THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.
105
A catalogue of the curious instances of how great discoveries have
been made in various departments of natural history might prove
interesting, if time permitted; but I doubt its instructiveness. No
explicit rules or hints for observation can be of practical use in an
address like this; these must come while we are on our excursions
in the fields and woods, or by the waterside. Prof. Rolleston truly
says that "the curiosity, which is the mother of science, is not
awakened for the first time in the museum, but out of doors—in the
wood, by the side of the brook, by the hill-side, by scarped cliff, and
quarried stone." I believe that it is in this direction we must extend
our energy and usefulness, and I rejoice that the feature of the past
year's work of the Club has undoubtedly been the extension of our
Field Meetings. From the first it was said, "Our Society in general
terms may be said to have for its scope the study of nature in
the field." My object this evening is to endeavour to point out
how these Field Meetings may be made still more useful, and so to
foster the love of those pursuits for the study of which the Club was
instituted.
Although I fear I should fail in attempting to give any specific
directions how to observe, I must earnestly recommend all our
members to become thoroughly acquainted with Gilbert White's
"Natural History of Selborne," and Waterton's "Wanderings," but
more especially Waterton's "Essays on Natural History," together
with the Rev. L. Jenyns' "Observations in Natural History." That
delightful and interesting classic, White's "Selborne," first published
just one hundred years ago, is itself a guide to patient observation,
and the careful and accurate recording of facts. Don't borrow the
book, but buy it; if you have the making of an old-fashioned
"Naturalist" in you, it will always be a charming companion.4
Charles Waterton, the old squire of Walton Hall (he was 83 when
he died in 1865), was a good type of the adventurous and enthu-
siastic field naturalist, and an intense lover of nature. The Rev.
Leonard Jenyns, still zoologically active at Bath, under the name of
Blomefield, was famous before most of us were born. His "Manual
of British Vertebrate Animals" was published as long ago as 1835.
He was himself an Editor of an edition of White's "Selborne,"
4 We are told that Mr. Alexander Ireland when a boy was so delighted with this work that, in
order to possess a copy of his own, he actually wrote out the whole work—good evidence of how
this work was valued. With all the research of the many learned and loving Editors of White's
book, no portrait of the Author is known ; he was merely described by one of his parishioners as
a little, slim, prim, upright man ; another said that he was a "quiet and extremely kind old
bachelor, with very old-fashioned sayings, and was thought very little of till he was dead and
gone, and then he was thought a great deal of."