OF FIELD CLUBS 165
means progression—stagnation is fatal—and progression, or
evolution, means change. I wonder if we too often make the
mistake of living too much in the past and of wanting things as
they were or rather, as it appears to us, that they were. For time
always brings out the highlights of past history and I believe the
Essex Field Club had its difficulties and ups and downs in the
past. I do not believe that its present members are not as good
as their fathers and especially, I do not believe that we should
follow blindly in the tradition which these fathers laid down.
Let me be specific. To what activities might the Club or any
similar society, devote itself ? As concerns field work—the aim
of the past was commonly to make lists and collections of speci-
mens. It was often sufficient to record a species in a parish, re-
gardless of its habitat. The pundit of the present day scorns
such work and will tell you it is out of date. Personally I regard
it as very necessary stock-taking provided it is not done with a
feeling of finality, for the fauna and flora changes and like com-
mercial stock-taking this is a task which ought to be undertaken
at intervals—by those whose tastes lie in this direction. Nor can
it be claimed that we have taken stock of our county. What do
we know of the distribution of its rotifers, or its earthworms, or
its centipedes and millipedes or if you would prefer plants, of its
rust fungi, its blue-green algae or its diatoms ? Past activities
have been along very restricted lines in Essex as elsewhere and
there is a wealth of systematic work waiting to be done. I have
just referred to a changing fauna and flora ; this is particularly
striking in a county like Essex, which borders on London and
which possesses ever-growing heavily urbanised areas. Studies
of the effects of urbanisation on wild life provide a most promising
field for investigation and one, curiously enough, which does not
seem to have attracted a lot of attention. As instances may be
mentioned the changing status of the Tufted Duck, a rare Essex
bird in the early days of our Club ; the fluctuation of the Carrion
Crow and the Magpie and of the London gulls. Again we have,
on our doorstep, that mysterious fungus which has recently been
destroying the sycamores in the Wanstead Park neighbourhood.
In ecological work there is much that the amateur might do.
Those whose interests and tastes lie in the direction of detailed
studies of plants, for example, might make valuable contributions
to the Biological Flora now being compiled by the British Ecologi-
cal Society. Should teamwork have a stronger appeal, one
might suggest synecological studies. Many areas have been
thus investigated, in more or less detail—the oak-hornbeam
woods of Hertfordshire, the Chiltern beechwoods and the sand
dunes and salt marshes of the North Norfolk coast, to mention
but three, but it is a curious thing that the largest area of forest