"A spirit, yet a woman too,
With household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty.
A countenance in which shall meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright and good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
But let her highest and her final development be that which not nature,
but self-education alone can bring--that which makes her once and for
ever--
"A being breathing thoughtful breath;
A traveller betwixt life and death.
With reason firm, with temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength and skill.
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort and command.
And yet a spirit still and bright
With something of an angel light."
THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY.
A LECTURE DELIVERED TO THE OFFICERS OF THE ROYAL ARTILLERY, WOOLWICH.
Gentlemen:--When I accepted the honour of lecturing here, I took for
granted that so select an audience would expect from me not mere
amusement, but somewhat of instruction; or, if that be too ambitious a
word for me to use, at least some fresh hint--if I were able to give
one--as to how they should fulfil the ideal of military men in such an
age as this.
To touch on military matters, even had I been conversant with them,
seemed to me an impertinence. I am bound to take for granted that every
man knows his own business best; and I incline more and more to the
opinion that military men should be left to work out the problems of
their art for themselves, without the advice or criticism of civilians.
But I hold--and I am sure that you will agree with me--that if the
soldier is to be thus trusted by the nation, and left to himself to do
his own work his own way, he must be educated in all practical matters as
highly as the average of educated civilians. He must know all that they
know, and his own art beside. Just as a clergyman, being a man plus a
priest, is bound to be a man, and a good man, over and above his
priesthood, so is the soldier bound to be a civilian, and a
highly-educated civilian, plus his soldierly qualities and acquirements.
It seemed to me, therefore, that I might, without impertinence, ask you
to consider a branch of knowledge which is becoming yearly more and more
important in the eyes of well-educated civilians; of which, therefore,
the soldier ought at least to know something, in order to put him on a
par with the general intelligence of the nation. I do not say that he is
to devote much time to it, or to follow it up into specialities: but that
he ought to be well grounded in its principles and methods; that he ought
to be aware of its importance and its usefulness; that so, if he comes
into contact--as he will more and more--with scientific men, he may
understand them, respect them, befriend them, and be befriended by them
in turn; and how desirable this last result is, I shall tell you
hereafter.
There are those, I doubt not, among my audience who do not need the
advice which I shall presume to give to-night; who belong to that fast
increasing class among officers of whom I have often said--and I have
found scientific men cordially agree with me--that they are the most
modest and the most teachable of men. But even in their case there can
be no harm in going over deliberately a question of such importance; in
putting it, as it were, into shape; and insisting on arguments which may
perhaps not have occurred to some of them.
Let me, in the first place, reassure those--if any such there be--who may
suppose, from the title of my lecture, that I am only going to recommend
them to collect weeds and butterflies, "rats and mice, and such small
deer." Far from it. The honourable title of Natural History has, and
unwisely, been restricted too much of late years to the mere study of
plants and animals. I desire to restore the words to their original and
proper meaning--the History of Nature; that is, of all that is born, and
grows in time; in short, of all natural objects.
If anyone shall say--By that definition you make not only geology and
chemistry branches of natural history, but meteorology and astronomy
likewise--I cannot deny it. They deal, each of them, with realms of
Nature. Geology is, literally, the natural history of soils and lands;
chemistry the natural history of compounds, organic and inorganic;
meteorology the natural history of climates; astronomy the natural
history of planetary and solar bodies. And more, you cannot now study
deeply any branch of what is popularly called Natural History--that is,
plants and animals--without finding it necessary to learn something, and
more and more as you go deeper, of those very sciences. As the
marvellous interdependence of all natural objects and forces unfolds
itself more and more, so the once separate sciences, which treated of
different classes of natural objects, are forced to interpenetrate, as it
were; and to supplement themselves by knowledge borrowed from each other.
Thus--to give a single instance--no man can now be a first-rate botanist
unless he be also no mean meteorologist, no mean geologist, and--as Mr.
Darwin has shown in his extraordinary discoveries about the fertilisation
of plants by insects--no mean entomologist likewise.
It is difficult, therefore, and indeed somewhat unwise and unfair, to put
any limit to the term Natural History, save that it shall deal only with
nature and with matter; and shall not pretend--as some would have it to
do just now--to go out of its own sphere to meddle with moral and
spiritual matters. But, for practical purposes, we may define the
natural history of any given spot as the history of the causes which have
made it what it is, and filled it with the natural objects which it
holds. And if anyone would know how to study the natural history of a
place, and how to write it, let him read--and if he has read its
delightful pages in youth, read once again--that hitherto unrivalled
little monograph, White's 'Natural History of Selborne;' and let him then
try, by the light of improved science, to do for any district where he
may be stationed, what White did for Selborne nearly one hundred years
ago. Let him study its plants, its animals, its soils and rocks; and
last, but not least, its scenery, as the total outcome of what the soils,
and plants, and animals have made it. I say, have made it. How far the
nature of the soils and the rocks will affect the scenery of a district
may be well learnt from a very clever and interesting little book of
Professor Geikie's, on 'The Scenery of Scotland, as affected by its
Geological Structure.' How far the plants and trees affect not merely
the general beauty, the richness or barrenness of a country, but also its
very shape; the rate at which the hills are destroyed and washed into the
lowland; the rate at which the seaboard is being removed by the action of
waves--all these are branches of study which is becoming more and more
important.
And even in the study of animals and their effects on the vegetation,
questions of really deep interest will arise. You will find that certain
plants and trees cannot thrive in a district, while others can, because
the former are browsed down by cattle, or their seeds eaten by birds, and
the latter are not; that certain seeds are carried in the coats of
animals, or wafted abroad by winds--others are not; certain trees
destroyed wholesale by insects, while others are not; that in a hundred
ways the animal and vegetable life of a district act and react upon each
other, and that the climate, the average temperature, the maximum and
minimum temperatures, the rainfall, act on them, and in the case of the
vegetation, are reacted on again by them. The diminution of rainfall by
the destruction of forests, its increase by replanting them, and the
effect of both on the healthiness or unhealthiness of a place--as in the
case of the Mauritius, where a once healthy island has become
pestilential, seemingly from the clearing away of the vegetation on the
banks of streams--all this, though to study it deeply requires a fair
knowledge of meteorology, and even of a science or two more, is surely
well worth the attention of any educated man who is put in charge of the
health and lives of human beings.
