And, with all our immense advances in method and in discipline: in observation and in discovery: no true student of nature and of man can afford to neglect the extraordinary catalogue of things which are so characteristically treated of in Sir Thomas Browne's great, if, nowadays, out-grown book. For one thing, and that surely not a small thing, we see on every page of the _Pseudodoxia_ the labour, as Dr. Johnson so truly says, that its author was always willing to pay for the truth. And, as Sir Thomas says himself, a work of this nature is not to be performed upon one leg, or without the smell of oil, if it is to be duly and deservedly handled. It must be left to men of learning and of science to say how far Sir Thomas has duly and deservedly handled the immense task he undertook in this book. But I, for one, have read this great treatise with a true pride, in seeing so much hard work so liberally laid out according to the best light allowed its author in that day. As Dr. Johnson has said of it, 'The mistakes that the author committed in the _Pseudodoxia_ were not committed by idleness or negligence, but only for want of the philosophy of Boyle and Newton.' Who, then, will gird up his loins in our enlightened day to give us a new _Pseudodoxia_ after the philosophy of Bacon and Boyle and Newton and Ewald and Darwin? And after Sir Thomas's own philosophy, which he thus sets forth before himself in this and in all his other studies: 'We are not magisterial in opinions, nor have we dictator-like obtruded our conceptions: but, in the humility of inquiries or disquisitions, have only proposed them to more ocular discerners. And we shall so far encourage contradiction as to promise no disturbance, or re- oppose any pen, that shall fallaciously or captiously refute us. And shall only take notice of such whose experimental and judicious knowledge shall be employed, not to traduce or extenuate, but to explain and dilucidate, to add and ampliate, according to the laudable custom of the ancients in their sober promotions of learning. Unto whom, notwithstanding, we shall not contentiously rejoin, or only to justify our own, but to applaud or confirm his maturer assertions; and shall confer what is in us unto his name and honour; ready, for our part, to be swallowed up in any worthy enlarger: as having our aid, if any way, or under any name, we may obtain a work, so much desired, and yet desiderated, of truth.' Shall this Association, I wonder, raise up from among its members, such a worthy successor and enlarger of Sir Thomas Browne?