific methods, admirable as it is in so many ways, fails to supply those humanising influences which the older learning can so well impart. For the moral stimulus that comes from an association with all that is noblest and best in the literatures of the past, for the culture and taste that spring from prolonged contact with the highest models of literary expression, for the widening of our sympathies and the vivifying of our imagination by the study of history and philosophy, the teaching of science has no proper equivalents.

Men who have completed their formal education with little or no help from the older learning may be pardoned should they be apt to despise such help and to believe that they can very well dispense with it in the race of life. My first earnest advice to the science students of this College is, not to entertain this belief and to refuse to act on it. Be assured that, in your future career whatever it may be, you will find in literature a source of solace and refreshment, ofstrength and encouragement, such as no department of science can give you. There will come times, even to the most enthusiastic among you, when scientific work, in spite of its absorbing interest, grows to be a weariness. At such times as these you will appreciate the value of the literary culture you may have received at school or college. Cherish the literary tastes you have acquired, and devote yourself sedulously to the further cultivation of them during such intervals of leisure as you may be able to secure.

Over and above the pleasure which communion with the best books will bring with it, two reasons of a more utilitarian kind may be given to science students why they should seek this communion. Men who have been too exclusively trained in science, or are too much absorbed in its pursuit, are not always the most agreeable members of society. They are apt to be somewhat angular and professional, contributing little that is interesting to general conversation, save when they get a chance of introducing their own science and its doings. Perhaps the greatest bore I ever met was a man of science, whose mind and training were so wholly mathematical and physical that he seemed unable to look at the simplest subject save in its physical relations, about which he would discourse till he had long exhausted the patience of the auditor whom he detained. There is no more efficacious remedy for this tendency to what is popularly known as 'shop' than the breadth and culture of mind that spring from wide reading in ancient and modern literature.

The other reason for the advice I offer you is one of which you will hardly, perhaps, appreciate thefull force in the present stage of your career. One result of the comparative neglect of the literary side of education by many men of science is conspicuously seen in their literary style. It is true that in our time we have had some eminent scientific workers, who have also been masters of nervous and eloquent English. But it is not less true that the literature of science is burdened with a vast mass of slipshod, ungrammatical and clumsy writing, wherein sometimes even the meaning of the authors is left in doubt. Let me press upon you the obvious duty of not increasing this unwieldy burden. Study the best masters of style, and when once you have made up your minds what you want to say, try to express it in the simplest, clearest, and most graceful language you can find.

Remember that, while education is the drawing out and cultivation of all the powers of the mind, no system has yet been devised that will by itself develop with equal success every one of these powers. The system under which we have been trained may have done as much for us as it can do. Each of us is thereafter left to supplement its deficiencies by self-culture. And in the ordinary science-instruction of the time one of the most obvious of these inevitable deficiencies is the undue limitation or neglect of the literary side of education.

But in the science-instruction itself there are dangers regarding which we cannot be too watchful. In this College and in all the other well-organised scientific institutions of the country, the principles of science are taught orally and experimentally. Every branch of knowledge is expounded in its bearings on otherbranches. Its theory is held up as the first great aim of instruction, and its practical applications are made subsequent and subordinate. Divisions of science are taught here which may have few practical applications, but which are necessary for a comprehensive survey of the whole circle of scientific truth. Now, you may possibly have heard, and in the midst of a busy industrial community you are not unlikely to hear, remarks made in criticism of this system or method of tuition. The importance of scientific training will be frankly acknowledged and even insisted upon, but you will sometimes hear this admission coupled with the proviso that the science must be of a practical kind; must, in short, be just such and no other, as will fit young men to turn it to practical use in the manufactures or industries to which they may be summoned. The critics who make this limitation boast that they are practical men, and that in their opinion theory is useless or worse for the main purposes for which they would encourage and support a great scientific school.

Now I am quite sure that those science students who have passed even a single session in Mason College can see for themselves the utter fallacy of such statements and the injury that would be done to the practical usefulness of this institution, and to the general progress of the industrial applications of science, if such short-sighted views were ever carried into effect. There can be no thorough, adequate, and effective training in science unless it be based on a comprehensive study of facts and principles, altogether apart from any economic uses to which they may beput. Science must be pursued for her own sake, in the first instance, and without reference to any pecuniary benefits she may be able to confer. We never can tell when the most theoretical part of pure science may be capable of being turned to the most important practical uses. Who could have surmised, for instance, that in the early tentative experiments of Volta, Galvani, and others last century lay the germ of the modern world-grasping electric telegraph? Or when Wedgwood, at the beginning of this century, copied paintings by the agency of light upon nitrate of silver, who could have foretold that he was laying the foundations of the marvellous art of photography.

