The practical value of science in securing the happiness of human communities is not, however, the reason which operates most strongly in exciting men and women to give themselves to the cultivation and improvement of this or that branch of it. A rich banker one day was looking round the Natural History Museum with me. It was his first visit. After a time he said, “It’s very fine! wonderful! But what’s it all for? Where does the money come in? That’s what I can’t understand. Why does the Government spend money on this if it don’t lead to making money?” I tried to convince him that there exists in us all a divine “curiosity,” a desire to know regardless of profit or loss, a thirst which we may cultivate and satisfy, in the full assurance that whilst its satisfaction is a delight in itself, we are all the while fulfilling the destiny of man, helping in the conquest of Nature. My friend had apparently lost that instinctive thirst which is the primary impulse to the pursuit of science, that capacity for pleasure which Robert Louis Stevenson truly notes in the words of the child of his “Garland of Verse”: “The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings!” The existence of that little child and of numberless “grown-ups” who have become or have never ceased to be, in this matter, even as he, is the reason why science has its helpers and workers of all ranks, and it is of them that I chiefly think in writing these notes. At a dinner of the Savage Club a year or so ago my friend Dr. Nansen, the Norwegian Minister, quoted some lines from a Scandinavian poet, which he translated somewhat as follows: “As you journey through life do not go too fast, do not press on blindly; there are so many beautiful things by the way. Turn your head, stay a few minutes. Leave the dusty road. Take in and enjoy the wonders and delights which are at your feet.” Motorists, please take note! For those who can enter more thoroughly into the pursuit of science there are even greater joys. To the very few there is the privilege not merely of realising well-established truths, and of perhaps assisting in securing their foundations or extending their application, but of discovering vast unexplored regions, new possibilities, new revelations of the unfathomed depths of Nature’s workings. Though few can hope to be leaders in these enthralling adventures, yet we can be close to those who are, and, holding their hands, sympathise with their soul’s vision. “Then felt I like some watcher from the skies, Or the stout Cortes, when, with eagle eyes, He stared at the Pacific.... Silent, upon a peak in Darien.” Such a one need have none of the conventional setting of romantic enterprise. He may be standing before a much-stained table, covered with bottles, in an atmosphere of acrid fumes, with a test-tube in his hand, or he may be just raising his head with a far-off gaze, as he sits, bent o’er a microscope, in London.