98 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.
has already been observed. Containing this, and with the record
of original work done by the members and by the Club, our
"Naturalist" will take a high place in the literature of the
naturalist, historian, topographer, and archaeologist. Byron says :—
" Words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."
Although but few steps have been yet taken to make our Journal
widely known, I have, with loving eyes, already seen it quoted in
works which take high rank in science. Let me entreat you all to
persevere in the good work, and lend a helping hand in the endeavour
to lift Essex from that low ebb in the sea of natural knowledge which
is denoted by the absence of county records in almost all published
zoological monographs. In my own department (entomology) I
have been pained to meet with such remarks as the following, pro-
bably from the pen of the present editor of a high-class entomological
serial. In the "Entomologists' Weekly Intelligencer" (vol. ii, pp.
49, 50), we read :—
" The East Anglians appear to have less tendency to entomology than any other
inhabitants of our island, only excepting those descendants of the ancient Britons,
the Welsh. We do not propose, at present, to discuss the cause of the languid
state of entomology in the Principality ; but why are those fine insect-producing
counties, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Lincolnshire, so poorly peopled with
entomologists. Suffolk, it is true, has of late been benefited by the recent settling
there of the renowned pupa-digger, Mr. Greene, and the amusing writer Mr.
Crewe. Professor Henslow, too, is at work, near Ipswich, developing entomo-
logical tendencies (as he has already developed botanical tendencies) in his school-
children, and a neighbouring clergyman, who bears the venerated name of Kirby,
has commenced a career of emulation with Mr. Henslow in this naturalist-growing
race. AH this promises fruit at some future day, but we may have long to wait.
In the meanwhile agriculture is advancing, hedge-timber is being cut down, and
hedges are being stubbed up; marshes (renowned in the time of Haworth for the
good things they produced when explored), now never visited by the tread of the
entomologist, will surely soon be drained, and their present races of occupants will
then vanish before the advancing tide of civilization, as certain as snipes, which
the poet Rogers once used to shoot where Conduit Street now stands, are no
longer to be seen in that spot...........Essex we have kept to consider
last, from its propinquity to London, and Essex is entomologically notorious from
containing Epping ; but beyond Epping, northward and eastward, how many
entomologists does it contain ? Look at the country about Colchester teeming
with A. iris; the lane, near Lavenham, where Mr. Gaze took A. lathonia ; and why
should this country be unproductive of entomologists ? "
It is certainly remarkable that, with the exception of a few
notes from Mr. W. H. Harwood, who happily we have still at Col-