THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.
109
Soc. Botany, xxii, pp. 341—401 ; xxiv, pp. 62—87), and the information recorded
for the first time in the same author's "Flowers, Fruits, and Leaves ("Nature
Series ").
(V.)—The B.A. Committee appointed to record temperature variation in lakes,
rivers, and estuaries has already twenty observers at work, and no doubt good
work in this direction is being done, but there are only one or two in England.
Observations taken in our own five or six estuaries might give important results,
and the arrangements necessary for carrying out the required work should not be
difficult. In connection with our oyster fisheries especially these results might
prove of great practical value ; the deposit of "spat" is believed to be almost
entirely dependent on temperature, and the reason practically assigned for the
superiority of the Crouch and Roach rivers, as oyster grounds, over the Blackwater
and Colne is that the tidal water comes through the adjacent havens off the Maplin
sand "as warm as milk."
(VI.)—Meteorological and Phenological Observations. In this direction the
Royal Meteorological Society has already collected so many facts, including tem-
perature and rainfall, the flowering and leafing of plants, the first appearances of
birds and insects, &c. Such observations, together with those on the preservation
of native plants, local museums, &c., have already received, and I trust will con-
tinue to receive, the full attention of members, and that they may be still more
communicative with their observations and suggestions, either at our meetings, or
by notes contributed to our publication.
(VII.)—Another subject mentioned in the B.A. Reports—the Defining of
the Racial Characters of the Inhabitants of the British Isles—I commend to our
ethnological members. The only reference to this I have heard in our Club was
the question put to me by Mr. Andrew Johnston, at the Maldon Meeting, but in
last month's "Illustrations" (vol. iv, p. 88), we may read as follows, from the pen
of Mr. Sparvel-Bailey, a former resident in our county :—"A stranger from the
north of England coming to this part of Essex [Ashingdon] would notice an enor-
mous amount of difference between the people, and if he crossed the North Sea he
would see at once precisely where the ancestors of these Essex people came from.
He would see the same coloured hair and eyes ; and give him half-a-dozen people
from the neighbourhood of this dune of Assan he would be able to match them
exactly with half-a-dozen in Denmark."
There are many other lines of inquiry, in archaeology, natural
history, and geology, that will at once suggest themselves to our
active members, but each must follow his own inclinations. It is
always pleasant and often wise to turn aside for awhile from the busy
and relentless human world, with its ceaseless anxieties, worries,
sorrows, labours and cares to contemplate the silent and wonderful
economy of that other world of nature, with which we are so closely
related, and on which we are so dependent. The mind of man,
as of the child, has a natural love for observation, and to the
votary of science whole worlds of unseen wonders are revealed in