A. Yes, I think I did, and the trio who started it did.
Only because we felt it deserved to succeed. Essex was,
and still is, under terrific pressure for housing and
industrial development, as much or more than any county in
the country. ¥hat worried me then, and still worries me
now, is that the Trust membership and activities grow by
leaps and bounds, and so do its administrative problems. I
think we are particularly fortunate, at the present time,
with our officers and secretariat, who blend their natural
history with their administrative skills. But it could very
well be otherwise, and therein lies a very great danger.
Q. The next question I have is a little more light-hearted,
If you could choose to be someone else, who would you choose
to be and why?
A. Now this is an interesting question. I can't think of
a single person by name, but I would like to have been one
of a type. I would like to have been a craftsman or an
artist, doing a job at one's own pace, with one's own hands,
primarily for one's own satisfaction - to please ones-self,
and not being answerable to a committee or a council or a
board of directors. As a young schoolboy at Margaretting I
used to love to pump the bellows at the forge, and watch
the smith make horse-shoes and gates. I used to watch the
village cobbler make a pair of shoes. Even now, I can watch
a wood-carver, or an engineer at a lathe, or an artist at
his easel, or a potter at his wheel. I could watch those
people for hours. It is this matter of being your own master,
particularly master of your hands, master of your eye. I'd
love to be a craftsman, in metal or wood.
Q. You strike a chord in me there, too. Now to a more
practical question: What guidance would you give to a
youngster who shows an interest in natural history?
A. I think my advice would be to join a Natural History
Society and not to specialise too early. Get into the habit
of observing and recording, for memory is a fickle thing.
And to be continually asking, as the true naturalist does,
how? why? and where? And not accepting all that's written
in text books. Finally, I would encourage the young
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