46 THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
" I have read with great pleasure and interest the proposal for establishing an
Epping Forest Free Local Museum in Queen Elizabeth's Lodge at Chingford,
and wish I could attend the meeting to further the object next Saturday, but
engagements have made it quite impossible. I wish to urge upon you the
desirability of keeping the collection absolutely to local objects, without any
exception. In a town or county museum, especially if connected with general
teaching, an Educational Museum requires other than local specimens, but the
object is different in this case, and although the Museum ought of course to be
arranged educationally, if once you open the door to admit specimens not from
your own district, as a paragraph in the proposal seems to indicate that you may
do, you will never know where to stop."
The Rev. W. T. Dyne said he came forward as representing the local thirst
for knowledge, which they hoped these gentlemen were going to satisfy. It seemed
to him that this museum would meet a want that had been felt by three classes
of people. They who lived in that district felt the want of such a museum
and it promised to be of great educational benefit. The people who came
down there from London and hovered about the station, and never got farther off
—some of them perhaps wished they woull go a little farther off—would be
encouraged through this museum to explore the Forest. The museum might
also be the means of awakening an interest in children's minds in the beauties of
nature in the grand woodlands, and to many members of London natural history
societies visiting the district such an institution would be very helpful and
encouraging. He moved that :—
" This Meeting is of opinion that it is desirable (with the consent of the Conservators')
that a small free Local Museum should be established in Queen Elizabeth's Lodge, and
pledges itself to do all in its power to promote the same."
Professor C. Stewart cordially seconded the resolution. He felt strongly
the very great advantage from many points of view of such a museum as it was
intended to found in that antique building. He looked upon it, if properly carried
out, as no doubt it would be in the able hands in which it was placed, as some-
thing which would supply to many inquiring minds a direct and emphatic answer
to such questions as, "What a certain thing was, what its life was, what it fed
upon, what its enemies were," etc. There were few more innocent pleasures, and
delightful pursuits than natural history carried out in the field. Useful though
dissection in laboratories and class-rooms might be, it was in the study of the
lives of these creatures that the main educational value and interest lay. He
wished most heartily for the success of the scheme, which he thought was well
conceived, and there could be little doubt that it would be thoroughly and
efficiently carried out.
Mr. J. E. Harting, in the course of his remarks in support of the resolution,
said that the aim and object of a local museum such as was proposed to be
established was not merely to exhibit rare and so-called curious specimens, but to
develop and foster in the minds of all classes of people an intelligent appreciation
of the common objects of nature by which they were surrounded, and to pro-
vide them with the means of informing themselves about such objects. Mr. Harting
could not advocate the indiscriminate collecting, nor the conservation in the
museum of specimens of all the birds of the Forest, for instance—such speci-
mens would occupy too much space and cost too much money—but collections
of invertebrates, such as land and fresh-water shells, with insects, mosses, fungi,
etc., were not open to this objection, and could be made interesting and education-
ally valuable in a high degree. It should be borne in mind, that the more