7
have fixed upon as the field for our studies. With this alone
we have a large and pleasant task in hand. The County of
Essex, and especially Epping Forest, has already been worked
by many highly competent observers, but nature's stores are
inexhaustible—there are no blind alleys in science, and what
has been already recorded must serve as the point of depar-
ture for our future work. The observations of our prede-
cessors, moreover, are to a great extent scattered throughout
various publications, and are therefore without that local
significance to which a true scientific meaning may one day be
attached. We must make it a part of our duties to centralize
these observations, and in time we may aspire to the proud
position of seeing our publications regarded as the authority
in all that relates to the natural history of the county.
With regard to the special nature of the observations with
which we may commence our labours, no definite programme
can be laid down at starting. This must be entirely left to
the taste and knowledge of our members, and I can here only
offer a few general suggestions. Some remarks recently made
to the Dulwich College Science Society by my friend and
colleague Mr. W. L. Distant are equally applicable to our
own Club:—"The object of the Society is to promote and
increase the knowledge of the natural history of the neigh-
bourhood, and the first step, but the most indispensable one
towards it, is to aim at having a complete catalogue of its
flora and fauna. In other words, before we can study the
inhabitants with any amount of completeness we must possess
their names and addresses. The Society should thus be a
Biological Registry Office. But this is not all. In certain
communities which are still in an arrested or undeveloped
condition of culture there exists a system of espionage or
secret police, the aim of which is to know as much about
everybody as possible, from purely unscientific motives. I
would advocate in the strictest scientific sense that you estab-
lish a bureaucracy in this neighbourhood in which man only
shall escape your domiciliary visits, by which a rabbit shall
not leave his burrow without in some way you have an expla-
nation of his goings out and of his comings in ; that every bird
shall be 'suspect' who, sojourning here for a period only of