There can be no more pernicious doctrine than that which would measure the commercial value of science by its immediate practical usefulness, and would restrict its place in education to those only of its sub-divisions which may be of service to the industries of the present time. Such a curtailed method of instruction is not education in the true sense of the term. It is only a kind of cramming for a specific purpose, and the knowledge which it imparts, being one-sided and imperfect, is of little value beyond its own limited range. I by no means wish to undervalue the importance of technical instruction. By all means let our artisans know as much as can be taught them regarding the nature and laws of the scientific processes in which they are engaged. But it is not by mere technical instruction that we shall maintain and extend the industrial and commercial greatness of the country. If we are not only to holdour own, but to widen the boundaries of applied science, to perfect our manufactures, and to bring new departments of Nature into the service of man, it is by broad, thorough, untrammelled scientific research that our success must be achieved.

When, therefore, you are asked to explain of what practical use are some of the branches of science in which you have been trained, do not lose patience with your questioner, nor answer him as you think such a Philistine deserves to be answered. Give him a few illustrations of the thousands of ways in which science, that might have been stigmatised by him as merely abstract and theoretical, has yet been made to minister to the practical needs of humanity. Above all, urge him to attend some of the classes of Mason College, where he will learn, in the most effectual manner, the intimate connection between theory and practice. If he chance to be wealthy, the experiment may possibly open his eyes to the more urgent needs of the institution and induce him to contribute liberally towards their satisfaction.

Among the advantages and privileges of your life at college there is one, the full significance and value of which you will better appreciate in later years. You have here an opportunity of acquiring a wide general view of the whole range of scientific thought and method. If you proceed to a science degree you are required to lay a broad foundation of acquaintance with the physical and biological sciences. You are thus brought into contact with the subjects of each great department of natural knowledge, and you learn enough regarding them to enable you to understandtheir scope and to sympathise with the workers who are engaged upon them. But when your academical career is ended, no such chance of wide general training is ever likely to be yours again. You will be dragged into the whirl of life, where you will probably find little time or opportunity to travel much beyond the sphere of employment to which you may have been called. Make the most, therefore, of the advantages which in this respect you meet with here. Try to ensure that your acquaintance with each branch of science embraced in your circle of studies shall be as full and accurate as lies in your power to make it. Even in departments outside the bounds of your own tastes and ultimate requirements, do not neglect the means provided for your gaining some knowledge of them. I urge this duty, not because its diligent discharge will obviously tell in your examinations, but because it will give you that scientific culture which while enabling you to appreciate and enjoy the successive advances of other sciences than that which you may select for special cultivation, will at the same time increase your general usefulness and aid you in your own researches.

The days of Admirable Crichtons are long since past. So rapid and general is the onward march of science that not only can no man keep pace with it in every direction, but it has become almost hopelessly impossible to remain abreast of the progress in each of the several sub-divisions of even a single science. We are entering more and more upon the age of specialists. It grows increasingly difficult for the specialists, even in kindred sciences, to remain in touch with each other.When you find yourselves fairly launched into the vortex of life you will look back with infinite satisfaction to the time when you were enabled to lay a broad and solid platform of general acquirement within the walls of this College.

Perhaps the most remarkable defect in the older or literary methods of education was the neglect of the faculty of observation. For the training of the other mental faculties ample provision was made, but for this, one of the most important of the whole, no care was taken. If a boy was naturally observant, he was left to cultivate the use of his eyes as he best might; if he was not observant, nothing was done to improve him in this respect, unless it were, here and there, by the influence of such an intelligent teacher as is described in Mrs. Barbauld's famous story ofEyes and No Eyes. Even when science began to be introduced into our schools, it was still taught in the old or literary fashion. Lectures and lessons were given by masters who got up their information from books, but had no practical knowledge of the subjects they taught. Class-books were written by men equally destitute of a personal acquaintance with any department of science. The lessons were learnt by rote, and not infrequently afforded opportunities rather for frolic than for instruction. Happily this state of things, though not quite extinct, is rapidly passing away. Practical tuition is everywhere coming into use, while the old-fashioned cut-and-dry lesson-book is giving way to the laboratory, the field-excursion, and the school-museum.

It is mainly through the eyes that we gain ourknowledge and appreciation of the world in which we live. But we are not all equally endowed with the gift of intelligent vision. On the contrary, in no respect, perhaps, do we differ more from each other than in our powers of observation. Obviously, a man who has a quick eye to note what passes around him must, in the ordinary affairs of life, stand at a considerable advantage over another man who moves unobservantly on his course. We cannot create an observing faculty any more than we can create a memory, but we may do much to develop both. This is a feature in education of much more practical and national importance than might be supposed. I suspect that it lies closer than might be imagined to the success of our commercial relations abroad. Our prevalent system of instruction has for generations past done nothing to cultivate the habit of observation, and has thus undoubtedly left us at a disadvantage in comparison with nations that have adopted methods of tuition wherein the observing faculty is regularly trained. With our world-wide commerce we have gone on supplying to foreign countries the same manufactured goods for which our fathers found markets in all quarters of the globe. Our traders, however, now find themselves in competition with traders from other nations who have been trained to better use of their powers of observation, and who, taking careful note of the gradually changing tastes and requirements of the races which they visit, have been quick to report these changes and to take means for meeting them. Thus, in our own centres of trade we find ourselvesin danger of being displaced by rivals with sharper eyes and greater powers of adaptation.

