54 THE FEDERATION IDEAL FOR NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETIES,
such subjects as those dealt with by British Association Com-
mittees it is not sufficient that Essex should be well surveyed ;
and that, if we are carrying out such work as it should be done
within our own area, we should have scientific enthusiasm
transcending county limits and "let our light shine before"
Suffolk and Norfolk.
Seriously, there is much that we might do in the way of
joint work and mutual help — more perhaps naturally with
Suffolk, and perhaps Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, than
with the more distant and not adjacent Norfolk. We share with
these counties, for instance in the basin and estuary of the
Stour, in the valley of the Lea, and, to a small extent, in
that of the Cam. This at once suggests co-operation in
recording rainfall, evaporation, flow of springs, and the
amount and composition of river water, in that of the
distribution of river molluscs and of river-side plants. To
trace such phenomena as the two last-mentioned in detail
would seem the best possible object for joint field-meetings
and perhaps for a joint Committee. As an incidental personal
grumble I may mention by the way that it is difficult
to distinguish in the interesting account of one of the recent
field-meetings of this Club on the Lea what observations were
made in Hertfordshire and what in Essex. This is, I may say,
a subject of peculiar interest to myself, as I should like to find
out what degree of importance really attaches to the sub-
division of counties for botanical purposes into river basins
—a point which the late Professor Babington, living in
Cambridge, in the midst of a level area, considered of
little importance, whilst the Rev. Mr. Newbould thought
it of the very highest. It would, I think, be a most
useful fillip to societies if those whose areas are conterminous,
held at least one joint field-meeting within the area of each
society in every season.2 In the South-eastern counties some-
thing has already been done in the way of forming and circulating
a series of geological lantern-slides illustrative of the local
formations and at the Congress at Tunbridge Wells last April, at
which the South-Eastern Union was established, a suggestion of
2 The holding of a Congress annually by invitation at some varying centre in a District
Union for the reading of papers on organization, or on scientific questions of more than
strictly local interest, and for visits to spots of scientific interest, I take to be a "counsel of
perfection "rather than a sine qua non to a Union. Here again, as in peripatetic missionary
meetings within the area of one society, it will undoubtedly be most desirable to extend the
meeting beyond a single day. The Devonshire Association, I am told, holds most successful
gatherings of a week's duration, and we propose to attempt a two-days' Congress at Tunbridge
Wells next May. Though the necessity for an invitation would perhaps confine such Con-
gresses to active centres, they ought to have a greatly reviving effect upon moribund societies.