You will surely agree with me that the habit of mind required for such a
study as this, is the very same as is required for successful military
study. In fact, I should say that the same intellect which would develop
into a great military man, would develop also into a great naturalist. I
say, intellect. The military man would require--what the naturalist
would not--over and above his intellect, a special force of will, in
order to translate his theories into fact, and make his campaigns in the
field and not merely on paper. But I am speaking only of the habit of
mind required for study; of that inductive habit of mind which works,
steadily and by rule, from the known to the unknown; that habit of mind
of which it has been said:--"The habit of seeing; the habit of knowing
what we see; the habit of discerning differences and likenesses; the
habit of classifying accordingly; the habit of searching for hypotheses
which shall connect and explain those classified facts; the habit of
verifying these hypotheses by applying them to fresh facts; the habit of
throwing them away bravely if they will not fit; the habit of general
patience, diligence, accuracy, reverence for facts for their own sake,
and love of truth for its own sake; in one word, the habit of reverent
and implicit obedience to the laws of Nature, whatever they may be--these
are not merely intellectual, but also moral habits, which will stand men
in practical good stead in every affair of life, and in every question,
even the most awful, which may come before them as rational and social
beings." And specially valuable are they, surely, to the military man,
the very essence of whose study, to be successful, lies first in
continuous and accurate observation, and then in calm and judicious
arrangement.
Therefore it is that I hold, and hold strongly, that the study of
physical science, far from interfering with an officer's studies, much
less unfitting for them, must assist him in them, by keeping his mind
always in the very attitude and the very temper which they require. If
any smile at this theory of mine, let them recollect one curious fact:
that perhaps the greatest captain of the old world was trained by perhaps
the greatest philosopher of the old world--the father of Natural History;
that Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander of Macedon. I do not fancy, of
course, that Aristotle taught Alexander any Natural History. But this we
know, that he taught him to use those very faculties by which Aristotle
became a natural historian, and many things beside; that he called out in
his pupil somewhat of his own extraordinary powers of observation,
extraordinary powers of arrangement. He helped to make him a great
general: but he helped to make him more--a great politician, coloniser,
discoverer. He instilled into him such a sense of the importance of
Natural History, that Alexander helped him nobly in his researches; and,
if Athenaeus is to be believed, gave him 800 talents towards perfecting
his history of animals. Surely it is not too much to say that this close
friendship between the natural philosopher and the soldier has changed
the whole course of civilisation to this very day. Do not consider me
Utopian when I tell you, that I should like to see the study of physical
science an integral part of the curriculum of every military school. I
would train the mind of the lad who was to become hereafter an officer in
the army--and in the navy like wise--by accustoming him to careful
observation of, and sound thought about, the face of nature; of the
commonest objects under his feet, just as much as of the stars above his
head; provided always that he learnt, not at second-hand from books, but
where alone he can really learn either war or nature--in the field; by
actual observation, actual experiment. A laboratory for chemical
experiment is a good thing, it is true, as far as it goes; but I should
prefer to the laboratory a naturalists' field club, such as are
prospering now at several of the best public schools, certain that the
boys would get more of sound inductive habits of mind, as well as more
health, manliness, and cheerfulness, amid scenes to remember which will
be a joy for ever, than they ever can by bending over retorts and
crucibles, amid smells even to remember which is a pain for ever.
But I would, whether a field club existed or not, require of every young
man entering the army or navy--indeed of every young man entering any
liberal profession whatsoever--a fair knowledge, such as would enable him
to pass an examination, in what the Germans call
_Erd-kunde_--earth-lore--in that knowledge of the face of the earth and
of its products, for which we English have as yet cared so little that we
have actually no English name for it, save the clumsy and questionable
one of physical geography; and, I am sorry to say, hardly any readable
school books about it, save Keith Johnston's 'Physical Atlas'--an
acquaintance with which last I should certainly require of young men.
It does seem most strange--or rather will seem most strange 100 years
hence--that we, the nation of colonists, the nation of sailors, the
nation of foreign commerce, the nation of foreign military stations, the
nation of travellers for travelling's sake, the nation of which one man
here and another there--as Schleiden sets forth in his book, 'The Plant,'
in a charming ideal conversation at the Travellers' Club--has seen and
enjoyed more of the wonders and beauties of this planet than the men of
any nation, not even excepting the Germans--that this nation, I say,
should as yet have done nothing, or all but nothing, to teach in her
schools a knowledge of that planet, of which she needs to know more, and
can if she will know more, than any other nation upon it.
As for the practical utility of such studies to a soldier, I only need, I
trust, to hint at it to such an assembly as this. All must see of what
advantage a rough knowledge of the botany of a district would be to an
officer leading an exploring party, or engaged in bush warfare. To know
what plants are poisonous; what plants, too, are eatable--and many more
are eatable than is usually supposed; what plants yield oleaginous
substances, whether for food or for other uses; what plants yield
vegetable acids, as preventives of scurvy; what timbers are available for
each of many different purposes; what will resist wet, salt-water, and
the attacks of insects; what, again, can be used, at a pinch, for
medicine or for styptics--and be sure, as a wise West Indian doctor once
said to me, that there is more good medicine wild in the bush than there
is in all the druggists' shops--surely all this is a knowledge not
beneath the notice of any enterprising officer, above all of an officer
of engineers. I only ask anyone who thinks that I may be in the right,
to glance through the lists of useful vegetable products given in
Lindley's 'Vegetable Kingdom'--a miracle of learning--and see the vast
field open still to a thoughtful and observant man, even while on
service; and not to forget that such knowledge, if he should hereafter
leave the service and settle, as many do, in a distant land, may be a
solid help to his future prosperity. So strongly do I feel on this
matter, that I should like to see some knowledge at least of Dr. Oliver's
excellent little 'First Book of Indian Botany' required of all officers
going to our Indian Empire: but as that will not be, at least for many a
year to come, I recommend any gentlemen going to India to get that book,
and wile away the hours of the outward voyage by acquiring knowledge
which will be a continual source of interest, and it may be now and then
of profit, to them during their stay abroad.
And for geology, again. As I do not expect you all, or perhaps any of
you, to become such botanists as General Monro, whose recent 'Monograph
of the Bamboos' is an honour to British botanists, and a proof of the
scientific power which is to be found here and there among British
officers: so I do not expect you to become such geologists as Sir
Roderick Murchison, or even to add such a grand chapter to the history of
extinct animals as Major Cautley did by his discoveries in the Sewalik
Hills. Nevertheless, you can learn--and I should earnestly advise you to
learn--geology and mineralogy enough to be of great use to you in your
profession, and of use, too, should you relinquish your profession
hereafter. It must be profitable for any man, and specially for you, to
know how and where to find good limestone, building stone, road metal; it
must be good to be able to distinguish ores and mineral products; it must
be good to know--as a geologist will usually know, even in a country
which he sees for the first time--where water is likely to be found, and
at what probable depth; it must be good to know whether the water is fit
for drinking or not, whether it is unwholesome or merely muddy; it must
be good to know what spots are likely to be healthy, and what unhealthy,
for encamping. The two last questions depend, doubtless, on
meteorological as well as geological accidents: but the answers to them
will be most surely found out by the scientific man, because the facts
connected with them are, like all other facts, determined by natural
laws. After what one has heard, in past years, of barracks built in
spots plainly pestilential; of soldiers encamped in ruined cities,
reeking with the dirt and poison of centuries; of--but it is not my place
to find fault; all I will say is, that the wise and humane officer, when
once his eyes are opened to the practical value of physical science, will
surely try to acquaint himself somewhat with those laws of drainage and
of climate, geological, meteorological, chemical, which influence, often
with terrible suddenness and fury, the health of whole armies. He will
not find it beyond his province to ascertain the amount and period of
rainfalls, the maxima of heat and of cold which his troops may have to
endure, and many another point on which their health and efficiency--nay,
their very life may depend, but which are now too exclusively delegated
to the doctor, to whose province they do not really belong. For cure, I
take the liberty of believing, is the duty of the medical officer;
prevention, that of the military.
