101
HISTORY IN BOTANICAL STUDY.
(Being a Presidential Address delivered to the Club at the Annual
Meeting on 28th March, 1931.)
By SIR DAVID PRAIN, C.M.G., CLE., F.R.S.
DURING the past session the Essex Field Club has received
invitations to send a representative to two forthcoming
historical conferences. That the Club should have been so
honoured suggests that those interested in the methods adopted
by students of Civil History would welcome the help of those
who are accustomed to employ methods appropriate to the study
of Natural History.
At our Ordinary Meeting a month ago we had the privilege
of listening to a contribution on the Ferns of Essex, which
taught us, along with much else, how frequently, now-a-days,
the Natural Historian has to seek evidence of the kind to which
the Civil Historian has always been largely limited. It is not
surprising that the Civil Historian should, in turn, desire to
know something about the methods the Natural Historian is free
to employ.
If we ask what is the difference between the methods of the
historian whose task is to deal with whatever has been produced
by Nature, and the historian whose business is to deal with
whatever has been performed by man, the answer is that there
should be none. Perhaps the invitations the Club has received
indicate a belief on the part of Civil Historians that there is none.
When the Natural Historian reflects dispassionately on the
subject, he is unfortunately compelled to admit that not-with-
standing the difference in outlook on the part of the Civil and
the Natural Historian, there is less difference in their methods
than might have been expected. A cynical critic, you may
remember, once remarked, regarding what throughout the ages
has been performed by man, that the difficulty as to the great
events of history has always been that they either occurred at
the wrong time or that they did not occur at all; and that the
business of the conscientious historian has been to remedy these
defects ! The same comment might be made regarding some
of the efforts to narrate the history of those natural products
that have received human attention, though the Natural