WILLIAM COLE, 1844-1922. 169
The actual birth of our Club was the outcome of a chance
suggestion made by a visitor to a local conversazione at Buck-
hurst Hill, held in the autumn of 1879, at which the Cole brothers
exhibited their entomological collection. The seed fell on good
soil; and that same night Cole wrote to Meldola and other
entomological friends, proposing that they should start a local
natural history society. From this proposal the Essex Field
Club (or as it was at first called, the Epping Forest and County
of Essex Naturalist's Field Club) was born.
From time to time other business activities claimed his
attention.
In or about 1890 he was appointed Science Organizer and
Curator by the Technical Instruction Committee of the. Essex
County Council, having his London office at 35, New Broad Street,
and a County office at Chelmsford, where he could meet enquirers
by appointment. Also, in 1891, or soon after, he became Secre-
tary to the "Organising Joint Committee on Technical Instruc-
tion," formed by the Essex County Council and the Essex Field
Club.
At the same address in New Broad Street he acted as Secretary
to the "Suburban Districts Water Supply Committee," appointed
at a Conference of extra-Metropolitan Local Authorities on the
question of water supply, on Nov. 17, 1890.
William Cole was fortunate in having brothers and sisters
—like himself unmarried, and living together in rare harmony—
who not only shared his interests but were willing to further them
wholeheartedly by their unselfish efforts. Never was there
a more united, more devoted family, never was an elder brother
more loyally served by his juniors. Indeed, we may not unjustly
say that William Cole was not an individual, he was a corpora-
tion ; for his life-work was the work not of himself alone (though
he, as the directing spirit, obtained the chief recognition), but
of the family, whose other members voluntarily effaced them-
selves behind the striking personality of "brother Will"; to
whom in all things they deferred, recognising in him the genius
of the family group. His was to plan, theirs, largely, to carry
out: his to design, theirs to perform the necessary hodwork
without which the design could not materialise. To scheme for
the future was, indeed, characteristic of William Cole, sometimes,
it must be confessed, to the prejudice of the work actually in