Thus much I can say just now--and there is much more to be said--on the
practical uses of the study of Natural History. But let me remind you,
on the other side, if Natural History will help you, you in return can
help her; and would, I doubt not, help her, and help scientific men at
home, if once you looked fairly and steadily at the immense importance of
Natural History--of the knowledge of the "face of the earth." I believe
that all will one day feel, more or less, that to know the earth _on_
which we live, and the laws of it _by_ which we live, is a sacred duty to
ourselves, to our children after us, and to all whom we may have to
command and to influence; aye, and a duty to God likewise. For is it not
a duty of common reverence and faith towards Him, if He has put us into a
beautiful and wonderful place, and given us faculties by which we can
see, and enjoy, and use that place--is it not a duty of reverence and
faith towards Him to use these faculties, and to learn the lessons which
He has laid open for us? If you feel that, as I think you all will some
day feel, then you will surely feel likewise that it will be a good
deed--I do not say a necessary duty, but still a good deed and
praiseworthy--to help physical science forward; and to add your
contributions, however small, to our general knowledge of the earth. And
how much may be done for science by British officers, especially on
foreign stations, I need not point out. I know that much has been done,
chivalrously and well, by officers; and that men of science owe them, and
give them, hearty thanks for their labours. But I should like, I
confess, to see more done still. I should like to see every foreign
station, what one or two highly-educated officers might easily make it,
an advanced post of physical science, in regular communication with our
scientific societies at home, sending to them accurate and methodic
details of the natural history of each district--details 99/100ths of
which might seem worthless in the eyes of the public, but which would all
be precious in the eyes of scientific men, who know that no fact is
really unimportant; and more, that while plodding patiently through
seemingly unimportant facts, you may stumble on one of infinite
importance, both scientific and practical. For the student of nature,
gentlemen, if he will be but patient, diligent, methodical, is liable at
any moment to the same good fortune as befel Saul of old, when he went
out to seek his father's asses, and found a kingdom.
There are those, lastly, who have neither time nor taste for the
technicalities, and nice distinctions, of formal Natural History; who
enjoy Nature, but as artists or as sportsmen, and not as men of science.
Let them follow their bent freely: but let them not suppose that in
following it they can do nothing towards enlarging our knowledge of
Nature, especially when on foreign stations. So far from it, drawings
ought always to be valuable, whether of plants, animals, or scenery,
provided only they are accurate; and the more spirited and full of genius
they are, the more accurate they are certain to be; for Nature being
alive, a lifeless copy of her is necessarily an untrue copy. Most
thankful to any officer for a mere sight of sketches will be the closet
botanist, who, to his own sorrow, knows three-fourths of his plants only
from dried specimens; or the closet zoologist, who knows his animals from
skins and bones. And if anyone answers--But I cannot draw. I rejoin,
You can at least photograph. If a young officer, going out to foreign
parts, and knowing nothing at all about physical science, did me the
honour to ask me what he could do for science, I should tell him--Learn
to photograph; take photographs of every strange bit of rock-formation
which strikes your fancy, and of every widely extended view which may
give a notion of the general lie of the country. Append, if you can, a
note or two, saying whether a plain is rich or barren; whether the rock
is sandstone, limestone, granitic, metamorphic, or volcanic lava; and if
there be more rocks than one, which of them lies on the other; and send
them to be exhibited at a meeting of the Geological Society. I doubt not
that the learned gentlemen there will find in your photographs a valuable
hint or two, for which they will be much obliged. I learnt, for
instance, what seemed to me most valuable geological lessons, from mere
glances at drawings--I believe from photographs--of the Abyssinian ranges
about Magdala.
Or again, let a man, if he knows nothing of botany, not trouble himself
with collecting and drying specimens; let him simply photograph every
strange and new tree or plant he sees, to give a general notion of its
species, its look; let him append, where he can, a photograph of its
leafage, flower, fruit; and send them to Dr. Hooker, or any distinguished
botanist: and he will find that, though he may know nothing of botany, he
will have pretty certainly increased the knowledge of those who do know.
The sportsman, again--I mean the sportsman of that type which seems
peculiar to these islands, who loves toil and danger for their own sakes;
he surely is a naturalist, ipso facto, though he knows it not. He has
those very habits of keen observation on which all sound knowledge of
nature is based; and he, if he will--as he may do without interfering
with his sport--can study the habits of the animals among whom he spends
wholesome and exciting days. You have only to look over such good old
books as Williams's 'Wild Sports of the East,' Campbell's 'Old Forest
Ranger,' Lloyd's 'Scandinavian Adventures,' and last, but not least,
Waterton's 'Wanderings,' to see what valuable additions to true
zoology--the knowledge of live creatures, not merely dead ones--British
sportsmen have made, and still can make. And as for the employment of
time, which often hangs so heavily on a soldier's hands, really I am
ready to say, if you are neither men of science, nor draughtsmen, nor
sportsmen, why go and collect beetles. It is not very dignified, I know,
nor exciting: but it will be something to do. It cannot harm you, if you
take, as beetle-hunters do, an india-rubber sheet to lie on; and it will
certainly benefit science. Moreover, there will be a noble humility in
the act. You will confess to the public that you consider yourself only
fit to catch beetles; by which very confession you will prove yourself
fit for much finer things than catching beetles: and meanwhile, as I said
before, you will be at least out of harm's way. At a foreign barrack
once, the happiest officer I met, because the most regularly employed,
was one who spent his time in collecting butterflies. He knew nothing
about them scientifically--not even their names. He took them simply for
their wonderful beauty and variety; and in the hope, too--in which he was
really scientific--that if he carefully kept every form which he saw, his
collection might be of use some day to entomologists at home. A most
pleasant gentleman he was; and, I doubt not, none the worse soldier for
his butterfly catching. Commendable, also, in my eyes, was another
officer--whom I have not the pleasure of knowing--who, on a remote
foreign station, used wisely to escape from the temptations of the world
into an entirely original and most pleasant hermitage. For finding--so
the story went--that many of the finest insects kept to the tree-tops,
and never came to ground at all, he used to settle himself among the
boughs of some tree in the tropic forests, with a long-handled net and
plenty of cigars, and pass his hours in that airy flower garden, making
dashes every now and then at some splendid monster as it fluttered round
his head. His example need not be followed by everyone; but it must be
allowed that--at least as long as he was in his tree--he was neither
dawdling, grumbling, spending money, nor otherwise harming himself, and
perhaps his fellow creatures, from sheer want of employment.
