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 v/ords, 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 wiiicli 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 



