6 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



should indicate what has been already accomplished, suggest 

 researches that should be undertaken, and advise as to 

 methods and sources of information, where such advice 

 would be likely to attract or be useful to new workers or 

 to aid those already in the field. 



There is no likelihood that a Biological survey of 

 Scotland will be placed on a similar basis with the 

 Geological survey as a national undertaking. It must 

 depend on the voluntary support of such as think that the 

 survey should be made, and that what extends our know- 

 ledge of our country ought to be made known. A survey 

 of the natural history of a country to be efficient must, like 

 other surveys, be the working out of a co-ordinated scheme, 

 prepared after due consideration, and with full knowledge 

 of the scope of the work and of the means available. The 

 researches that have been made on the natural history of 

 Scotland have for the most part related to some limited 

 district, or to the distribution of some group (vascular plants, 

 mosses and liverworts, fungi, seaweeds, and desmids among 

 plants, and lepidoptera, beetles, etc., among animals) 

 throughout the country. No general scheme for such a 

 survey has ever been prepared. Indeed, there has been no 

 organisation with authority to do so, since each society's 

 efforts have been rightly directed to its own field, and 

 each individual's to one or to a few groups. But the time 

 is more than come for the preparation of a scheme for a 

 survey of the whole natural history of Scotland, in which 

 existing societies and individuals will find the true place 

 for their work and inspiration and assistance for more 

 strenuous efforts. In a well -devised scheme no existing 

 organisation or research should be interfered with or dis- 

 couraged. The new should supplement and not supersede 

 the old. 



No existing organisation can with advantage undertake 

 a national survey of the kind required. That will require 

 a new society, formed for the promotion of whatever will 

 advance that aim THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF 

 SCOTLAND in the fullest sense of the name. 



The work to be done by such a society, and the relations 

 between it and those at present existing have been already 