One word more, and I have done. If I was allowed to give one special
piece of advice to a young officer, whether of the army or navy, I would
say--Respect scientific men; associate with them; learn from them; find
them to be, as you will usually, the most pleasant and instructive of
companions: but always respect them. Allow them chivalrously, you who
have an acknowledged rank, their yet unacknowledged rank; and treat them
as all the world will treat them, in a higher and truer state of
civilisation. They do not yet wear the Queen's uniform; they are not yet
accepted servants of the State; as they will be in some more perfectly
organised and civilised land: but they are soldiers nevertheless, and
good soldiers and chivalrous, fighting their nation's battle, often on
even less pay than you,--and with still less chance of promotion and of
fame, against most real and fatal enemies--against ignorance of the laws
of this planet, and all the miseries which that ignorance begets. Honour
them for their work; sympathise in it; give them a helping hand in it
whenever you have an opportunity--and what opportunities you have, I have
been trying to sketch for you to-night; and more, work at it yourselves
whenever and wherever you can. Show them that the spirit which animates
them--the hatred of ignorance and disorder, and of their bestial
consequences--animates you likewise; show them that the habit of mind
which they value in themselves--the habit of accurate observation and
careful judgment--is your habit likewise; show them that you value
science, not merely because it gives better weapons of destruction and of
defence, but because it helps you to become clear-headed, large-minded,
able to take a just and accurate view of any subject which comes before
you, and to cast away every old prejudice and every hasty judgment in the
face of truth and of duty: and it will be better for you and for them.
But why? What need for the soldier and the man of science to fraternise
just now? This need:--The two classes which will have an increasing, it
may be a preponderating, influence on the fate of the human race for some
time, will be the pupils of Aristotle and those of Alexander--the men of
science and the soldiers. In spite of all appearances, and all
declamations to the contrary, that is my firm conviction. They, and they
alone, will be left to rule; because they alone, each in his own sphere,
have learnt to obey. It is therefore most needful for the welfare of
society that they should pull with, and not against each other; that they
should understand each other, respect each other, take counsel with each
other, supplement each other's defects, bring out each other's higher
tendencies, counteract each other's lower ones. The scientific man has
something to learn of you, gentlemen, which I doubt not that he will
learn in good time. You, again, have--as I have been hinting to you to-
night--something to learn of him, which you, I doubt not, will learn in
good time likewise. Repeat, each of you according to his powers, the old
friendship between Aristotle and Alexander; and so, from the sympathy and
co-operation of you two, a class of thinkers and actors may yet arise
which can save this nation, and the other civilised nations of the world,
from that of which I had rather not speak; and wish that I did not think,
too often and too earnestly.
I may be a dreamer: and I may consider, in my turn, as wilder dreamers
than myself, certain persons who fancy that their only business in life
is to make money, the scientific man's only business is to show them how
to make money, and the soldier's only business to guard their money for
them. Be that as it may, the finest type of civilised man which we are
likely to see for some generations to come, will be produced by a
combination of the truly military with the truly scientific man. I say--I
may be a dreamer: but you at least, as well as my scientific friends,
will bear with me; for my dream is to your honour.
ON BIO-GEOLOGY.
AN ADDRESS GIVEN TO THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY OF WINCHESTER.
I am not sure that the subject of my address is rightly chosen. I am not
sure that I ought not to have postponed a question of mere natural
history, to speak to you, as scientific men, on the questions of life and
death, which have been forced upon us by the awful warning of an
illustrious personage's illness; of preventible disease, its frightful
prevalency; of the 200,000 persons who are said to have died of fever
alone since the Prince Consort's death, ten years ago; of the remedies;
of drainage; of sewage disinfection and utilisation; and of the
assistance which you, as a body of scientific men, can give to any effort
towards saving the lives and health of our fellow-citizens from those
unseen poisons which lurk like wild beasts couched in the jungle, ready
to spring at any moment on the unsuspecting, the innocent, the helpless.
Of all this I longed to speak: but I thought it best only to hint at it,
and leave the question to your common sense and your humanity; taking for
granted that your minds, like the minds of all right-minded Englishmen,
have been of late painfully awakened to its importance. It seemed to me
almost an impertinence to say more in a city of whose local circumstances
I know little or nothing. As an old sanitary reformer, practical, as
well as theoretical, I am but too well aware of the difficulties which
beset any complete scheme of drainage, especially in an ancient city like
this; where men are paying the penalty of their predecessors' ignorance;
and dwelling, whether they choose or not, over fifteen centuries of
accumulated dirt.
And, therefore, taking for granted that there is energy and intellect
enough in Winchester to conquer these difficulties in due time, I go on
to ask you to consider, for a time, a subject which is growing more and
more important and interesting, a subject the study of which will do much
towards raising the field naturalist from a mere collector of
specimens--as he was twenty years ago--to a philosopher elucidating some
of the grandest problems. I mean the infant science of Bio-geology--the
science which treats of the distribution of plants and animals over the
globe, and the causes of that distribution.
I doubt not that there are many here who know far more about the subject
than I; who are far better read than I am in the works of Forbes, Darwin,
Wallace, Hooker, Moritz Wagner, and the other illustrious men who have
written on it. But I may, perhaps, give a few hints which will be of use
to the younger members of this Society, and will point out to them how to
get a new relish for the pursuit of field science.
Bio-geology, then, begins with asking every plant or animal you meet,
large or small, not merely--What is your name? That is the collector and
classifier's duty; and a most necessary duty it is, and one to be
performed with the most conscientious patience and accuracy, so that a
sound foundation may be built for future speculations. But young
naturalists should act not merely as Nature's registrars and
census-takers, but as her policemen and gamekeepers; and ask everything
they meet--How did you get here? By what road did you come? What was
your last place of abode? And now you are here, how do you get your
living? Are you and your children thriving, like decent people who can
take care of themselves, or growing pauperised and degraded, and dying
out? Not that we have a fear of your becoming a dangerous class. Madam
Nature allows no dangerous classes, in the modern sense. She has,
doubtless for some wise reason, no mercy for the weak. She rewards each
organism according to its works; and if anything grows too weak or stupid
to take care of itself, she gives it its due deserts by letting it die
and disappear. So, you plant or you animal, are you among the strong,
the successful, the multiplying, the colonising? Or are you among the
weak, the failing, the dwindling, the doomed?
These questions may seem somewhat rude: but you may comfort yourself by
the thought that plants and animals, though they deserve all kindness,
all admiration, deserve no courtesy--at least in this respect. For they
are, one and all, wherever you find them, vagrants and landloupers,
intruders and conquerors, who have got where they happen to be simply by
the law of the strongest--generally not without a little robbery and
murder. They have no right save that of possession; the same by which
the puffin turns out the old rabbits, eats the young ones, and then lays
her eggs in the rabbit burrow--simply because she can.