It is the special function of science to cultivate this faculty of observation. Here in Mason College, from the very beginning of your scientific studies you have been taught to use your eyes, to watch the phenomena that appear and disappear around you, to note the sequence and relation of these phenomena, and thus, as it were, to enter beneath the surface into the very soul of things. You cannot, however, have failed to remark among your fellow-students great inequalities in their powers of observation, and great differences in the development of these powers under the very same system of instruction. And you may have noticed that, speaking generally, those class-mates who have shown the best observing faculty have taken a foremost place among their fellows. It is not a question of mere brain-power. A man may possess a colossal intellect, while his faculty of observation may be of the feeblest kind. One of the greatest mathematicians of this century who, full of honours, recently passed away from us, had so little cognisance of his surroundings, that many ludicrous stories are told of his child-like mistakes as to place and time.

The continued development of the faculty of prompt and accurate observation is a task on which you cannot bestow too much attention. Your education here must already have taught you its value. In your future career the use you make of this faculty may determine your success or your failure. But not only have your studies in this College trained yourobserving powers, they have at the same time greatly widened the range of your mental vision by the variety of objects which you have been compelled to look at and examine. The same methods which have been so full of benefit to you here can be continued by you in after life. And be assured that in maintaining them in active use you will take the most effective means for securing success in the careers you may choose to follow.

But above and beyond the prospect of any material success there is a higher motive which will doubtless impel you. The education of your observing faculty has been carried on during your introduction to new realms of knowledge. The whole domain of Nature has been spread out before you. You have been taught to observe thousands of objects and processes of which, common though they may be, you had previously taken no note. Henceforth, wherever you may go, you cannot wander with ignorant or unobservant eyes. Land and sea and sky, bird and beast and flower, now awaken in you a new interest, for you have learned lessons from them that have profoundly impressed you, and you have discovered meanings in them of which you had never dreamed. You have been permitted to pass within the veil of nature, and to perceive some of the inner mechanism of this world.

Thus, your training in science has not only taught you to use your eyes, but to use them intelligently, and in such a way as to see much more in the world around you than is visible to the uninstructed man. This widened perception might be illustrated fromany department of natural science. Let me take, by way of example, the relation of the student of science towards the features and charms of landscape. It may be said that no training is needed to comprehend these beauties; that the man in the street, the holiday-maker from town, is just as competent as the man of science to appreciate them, and get quite as much pleasure out of them. We need not stop to discuss the relative amounts of enjoyment which different orders of spectators may derive from scenery; but obviously the student of science has one great advantage in this matter. Not only can he enjoy to the full all the outward charms which appeal to the ordinary eye, but he sees in the features of the landscape new charms and interests which the ordinary untrained eye cannot see. Your accomplished Professor of Geology has taught you the significance of the outer lineaments of the land. While under his guidance you have traced with delight the varied features of the lovely landscapes of the Midlands, your eyes have been trained to mark their connection with each other, and their respective places in the ordered symmetry of the whole scene. You perceive why there is here a height and there a hollow; you note what has given the ridges and vales their dominant forms and directions; you detect the causes that have spread out a meadow in one place and raised up a hill in another.

Above and beyond all questions as to the connection and origin of its several parts, the landscape appeals vividly to your imagination. You know that it has not always worn the aspect which it presents to-day. You have observed in these ridges proofs thatthe sea once covered their site. You have seen the remains of long extinct shells, fishes, and reptiles that have been disinterred from the mud and silt left behind by the vanished waters. You have found evidence that not once only, but again and again, after vast lapses of time and many successive revolutions, the land has sunk beneath the ocean and has once more emerged. You have been shown traces of underground commotion, and you can point to places where, over central England, volcanoes were once active. You have learnt that the various elements of the landscape have thus been gradually put together during successive ages, and that the slow processes, whereby the characteristic forms of the ground have been carved out, are still in progress under your eye.

While, therefore, you are keenly alive to the present beauty of the scene, it speaks to you at every turn of the past. Each feature recalls some incident in the strange primeval history that has been transacted here. The succession of contrasts between what is now and what has been fills you with wonder and delight. You feel as if a new sense had been given to you, and that with its aid your appreciation of scenery has been enlarged and deepened to a marvellous degree.

