Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/312

298 fear may have sometimes tried your patience, or to have inflicted upon you details which could not possibly he escaped, but which may well have been wearisome. But I shall rejoice—I shall consider I have done you the greatest service which it was in my power in such a way to do—if I have thus convinced you that this great question which we are discussing is not one to be dealt with by rhetorical flourishes or by loose and superficial talk, but that it requires the keenest attention of the trained intellect and the patience of the most accurate observer. When I commenced this series of lectures, I did not think it necessary to preface them with a prologue, such as might be expected from a stranger and a foreigner; for, during my brief stay in your country, I have found it very hard to believe that a stranger could be possessed of so many friends, and almost harder to imagine that a foreigner could express himself in your language in such a way as, to all appearances, to be so readily intelligible; for, so far as I can judge, that most intelligent, and, perhaps, I may add most singularly active and enterprising body, your press reporters, do not seem to have been deterred by my accent from giving the fullest account of everything that I happen to have said. But the vessel in which I take my departure to-morrow morning is even now ready to slip her moorings; I awake from my delusion that I am other than a stranger and a foreigner. I am ready to go back to my place and country, but, before doing so, let me, by way of epilogue, tender to you my most hearty thanks for the kind and cordial reception which you have accorded to me; and let me thank you still more for that which is the greatest compliment which can be afforded to any person in my position—the continuous and undisturbed attention which you have bestowed upon the long argument which I have had the honor to lay before you.



E meet to-morrow to formally begin the biological work of this University to commence that systematic study of animal and vegetable form and function, relationship and distribution, which we include under the names of Comparative Anatomy, Zoölogy, Physiology and Botany, or in the general terms Biology or Natural History. I have thought that it might be well to-day to take an opportunity of laying before you what seem to be the ends which we should hold in view, and the methods on which we should work, if we are to attain or to deserve a permanent success. I am further induced 