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THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.
a more careful review I really doubt the utility of bringing them
before you. They all seem to teach that the habit of observation
is only attained by continued or repeated observation and experience.
Mr. Crouch's answer to a member's inquiry as to where he was to
find the beautiful shells similar to those exhibited at our December
meeting, was that really the only safe way is to look anywhere and
everywhere at all times, and literally to leave not a stone unturned. We
all know that the ornithologist sees the squatting bird, hears its note
or song, and recognizes it by its manner of flight, more readily than
the ordinary observer. So the entomologist does not fail at once to
see on the bare tree-trunk the equilateral triangle of Hybernia
leucophearia, the isosceles triangle of Anisopteryx aescularia, or the still
smaller form of the Grey-dagger moth (Diurnea fagella) in the crevices
of oak bark in the early spring, which often are not easily noted
by the uneducated eye. So the geologist readily reads "sermons
in stones." So the marine botanist and zoologist finds treasures
abounding where the fisherman sees nothing but sea tangle and
rubbish. Indeed it has frequently been pointed out how objects
worthy of notice crowd upon the observer's view when his mind and
eyes have been properly directed to them; many, perhaps, had been
daily under his eyes for years, but unseen and unsuspected until a
train of thought brought them into notice. That remarkably talented
naturalist, Prof. Edward Forbes, who did so much in so many direc-
tions ere he was called from his work before he was forty years of
age, has left it on record that "it is surprising how little we see until
we are taught to observe." Listen also to the recent confessions
of the talented novelist and observer of men and manners, Walter
Besant, and confess how generally applicable they are :—
" I remember the delight with which I drank, as a bright, refreshing draught
from a clear spring-head, the story of the country life as set forth by him, this
writer, the like of whom I had never before read. Why, we must have been blind
all our lives ; here were the most wonderful things possible going on under our
very noses, but we saw them not. Nay, after reading all the books and all the
papers—every one—that Jefferies wrote between the years 1876 and 1887, after
learning from him all that he had to teach, I cannot yet see these things.....
Mine, alas ! are eyes which have looked into shop windows and across crowded
streets for half a century, save for certain intervals every year; they are also eyes
which need glasses; they are slow to see things unexpected, ignorant of what
should be expected ; they are helpless eyes when they are turned from men and
women to flowers, ferns, weeds, and grasses; they are, in fact, like unto the eyes
of those men with whom I mostly consort. None of us—poor street-struck
creatures ! can see the things we ought to see." 3
3 "The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies,'' by Walter Besant, p. 167.