C^tye |iri#lj |taturali0t. 



Vol. III. JULY, 1894. No. 7. 



THE IRISH FIELD CLUBS. 



BY R. LLOYD PRAEGER, B.E., 

 Secretary Dublin Nat. Field Club ; Ex-Secretary Belfast Nat. Field Club. 



I. — The Belfast Naturalists' Field Club. 



In these modern days, when the number of persons who take 

 an intelligent interest in the natural phenomena by which 

 they are surrounded is steadily increasing, and when the army 

 of observers and investigators in every department of science 

 grows larger year by year, any institution whose object is the 

 advancement of science, and especially the popularization 

 of science, is sure to have our sympathy ; and in no way, 

 perhaps, has more been done to popularize natural science, 

 and to enlist fresh recruits in scientific work, than through 

 the instrumentality of the various Naturalists' Field Clubs 

 which are scattered through the country. Carried on on a 

 popular basis, and with a low subscription rate, the advantages 

 of these societies are within the reach of all ; and especially 

 by their summer excursions, when the field naturalists have 

 an opportunity of visiting selected localities under scientific 

 guidance, are the members brought into actual contact with 

 nature — the more so since skilled workers in the various 

 "ologies" are generally present, who are able and willing to 

 impart the lore pertaining to their several crafts, and thus to 

 reveal to untrained eyes the thousand marvels that lie hid in 

 field, and wood, and stream, and rock. 



Here in Ireland, we cannot boast that by any means so 

 general an interest is taken in natural science as in England ; 

 but within the last decade there has been a most gratifying 

 and encouraging increase in the number of workers ; and a 

 result of this has been that the Belfast Field Club, for over 20 

 years the only society of the kind in Ireland, received in 

 1887 a comrade in the shape of the Dublin Naturalists' Field 



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