EDITORIAL GLEANINGS.
The Presidential Address to the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union by Sir Michael Foster, Secretary of the Royal Society, &c, is a very important and welcome deliverance in the cabal of modern biological scholasticism. The Tower of Babel finds its equivalent in the current methods of building the city of Natural Knowledge, and raising the "tower of Science." Amidst the plethora of much scientific jargon, Sir Michael well remarks, "the old example of the plain of Shinar bids every thoughtful man to ask himself the question, Is not this confusion of languages hindering and spoiling the work, even if it will not, as it did of old, stop it altogether?" We have specialized ourselves to the point of ignorance. Take the Royal Society and its purview of ascertainable knowledge. Our authority cites as an example the papers read before a single meeting, that of June 16th, 1897. He observes:—"I make bold to say that neither the President of the Society, nor any other of the officers, nor any one of the Fellows, could of his own knowledge state what was the exact meaning of each of all those titles. If you asked such a one to do it, he would tell you that he did not understand the speech of most of them.... The tower has risen to a considerable height since the Royal Society was founded, and its Fellows are no longer able to understand one another's speech." We wish we could print the whole of this address; no extracts do it justice. "There is a good old word 'Naturalist,' which, though it originally had to do with the nature of all things which exist, has in course of time been narrowed to the things which are alive. In this sense the naturalist was a man who busied himself with 'Nature' as manifested in living creatures, who sought to solve all the problems which life presents. Form, structure, function, habits, history, all and each of these supplied him with facts from which he wrested his conclusions. Observation was his chief tool, and the field his main workshop. To him invidious distinctions between different parts of biologic learning were unknown. He had not learnt to exalt either form or structure or function to the neglect of the rest. Everything he could learn came to him as a help towards answering the questions which pressed on him for an answer. A naturalist of this kind, however—a whole-minded inquirer into the nature of living beings—is for the most part a thing of the past. He has well-nigh disappeared through the process of differentiation of which I have spoken."
