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sion that peculiar difficulties beset the study of natural history, only to 

 be overcome by a favored few. Many a time I have heard the remark 

 " I would like to know something about botany, bat it would take too 

 much time, and I never could remember the long names;" to which 

 my answer has been : " If you are only anxious to learn it is not 

 nearly so difficult as, say, Latin, or German, or algebra, or half a 

 dozen other subjects that an average boy or girl is expected to master 

 during their school life." To show what can be done by anyone who 

 is in earnest about it I will ask your attention to what has been done 

 by some members of our own club, leaving out of consideration our 

 professional naturalists and confining myself to those who study nature 

 for the love of it, first apologizing to the gentlemen concerned for 

 mentioning their names without i)ermission. In the (in our club) 

 somewhat neglected subject of conchology, one of our members while 

 a student at college occupied his few leisure moments in the study of 

 our shells, to such purpose that he is now, as I was told the other day on 

 good authority, one of the first amateur conchologists in the Dominion. 

 Those of you who were present at our afternoon lecture on conchology 

 last winter will know to whom I refer. To those who were not I 

 would say come to the lecture on that subject in this winter's course, 

 and see what a master of his subject Mr. Latchford is. Another 

 student at the same University of Ottawa, Mr. W. L. Scott, devoted 

 himself so assiduously to the study of birds as to be a thorough orni- 

 thologist before he left college. In the same department we have 

 another member (Mr. Lees) who uses his eyes to such good effect that, 

 as Prof. Macoun tells me, his list of bird arrivals sent in to the leaders 

 last spring was as complete as his own or that of Mr. G. R. White, the 

 two recognized heads of the de})artment, and I may say that Mr. Lees 

 has acquired his knowledge without taking the life of a single bird, and 

 all in the last two years. 



One more example for the last in the most important branch of 

 entomology. It would be hard to name an amateur naturalist more 

 widely known over the whole Dominion, and through the pages of the 

 Canadian Entomologist, to which he is a frequent contributor, over the 

 world, than our friend Mr. Harrington. I have selected these names 

 from among many others because they are all alike very busy men, and 



