126 PRESENTATION TO MR. WILLIAM COLE.
sympathise with all work that helps to elevate the general level of public scientific
interest, and the Essex Field Club has certainly deserved well of the County for
the efficient way in which it has carried out its programme. That the success of
the Club is largely due to the single-minded devotion to its interests by the
Hon. Secretary, Mr. William Cole, is to be declared publicly on the occasion of
the presentation on the 9th.
I will ask you. therefore at that ceremony to make known to him and to the
Members assembled how much I appreciate his past services, and to let him
know that he has my good wishes for his future activity, and for the future
prosperity of the Club.
Yours sincerely.
Frances Evelyn WARWICK.
I29, BEAUFORT STREET, CHELSEA, S.W.
Dear Mr. Miller Christy,
I had fully intended to come and to bring Mrs. Woodward, but
advancing years and much work still to be done prevent.
My thoughts will be with you at your gathering, and I most cordially add my
earnest good wishes for my friend William Cole, his brothers and sisters, and for
the success of the Essex Field Club,
. . . . With much regret at not being able to be present and renewed
good wishes for the success of your gathering,
Believe me, always, yours very sincerely,
Henry WOODWARD.
KAYHOUGH, KEW,
November 11, 1905.
Dear Mr. Miller Christy,
I much regret being unable to attend the dinner on the 9th December,
having only just recovered from a bad cold.
. . . . The address well expresses the sentiments we all must have
towards Mr. Cole. His long and disinterested labours, so well seconded by
members of his family in promoting the cause of Natural Science, deserve, as the
address says, "formal and public recognition."
Yours sincerely,
Chas. A. WRIGHT.
The Chairman (continuing) said: Before I sit down, I think it is my duty to
perform one pleasant task, and that is to express my own appreciation of the
skilful organizing powers which the President of the Club, Mr. Miller Christy,
has displayed in arranging this little function (Applause). It is really to Mr.
Christy, more than anybody else, that you are indebted for the success which has
attended this movement. As he has acted as hon. secretary of this fund, I
think the next tiling to be done is to ask him to say a few words.
Mr. Miller Christy: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, Our Chairman
has spoken of this function as celebrating an epoch in the history of the Essex
Field Club, but I may, perhaps, point out that, although the Essex Field Club is
very closely connected with what we are met here to do, the organization which
has got up this movement is not officially connected with the Club.
I have had in my mind for some time the idea that something ought to be done
to call attention to and to recognize the very remarkable work of our founder and
hon. secretary; and, when I found myself President of the Club in the twenty-
sixth year of its existence, I felt there was nothing for me to do but to endeavour
to set this movement on foot. This is the history of its origin.
You would say it was fiction on my part were I to tell you that the getting up
of this Fund had not involved a considerable amount of labour. I admit that it