PRESENTATION TO MR. WILLIAM COLE. 125
As I am one of the oldest members cf the Club and also a member of the
first Council, it would have been peculiarly pleasant to have been present and
joined in the congratulations and thanks to William Cole for his magnificent and
unselfish work for our county.
Yours very truly,
T. Fisher UNWIN.
BROADSTONE, WIMBORNE,
Nov. 4th, 1905.
My dear Meldola,
It seems only the other day that you started the "Essex"—or, rather,
I think the Epping Forest—Field Club, and now you are celebrating its Jubilee
of 25 years.
I heartily congratulate you and Mr. Cole on the great success of your work.
I look back upon my few rambles with the Club in its early days with great
pleasure, while the "fungus forays" were as delightful as they were instructive.
I only regret that distance and other occupations have for so many years debarred
me from the pleasure of attending your meetings and excursions.1
With my very best wishes for the success of the Club and for the prolongation
of its life into the remotest conceivable futurity,
Believe me, yours very sincerely,
Alfred R. WALLACE.
II, CRANMER ROAD, CAMBRIDGE,
December 6th, 1905.
My dear Meldola,
I am extremely sorry to be unable to be present at the celebration
dinner to Mr. Cole, but, as President of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, I
must be in the chair at their annual dinner.
Had I been with you, I should have hoped to say much better than I can
write how heartily I congratulate Mr. Cole on his consummation of a great work;.
for it is a great work to have founded, and successfully piloted through all these
years, a club such as yours.
Field Clubs with real working power such as yours are capable of doing an
immense amount of good.
' Even your literary side—of course, I mean the periodical publication—
expresses a vigour and appreciation of the local scientific topics of interest and
importance, which arouses enthusiasm in anyone with a true love of Natural
History.
You are, in the truest sense of the words, a "Field Club," and I hope you
will continue to be so, prying into local Natural History, and making yourselves
felt as a local power.
As for myself, I am very proud to be enrolled in honour on your list.
Believe me, yours sincerely,
H. Marshall WARD.
WARWICK HOUSE, ST. JAMES'S, S.W.,
Nov. 25th, 1905.
Dear Professor Meldola,
I regret very much that my engagements do not admit of my being
with you on Dec. 9th, and I, therefore, write a few lines for you to communicate
to the Meeting.
In the first place let me congratulate you all on the completion of 25 years of
active work in our good County of Essex. You know full well how warmly I
1 In his recently-published Autobiography (vol. ii., p. 106) Mr. Wallace says:—"Shortly
before I left England (1886) I gave the lecture on "Darwinism" to the Essex Field Club, in
order to see how my diagrams of variation struck an intelligent audience, and was fairly-
satisfied with the result."