164 THE ESSEX NATURALIST
a number of ardent collectors. To these we owe, in the main, our
county records : to mention a few names from the Essex Field
Club, we have had the Listers on the Mycetozoa, Miller Christy
and later Glegg on birds, Cole on the Lepidoptera and Fitch on
the Hymenoptera and, working the less popular groups, Scourfield
on the Entomostraca and Whitehead on the leeches and Tur-
bellaria. This list is not exhaustive—it merely records the names
of some of the outstanding workers, jotted down as they came
to my mind, as excellent examples of some to whom we owe
important data on the Essex flora and fauna. Some of their work
has appeared in our own journal or in those of other learned
societies, some has formed the subject of special memoirs or
monographs.
Another activity of the Essex Field Club, and here again, not
a unique one, has been the exploration of selected sites—the Dene
Holes, a putative Lake Dwelling, and other similar studies in
Essex prehistory. Our interest in the protection and preservation
of wild life within our boundaries may also be recalled and special
mention must be made of our efforts to obtain pictorial records of
Essex, built up now, and largely through the care and devotion of
Miss Greaves, into the magnificent Pictorial Survey : here we
have records of places which have been swallowed up by London,
of rural areas now a dreary wilderness of villas and concrete and
other amenities of modern civilisation.
Of the type of person who became a member of field clubs I
speak with some hesitation, but I suppose membership in the
past was much the same as it is now, and included the keen ama-
teur, the professional, the interested layman—no specialist, but
finding in the general activities of the club a pleasant form of
recreation which brought him into contact with a host of know-
ledgeable folk who could assist him in his difficulties.
When we turn to examine the present position of field clubs
the picture is often rather depressing. Our Club, like a number
of others, is not in the most thriving stage of its existence. What
is the reason? Have the activities which I have mentioned lost
their appeal, are the giants of the past all dead and did they die
without issue, are we too busy to find time for such activities, is
the war to blame or what is wrong? It is a curious thing that
any learned society seems to go through its good and bad periods,
rather than to pursue the even tenor of its way; its progress
might be described as wave motion—with a series of crests of
successful progress separated by troughs of depression. This
seems to be the natural course of evolution of a field club or a
natural history society and it need cause no great concern pro-
vided that it is not concluded that a club is down and out when it
gets into a depressed period. Healthy growth of any such society