And so too is it with your relation to all the other departments of Nature. The movements of the clouds, the fall of rain, the flow of brook and river, the changes of the seasons, the succession of calm and storm, do not pass before your eyes now as they once did. While they minister to the joy of life, they speak to you of that all-embracing system of process and law that governs the world. Thewayside flower is no longer to your eyes merely a thing of beauty. You have found it to be that and far more—an exquisite organism in which the several parts are admirably designed to promote the growth of the plant and to perpetuate the life of the species. Every insect and bird is now to you an embodiment of the mystery of life. The forces of Nature, once so dark and so dreaded, are now seen by you to be intelligible, orderly and capable of adaptation to the purposes of man. In the physical and chemical laboratories you have been brought into personal contact with these forces, and have learnt to direct their operations, as you have watched the manifold effects of energy upon the infinite varieties of matter.

When you have completed your course of study and leave this College, crowned, I hope, with academic distinction, there will be your future career in life to choose and follow. A small number among you may, perhaps, be so circumstanced as to be able to devote yourselves entirely to original scientific research, selecting such branches of inquiry as may have specially interested you here, and giving up your whole time and energy to investigation. A much larger number will, no doubt, enter professions where a scientific training can be turned to practical account, and you may become engineers, chemists, or medical men. But in the struggle for existence, which every year grows keener amongst us, these professions are more and more crowded, so that a large proportion of your ranks may not succeed in finding places there, and may in the end be pushed into walks in life where there may be little or no opportunity formaking much practical use of the knowledge in science which you have gained here. To those who may ultimately be thus situated it will always be of advantage to have had the mental training given in this Institution, and it will probably be your own fault if, even under unfavourable conditions, you do not find, from time to time, chances of turning your scientific acquirements to account. Your indebtedness to your professors demands that you shall make the effort, and, for the credit of the College, you are bound to do your best.

Among the mental habits which your education in science has helped to foster, there are a few which I would specially commend to your attention as worthy of your most sedulous care all through life.

In the first place I would put Accuracy. You have learnt in the laboratory how absolutely essential this condition is for scientific investigation. We are all supposed to make the ascertainment of the truth our chief aim, but we do not all take the same trouble to attain it. Accuracy involves labour, and every man is not gifted with an infinite capacity for taking pains. Inexactness of observation is sure sooner or later to be detected, and to be visited on the head of the man who commits it. If his observations are incorrect, the conclusions he has drawn from them may be vitiated. Thus all the toil he has endured in a research may be rendered of no avail, and the reputation he might have gained is not only lost but replaced by discredit. It is quite true that absolute accuracy is often unattainable; you can only approach it. But the greater the exertion you maketo reach it, the greater will be the success of your investigations. The effort after accuracy will be transferred from your scientific work to your every-day life and become a habit of mind, advantageous both to yourselves and to society at large.

In the next place, I would set Thoroughness, which is closely akin to accuracy. Again, your training here has shown you how needful it is in scientific research to adopt thorough and exhaustive methods of procedure. The conditions to be taken into account are so numerous and complex, the possible combinations so manifold, before a satisfactory conclusion can be reached. A laborious collection of facts must be made. Each supposed fact must be sifted out and weighed. The evidence must be gone over again and yet again, each link in its chain being scrupulously tested. The deduction to which the evidence may seem to point must be closely and impartially scrutinised, every other conceivable explanation of the facts being frankly and fully considered. Obviously the man whose education has inured him to the cultivation of a mental habit of this kind is admirably equipped for success in any walk in life which he may be called upon to enter. The accuracy and thoroughness which you have learnt to appreciate and practise at College must never be dropped in later years. Carry them with you as watchwords, and make them characteristic of all your undertakings.

In the third place, we may take Breadth. At the outset of your scientific education you were doubtless profoundly impressed by the multiplicity of detail which met your eye in every department of naturalknowledge. When you entered upon the study of one of these departments, you felt, perhaps, almost overpowered and bewildered by the vast mass of facts with which you had to make acquaintance. And yet as your training advanced, you gradually came to see that the infinite variety of phenomena could all be marshalled, according to definite laws, into groups and series. You were led to look beyond the details to the great principles that underlie them and bind them into a harmonious and organic whole. With the help of a guiding system of classification, you were able to see the connection between the separate facts, to arrange them according to their mutual relations, and thus to ascend to the great general laws under which the material world has been constructed. With all attainable thoroughness in the mastery of detail, you have been taught to combine a breadth of treatment which enables you to find and keep a leading clue even through the midst of what might seem a tangled web of confusion. There are some men who cannot see the wood for the trees, and who consequently can never attain great success in scientific investigation. Let it be your aim to master fully the details of the tree, and yet to maintain such a breadth of vision as will enable you to embrace the whole forest within your ken. I need not enlarge on the practical value of this mental habit in every-day life, nor point out the excellent manner in which a scientific education tends to develop it.

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