The Project Gutenberg eBook, Scientific Essays and Lectures, by Charles
Kingsley

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Title: Scientific Essays and Lectures

Author: Charles Kingsley

Release Date: December 9, 2003 [eBook #10427]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCIENTIFIC ESSAYS AND LECTURES***

Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

Scientific Lectures and Essays

Contents: {0}
On Bio-Geology
The Study of Natural History
Superstition
Science
Thoughts in a Gravel-Pit
How to Study Natural History
The Natural Theology of the Future

ON BIO-GEOLOGY {1}

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 cho