Now, you will see at once that such a course of questioning will call out
a great many curious and interesting answers, if you can only get the
things to tell you their story; as you always may, if you will
cross-examine them long enough; and will lead you into many subjects
beside mere botany or entomology. So various, indeed, are the subjects
which you will thus start, that I can only hint at them now in the most
cursory fashion.
At the outset you will soon find yourself involved in chemical and
meteorological questions: as, for instance, when you ask--How is it that
I find one flora on the sea-shore, another on the sandstone, another on
the chalk, and another on the peat-making gravelly strata? The usual
answer would be, I presume--if we could work it out by twenty years'
experiment, such as Mr. Lawes, of Rothampsted, has been making on the
growth of grasses and leguminous plants in different soils and under
different manures--the usual answer, I say, would be--Because we plants
want such and such mineral constituents in our woody fibre; again,
because we want a certain amount of moisture at a certain period of the
year: or, perhaps, simply because the mechanical arrangement of the
particles of a certain soil happens to suit the shape of our roots and of
their stomata. Sometimes you will get an answer quickly enough;
sometimes not. If you ask, for instance, _Asplenium viride_ how it
contrives to grow plentifully in the Craven of Yorkshire down to 600 or
800 feet above the sea, while in Snowdon it dislikes growing lower than
2000 feet, and is not plentiful even there?--it will reply--Because in
the Craven I can get as much carbonic acid as I want from the decomposing
limestone: while on the Snowdon Silurian I get very little; and I have to
make it up by clinging to the mountain tops, for the sake of the greater
rainfall. But if you ask _Polopodium calcareum_--How is it you choose
only to grow on limestone, while _Polypodium Dryopteris_, of which, I
suspect, you are only a variety, is ready to grow anywhere?--_Polypodium
calcareum_ will refuse, as yet, to answer a word.
Again--I can only give you the merest string of hints--you will find in
your questionings that many plants and animals have no reason at all to
show why they should be in one place and not in another, save the very
sound reason for the latter which was suggested to me once by a great
naturalist. I was asking--Why don't I find such and such a species in my
parish, while it is plentiful a few miles off in exactly the same
soil?--and he answered--For the same reason that you are not in America.
Because you have not got there. Which answer threw to me a flood of
light on this whole science. Things are often where they are, simply
because they happen to have got there, and not elsewhere. But they must
have got there by some means: and those means I want young naturalists to
discover; at least to guess at.
A species, for instance--and I suspect it is a common case with
insects--may abound in a single spot, simply because, long years ago, a
single brood of eggs happened to hatch at a time when eggs of other
species, who would have competed against them for food, did not hatch;
and they may remain confined to that spot, though there is plenty of good
food for them outside it, simply because they do not increase fast enough
to require to spread out in search of more food. Thus I should explain a
case which I heard of lately of _Anthocera trifolii_, abundant for years
in one corner of a certain field, and only there; while there was just as
much trefoil all round for its larvae as there was in the selected spot.
I can, I say, only give hints: but they will suffice, I hope, to show the
path of thought into which I want young naturalists to turn their minds.
Or, again, you will have to inquire whether the species has not been
prevented from spreading by some natural barrier. Mr. Wallace, whom you
all of course know, has shown in his 'Malay Archipelago' that a strait of
deep sea can act as such a barrier between species. Moritz Wagner has
shown that, in the case of insects, a moderately broad river may divide
two closely allied species of beetles, or a very narrow snow-range two
closely allied species of moths.
Again, another cause, and a most common one is: that the plants cannot
spread because they find the ground beyond them already occupied by other
plants, who will not tolerate a fresh mouth, having only just enough to
feed themselves. Take the case of _Saxifraga hypnoides_ and _S.
umbrosa_, "London pride." They are two especially strong species. They
show that, _S. hypnoides_ especially, by their power of sporting, of
diverging into varieties; they show it equally by their power of thriving
anywhere, if they can only get there. They will both grow in my sandy
garden, under a rainfall of only 23 inches, more luxuriantly than in
their native mountains under a rainfall of 50 or 60 inches. Then how is
it that _S. hypnoides_ cannot get down off the mountains; and that _S.
umbrosa_, though in Kerry it has got off the mountains and down to the
sea level, exterminating, I suspect, many species in its progress, yet
cannot get across county Cork? The only answer is, I believe: that both
species are continually trying to go ahead; but that the other plants
already in front of them are too strong for them, and massacre their
infants as soon as born.
And this brings us to another curious question: the sudden and abundant
appearance of plants, like the foxglove and _Epilobium angustifolium_, in
spots where they have never been seen before. Are their seeds, as some
think, dormant in the ground; or are the seeds which have germinated
fresh ones wafted thither by wind or otherwise, and only able to
germinate in that one spot, because there the soil is clear? General
Monro, now famous for his unequalled memoir on the bamboos, holds to the
latter theory. He pointed out to me that the _Epilobium_ seeds, being
feathered, could travel with the wind; that the plant always made its
appearance first on new banks, landslips, clearings, where it had nothing
to compete against; and that the foxglove did the same. True, and most
painfully true, in the case of thistles and groundsels: but foxglove
seeds, though minute, would hardly be carried by the wind any more than
those of the white clover, which comes up so abundantly in drained fens.
Adhuc sub judice lis est, and I wish some young naturalists would work
carefully at the solution; by experiment, which is the most sure way to
find out anything.
But in researches in this direction they will find puzzles enough. I
will give them one which I shall be most thankful to hear they have
solved within the next seven years--How is it that we find certain
plants, namely, the thrift and the scurvy grass, abundant on the
sea-shore and common on certain mountain-tops, but nowhere between the
two? Answer me that. For I have looked at the fact for years--before,
behind, sideways, upside down, and inside out--and I cannot understand
it.
But all these questions, and specially, I suspect, that last one, ought
to lead the young student up to the great and complex question--How were
these islands re-peopled with plants and animals, after the long and
wholesale catastrophe of the glacial epoch?
I presume you all know, and will agree, that the whole of these islands,
north of the Thames, save certain ice-clad mountain-tops, were buried for
long ages under an icy sea. From whence did vegetable and animal life
crawl back to the land, as it rose again; and cover its mantle of glacial
drift with fresh life and verdure?
Now let me give you a few prolegomena on this matter. You must study the
plants of course, species by species. Take Watson's 'Cybele Britannica,'
and Moore's 'Cybele Hibernica;' and let--as Mr. Matthew Arnold would
say--"your thought play freely about them." Look carefully, too, in the
case of each species, at the note on its distribution, which you will
find appended in Bentham's 'Handbook,' and in Hooker's 'Student's Flora.'
Get all the help you can, if you wish to work the subject out, from
foreign botanists, both European and American; and I think that, on the
whole, you will come to some such theory as this for a general starting
platform. We do not owe our flora--I must keep to the flora just now--to
so many different regions, or types, as Mr. Watson conceives, but to
three, namely: an European or Germanic flora, from the south-east; an
Atlantic flora, from the south-west; a Northern flora from the north.
These three invaded us after the glacial epoch; and our general flora is
their result.
