THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 149
tive exhibition. The collections at present exhibited are intended more for
the ordinary visitor to the Forest than for the student of Natural History.
For the benefit of the latter we must have complete collections of the Forest
Fauna and Flora, stored in proper cabinets, and so arranged as to be easily
accessible. Materials towards such collections are already in existence, or could
be obtained in a few years ; what is needed is persistent curatorial work, space, and
money. The Committee have prepared a Statement of the requirements as they
present themselves after due consideration of the matter, and propose issuing an
appeal for further funds in order that the Corporation of London may be
approached with a request to put the Museum into a good position as a permanent
institution.
The ideal placed before the public in our prospectus and later pamphlets is
one well worthy of attainment, and the Committee is convinced that this ideal can
be approached if encouragement to persevere is given by the frequenters and
admirers of our noble Forest and those who desire to encourage the study of
natural history as a rational amusement and means of education.
Wm. Cole,
March 28th, 1896. Hon. Curator.
THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.
Delivered at the Sixteenth Annual Meeting, on
March 28th, 1896.
By DAVID HOWARD, J.P., F.C.S., Etc.,
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—The work of the Essex Field
Club during the past year presents features of considerable
interest. The Club has again afforded, both to its members and to
visitors, an opportunity of judging how far the outcry raised in some
of the daily papers against the management of Epping Forest has
any justification. The Club holds no brief for the Forest Com-
mittee, but I think it is the almost unanimous opinion of the
members that the advisers of the Forest Committee have fully
justified the action they have taken. The management of forests,
and most of all of a forest so neglected in the past, is a difficult
technical science, and singularly unfitted to be undertaken by the
general public guided solely by the misrepresentations of writers in
search of copy, and by photographers who have shown what can be
done in the way of the suppressio veri and of the suggestio falsi.
Of far more permanent value has been the work of the Club in
establishing the Epping Forest Museum ; owing to the labours of
love of the Committee appointed for the purpose, and above all to
the untiring zeal of our Secretary, Mr. W. Cole, a beginning has been