But this will cause you much trouble. Before you go a step further you
will have to eliminate from all your calculations most of the plants
which Watson calls glareal, _i.e_. found in cultivated ground about
habitations. And what their limit may be I think we never shall know.
But of this we may be sure; that just as invading armies always bring
with them, in forage or otherwise, some plants from their own
country--just as the Cossacks, in 1815, brought more than one Russian
plant through Germany into France--just as you have already a crop of
North German plants upon the battle-fields of France--thus do conquering
races bring new plants. The Romans, during their 300 or 400 years of
occupation and civilisation, must have brought more species, I believe,
than I dare mention. I suspect them of having brought, not merely the
common hedge elm of the south, not merely the three species of nettle,
but all our red poppies, and a great number of the weeds which are common
in our cornfields; and when we add to them the plants which may have been
brought by returning crusaders and pilgrims; by monks from every part of
Europe, by Flemings or other dealers in foreign wool; we have to cut a
huge cantle out of our indigenous flora: only, having no records, we
hardly know where and what to cut out; and can only, we elder ones,
recommend the subject to the notice of the younger botanists, that they
may work it out after our work is done.
Of course these plants introduced by man, if they are cut out, must be
cut out of only one of the floras, namely, the European; for they,
probably, came from the south-east, by whatever means they came.
That European flora invaded us, I presume, immediately after the glacial
epoch, at a time when France and England were united, and the German
Ocean a mere network of rivers, which emptied into the deep sea between
Scotland and Scandinavia. And here I must add, that endless questions of
interest will arise to those who will study, not merely the invasion of
that truly European flora, but the invasion of reptiles, insects, and
birds, especially birds of passage, which must have followed it as soon
as the land was sufficiently covered with vegetation to support life.
Whole volumes remain to be written on this subject. I trust that some of
your younger members may live to write one of them. The way to begin
will be: to compare the flora and fauna of this part of England very
carefully with that of the southern and eastern counties; and then to
compare them again with the fauna and flora of France, Belgium, and
Holland.
As for the Atlantic flora, you will have to decide for yourselves whether
you accept or not the theory of a sunken Atlantic continent. I confess
that all objections to that theory, however astounding it may seem, are
outweighed in my mind by a host of facts which I can explain by no other
theory. But you must judge for yourselves; and to do so you must study
carefully the distribution of heaths, both in Europe and at the Cape; and
their non-appearance beyond the Ural Mountains, and in America, save in
Labrador, where the common ling, an older and less specialised form,
exists. You must consider, too, the plants common to the Azores,
Portugal, the West of England, Ireland, and the Western Hebrides. In so
doing young naturalists will at least find proofs of a change in the
distribution of land and water, which will utterly astound them when they
face it for the first time.
As for the Northern flora, the question whence it came is puzzling
enough. It seems difficult to conceive how any plants could have
survived when Scotland was an archipelago in the same ice-covered
condition as Greenland is now; and we have no proof that there existed
after the glacial epoch any northern continent from which the plants and
animals could have come back to us. The species of plants and animals
common to Britain, Scandinavia, and North America, must have spread in
pre-glacial times, when a continent joining them did exist.
But some light has been thrown on this question by an article, as
charming as it is able, on "The Physics of the Arctic Ice," by Dr. Brown,
of Campster. You will find it in the 'Quarterly Journal of the
Geological Society' for February 1870. He shows there that even in
Greenland peaks and crags are left free enough from ice to support a
vegetation of between 300 or 400 species of flowering plants; and,
therefore, he well says, we must be careful to avoid concluding that the
plant and animal life on the dreary shores or mountain-tops of the old
glacial Scotland was poor. The same would hold good of our mountains;
and, if so, we may look with respect, even with awe, on the Alpine plants
of Wales, Scotland, and the Lake mountains, as organisms stunted, it may
be, and even degraded, by their long battle with the elements; but
venerable from their age, historic from their endurance. Relics of an
older temperate world, they have lived through thousands of centuries of
frost and fog, to sun themselves in a temperate climate once more. I can
never pick one of them without a tinge of shame; and to exterminate one
of them is to destroy for the mere pleasure of collecting the last of a
family which God has taken the trouble to preserve for thousands of
centuries.
I trust that these hints--for I can call them nothing more--will at least
awaken any young naturalist who has hitherto only collected natural
objects, to study the really important and interesting question--How did
these things get here?
Now hence arise questions which may puzzle the mind of a Hampshire
naturalist. You have in this neighbourhood, as you well know, two, or
rather three, soils, each carrying its peculiar vegetation. First, you
have the clay lying on the chalk, and carrying vast woodlands, seemingly
primeval. Next, you have the chalk, with its peculiar, delicate, and
often fragrant crop of lime-loving plants; and next you have the poor
sands and clays of the New Forest basin, saturated with iron, and
therefore carrying a moorland or peat-loving vegetation, in many respects
quite different from the others. And this moorland soil, and this
vegetation, with a few singular exceptions, repeats itself, as I daresay
you know, in the north of the county, in the Bagshot basin, as it is
called--the moors of Aldershot, Hartford Bridge, and Windsor Forest.
Now what a variety of interesting questions are opened up by these simple
facts. How did these three floras get each to its present place? Where
did each come from? How did it get past or through the other, till each
set of plants, after long internecine competition, settled itself down in
the sheet of land most congenial to it? And when did each come hither?
Which is the oldest? Will any one tell me whether the heathy flora of
the moors, or the thymy flora of the chalk downs, were the earlier
inhabitants of these isles? To these questions I cannot get any answer;
and they cannot be answered without first--a very careful study of the
range of each species of plant on the continent of Europe; and next,
without careful study of those stupendous changes in the shape of this
island which have taken place at a very late geological epoch. The
composition of the flora of our moorlands is as yet to me an utter
puzzle. We have Lycopodiums--three species--enormously ancient forms
which have survived the age of ice: but did they crawl downward hither
from the northern mountains, or upward hither from the Pyrenees? We have
the beautiful bog asphodel again--an enormously ancient form; for it is,
strange to say, common to North America and to Northern Europe, but does
not enter Asia--almost an unique instance. It must, surely, have come
from the north; and points--as do many species of plants and animals--to
the time when North Europe and North America were joined. We have,
sparingly, in North Hampshire, though, strangely, not on the Bagshot
moors, the Common or Northern Butterwort (_Pinguicula vulgaris_); and
also, in the south, the New Forest part of the county, the delicate
little _Pinguicula lusitanica_, the only species now found in Devon and
Cornwall, marking the New Forest as the extreme eastern limit of the
Atlantic flora. We have again the heaths, which, as I have just said,
are found neither in America nor in Asia, and must, I believe, have come
from some south-western land long since submerged beneath the sea. But
more, we have in the New Forest two plants which are members of the South
Europe, or properly, the Atlantic flora; which must have come from the
south and south-east; and which are found in no other spots in these
islands. I mean the lovely _Gladiolus_, which grows abundantly under the
ferns near Lyndhurst, certainly wild but it does not approach England
elsewhere nearer than the Loire and the Rhine; and next, that delicate
orchid, the _Spiranthes aestivalis_, which is known only in a bog near
Lyndhurst and in the Channel Islands, while on the Continent it extends
from southern Europe all through France. Now, what do these two plants
mark? They give us a point in botany, though not in time, to determine
when the south of England was parted from the opposite shores of France;
and whenever that was, it was just after the Gladiolus and Spiranthes got
hither. Two little colonies of these lovely flowers arrived just before
their retreat was cut off. They found the country already occupied with
other plants; and, not being reinforced by fresh colonists from the
south, have not been able to spread farther north than Lyndhurst. Thus,
in the New Forest, and, I may say, in the Bagshot moors, you find plants
which you do not expect, and do not find plants which you do expect; and
you are, or ought to be, puzzled, and I hope also interested, and stirred
up to find out more.
I spoke just now of the time when England was joined to France, as
bearing on Hampshire botany. It bears no less on Hampshire zoology. In
insects, for instance, the presence of the purple emperor and the white
admiral in our Hampshire woods, as well as the abundance of the great
stag-beetle, point to a time when the two countries were joined, at
least, as far west as Hampshire; while the absence of these insects
farther to the westward shows that the countries, if ever joined, were
already parted; and that those insects have not yet had time to spread
westward. The presence of these two butterflies, and partly of the stag-
beetle, along the south-east coast of England as far as the primeval
forests of South Lincolnshire, points--as do a hundred other facts--to a
time when the Straits of Dover either did not exist, or were the bed of a
river running from the west; and when, as I told you just now, all the
rivers which now run into the German Ocean, from the Humber on the west
to the Elbe on the east, discharged themselves into the sea between
Scotland and Norway, after wandering through a vast lowland, covered with
countless herds of mammoth, rhinoceros, gigantic ox, and other mammals
now extinct; while the birds, as far as we know; the insects; the fresh-
water fish; and even, as my friend Mr. Brady has proved, the
_Entomostraca_ of the rivers, were the same in what is now Holland as in
what is now our Eastern counties. I could dwell long on this matter. I
could talk long about how certain species of _Lepidoptera_--moths and
butterflies--like _Papilio Machaon_ and _P. Podalirius_, swarm through
France, reach up to the British Channel, and have not crossed it; with
the exception of one colony of _Machaon_ in the Cambridgeshire fens. I
could talk long about a similar phenomenon in the case of our migratory
and singing birds: how many exquisite species--notably those two glorious
songsters, the Orphean Warbler and Hippolais, which delight our ears
everywhere on the other side of the Channel--follow our nightingales,
blackcaps, and warblers northward every spring almost to the Straits of
Dover: but dare not cross, simply because they have been, as it were,
created since the gulf was opened, and have never learnt from their
parents how to fly over it.
In the case of fishes, again, I might say much on the curious fact that
the Cyprinidae, or white fish--carp, &c.--and their natural enemy, the
pike, are indigenous, I believe, only to the rivers, English or
continental, on the eastern side of the Straits of Dover; while the
rivers on the western side were originally tenanted, like our Hampshire
streams, as now, almost entirely by trout, their only Cyprinoid being the
minnow--if it, too, be not an interloper; and I might ask you to consider
the bearing of this curious fact on the former junction of England and
France.
But I have only time to point out to you a few curious facts with regard
to reptiles, which should be specially interesting to a Hampshire bio-
geologist. You know, of course, that in Ireland there are no reptiles,
save the little common lizard, _Lacerta agilis_, and a few frogs on the
mountain-tops--how they got there I cannot conceive. And you will, of
course, guess, and rightly, that the reason of the absence of reptiles
is: that Ireland was parted off from England before the creatures, which
certainly spread from southern and warmer climates, had time to get
there. You know, of course, that we have a few reptiles in England. But
you may not be aware that, as soon as you cross the Channel, you find
many more species of reptiles than here, as well as those which you find
here. The magnificent green lizard which rattles about like a rabbit in
a French forest, is never found here; simply because it had not worked
northward till after the Channel was formed. But there are three
reptiles peculiar to this part of England which should be most
interesting to a Hampshire zoologist. The one is the sand lizard (_L.
stirpium_), found on Bourne-heath, and, I suspect, in the South Hampshire
moors likewise--a North European and French species. Another, the
_Coronella laevis_, a harmless French and Austrian snake, which has been
found about me, in North Hants and South Berks, now about fifteen or
twenty times. I have had three specimens from my own parish. I believe
it not to be uncommon; and most probably to be found, by those who will
look, both in the New Forest and Woolmer. The third is the Natterjack,
or running toad (_Bufo Rubeta_), a most beautifully spotted animal, with
a yellow stripe down his back, which is common with me at Eversley, and
common also in many moorlands of Hants and Surrey; and, according to
Fleming, on heaths near London, and as far north-east as Lincolnshire; in
which case it will belong to the Germanic fauna. Now, here again we have
cases of animals which have just been able to get hither before the
severance of England and France; and which, not being reinforced from the
rear, have been forced to stop, in small and probably decreasing
colonies, on the spots nearest the coast which were fit for them.
I trust that I have not kept you too long over these details. What I
wish to impress upon you is that Hampshire is a county specially fitted
for the study of important bio-geological questions.
To work them out, you must trace the geology of Hampshire, and, indeed,
of East Dorset. You must try to form a conception of how the land was
shaped in miocene times, before that tremendous upheaval which reared the
chalk cliffs at Freshwater upright, lifting the tertiary beds upon their
northern slopes. You must ask--Was there not land to the south of the
Isle of Wight in those ages, and for ages after; and what was its extent
and shape? You must ask--When was the gap between the Isle of Wight and
the Isle of Purbeck sawn through, leaving the Needles as remnants on one
side, and Old Harry on the opposite? And was it sawn asunder merely by
the age-long gnawing of the waves? You must ask--Where did the great
river which ran from the west, where Poole Harbour is now, and probably
through what is now the Solent, depositing brackish water-beds right and
left--where, I say, did it run into the sea? Where the Straits of Dover
are now? Or, if not there, where? What, too, is become of the land to
the Westward, composed of ancient metamorphic rocks, out of which it ran,
and deposited on what are now the Haggerstone Moors of Poole, vast beds
of grit? What was the climate on its banks when it washed down the
delicate leaves of broad-leaved trees, akin to our modern English ones,
which are found in the fine mud-sand strata of Bournemouth? When,
finally, did it dwindle down to the brook which now runs through Wareham
town? Was its bed sea, or dry land, or under an ice sheet, during the
long ages of the glacial epoch? And if you say--Who is sufficient for
these things?--Who can answer these questions? I answer--Who but you, or
your pupils after you, if you will but try?
And if any shall reply--And what use if I do try? What use, if I do try?
What use if I succeed in answering every question which you have
propounded to-night? Shall I be the happier for it? Shall I be the
wiser?
My friends, whether you will be the happier for it, or for any knowledge
of physical science, or for any other knowledge whatsoever, I cannot
tell: that lies in the decision of a Higher Power than I; and, indeed, to
speak honestly, I do not think that bio-geology or any other branch of
physical science is likely, at first at least, to make you happy. Neither
is the study of your fellow-men. Neither is religion itself. We were
not sent into the world to be happy, but to be right; at least, poor
creatures that we are, as right as we can be; and we must be content with
being right, and not happy. For I fear, or rather I hope, that most of
us are not capable of carrying out Talleyrand's recipe for perfect
happiness on earth--namely, a hard heart and a good digestion. Therefore,
as our hearts are, happily, not always hard, and our digestions,
unhappily, not always good, we will be content to be made wise by
physical science, even though we be not made happy.
And we shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not
only with what we can understand, but, content with what we do not
understand--the habit of mind which theologians call--and rightly--faith
in God; the true and solid faith, which comes often out of sadness, and
out of doubt, such as bio-geology may well stir in us at first sight. For
our first feeling will be--I know mine was when I began to look into
these matters--one somewhat of dread and of horror.
Here were all these creatures, animal and vegetable, competing against
each other. And their competition was so earnest and complete, that it
did not mean--as it does among honest shopkeepers in a civilised
country--I will make a little more money than you; but--I will crush you,
enslave you, exterminate you, eat you up. "Woe to the weak," seems to be
Nature's watchword. The Psalmist says, "The righteous shall inherit the
land." If you go to a tropical forest, or, indeed, if you observe
carefully a square acre of any English land, cultivated or uncultivated,
you will find that Nature's text at first sight looks a very different
one. She seems to say--Not the righteous, but the strong, shall inherit
the land. Plant, insect, bird, what not--Find a weaker plant, insect,
bird, than yourself, and kill it, and take possession of its little
vineyard, and no Naboth's curse shall follow you: but you shall inherit,
and thrive therein, you, and your children after you, if they will be
only as strong and as cruel as you are. That is Nature's law: and is it
not at first sight a fearful law? Internecine competition, ruthless
selfishness, so internecine and so ruthless that, as I have wandered in
tropic forests, where this temper is shown more quickly and fiercely,
though not in the least more evilly, than in our slow and cold temperate
one, I have said--Really these trees and plants are as wicked as so many
human beings.
Throughout the great republic of the organic world, the motto of the
majority is, and always has been as far back as we can see, what it is,
and always has been, with the majority of human beings, "Every one for
himself, and the devil take the hindmost." Over-reaching tyranny; the
temper which fawns, and clings, and plays the parasite as long as it is
down, and when it has risen, fattens on its patron's blood and
life--these, and the other works of the flesh, are the works of average
plants and animals, as far as they can practise them. At least, so says
at first sight the science of bio-geology; till the naturalist, if he be
also human and humane, is glad to escape from the confusion and darkness
of the universal battle-field of selfishness into the order and light of
Christmas-tide.
For then there comes to him the thought--And are these all the facts? And
is this all which the facts mean? That mutual competition is one law of
Nature, we see too plainly. But is there not, besides that law, a law of
mutual help? True it is, as the wise man has said, that the very hyssop
on the wall grows there because all the forces of the universe could not
prevent its growing. All honour to the hyssop. A brave plant, it has
fought a brave fight, and has its just deserts--as everything in Nature
has--and so has won. But did all the powers of the universe combine to
prevent it growing? Is not that a one-sided statement of facts? Did not
all the powers of the universe also combine to make it grow, if only it
had valour and worth wherewith to grow? Did not the rains feed it, the
very mortar in the wall give lime to its roots? Were not electricity,
gravitation, and I know not what of chemical and mechanical forces, busy
about the little plant, and every cell of it, kindly and patiently ready
to help it, if it would only help itself? Surely this is true; true of
every organic thing, animal and vegetable, and mineral, too, for aught I
know: and so we must soften our sadness at the sight of the universal
mutual war by the sight of an equally universal mutual help.
But more. It is true--too true if you will--that all things live on each
other. But is it not, therefore, equally true that all things live for
each other?--that self-sacrifice, and not selfishness, is at the bottom
the law of Nature, as it is the law of Grace; and the law of bio-geology,
as it is the law of all religion and virtue worthy of the name? Is it
not true that everything has to help something else to live, whether it
knows it or not?--that not a plant or an animal can turn again to its
dust without giving food and existence to other plants, other
animals?--that the very tiger, seemingly the most useless tyrant of all
tyrants, is still of use, when, after sending out of the world suddenly,
and all but painlessly, many an animal which would without him have
starved in misery through a diseased old age, he himself dies, and, in
dying, gives, by his own carcase, the means of life and of enjoyment to a
thousandfold more living creatures than ever his paws destroyed?
And so, the longer one watches the great struggle for existence, the more
charitable, the more hopeful, one becomes; as one sees that, consciously
or unconsciously, the law of Nature is, after all, self-sacrifice;
unconscious in plants and animals, as far as we know; save always those
magnificent instances of true self-sacrifice shown by the social insects,
by ants, bees, and others, which put to shame by a civilization truly
noble--why should I not say divine, for God ordained it?--the selfishness
and barbarism of man. But be that as it may, in man the law of
self-sacrifice--whether unconscious or not in the animals--rises into
consciousness just as far as he is a man; and the crowning lesson of bio-
geology may be, when we have worked it out, after all, the lesson of
Christmas-tide--of the infinite self-sacrifice of God for man; and Nature
as well as religion may say to us--
"Ah, could you crush that ever craving lust
For bliss, which kills all bliss, and lose your life,
Your barren unit life, to find again
A thousand times in those for whom you die--
So were you men and women, and should hold
Your rightful rank in God's great universe,
Wherein, in heaven or earth, by will or nature,
Naught lives for self. All, all, from crown to base--
The Lamb, before the world's foundation slain--
The angels, ministers to God's elect--
The sun, who only shines to light the worlds--
The clouds, whose glory is to die in showers--
The fleeting streams, who in their ocean graves
Flee the decay of stagnant self-content--
The oak, ennobled by the shipwright's axe--
The soil, which yields its marrow to the flower--
The flower, which feeds a thousand velvet worms
Born only to be prey to every bird--
All spend themselves on others: and shall man,
Whose two-fold being is the mystic knot
Which couples earth with heaven, doubly bound,
As being both worm and angel, to that service
By which both worms and angels hold their life,
Shall he, whose every breath is debt on debt,
Refuse, forsooth, to be what God has made him?
No; let him show himself the creatures' Lord
By free-will gift of that self-sacrifice
Which they, perforce, by Nature's laws endure."
My friends, scientific and others, if the study of bio-geology shall help
to teach you this, or anything like this; I think that though it may not
make you more happy, it may yet make you more wise; and, therefore, what
is better than being more happy, namely, more blessed.