305 



ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF PYRITES 



AND GYPSUM. 



Bting the Presidential Addre'is Delivered to the Essex Field Chih at the 

 Annual JMeeting on April idth, 1904. 



By F. W. RUDLER, I.S.O., F.G.S.. President of the Club. 

 (With Plate XII.) 



THE Essex Field Club, over whose concerns it is my 

 privilege at present to preside, is a group of some three 

 hundred persons banded together by a common interest in the 

 Natural History, the Geology, and the Prehistoric Archaeology 

 of this county. It is curious to note that while the term 

 " Natural History " stands bound, literally, to cover the history 

 of every department of Nature, it is a term which is often used 

 now-a-days in so narrow a sense as to suggest its limitation 

 to living things. A " naturalist " is commonly understood to 

 be either a zoologist or a botanist, or both, but hardly a 

 mineralogist. Natural objects which lack the fascination of life 

 are apt to be kept outside the pale of natural history, as thougli 

 minerals were rather beneath the attention of those who are 

 attracted by the study of plants and animals. There may be 

 some justification for drawing a sharp line between living things 

 and lifeless things, but surely no shadow of justification for 

 cutting off the Mineral Kingdom from the vast Empire which 

 is embraced by the study of Natural History. 



How we drifted into this practice of shutting our eyes to one 

 great department of natural science and narrowing the meaning 

 of the simple expression " Natural History " in a way which 

 even if tolerated by convenience is clearly unjustified by logic, 

 I never could discover. The name of that man who first had 

 the coolness to shelve one-thiid of Nature is not, I believe, on 

 record. I am anxious this evening to put in a plea on behalf 

 of Mineralogy to take its place by the side of Zoology and Botany 

 in the grand trinity of Natural Science. 



It should, perhaps, be admitted at the outset that the 

 mineralogist has himself largely to thank for the popular neglect 

 of his science. Very little has been done, at least in this country, 

 to place mineralogy before the public in an attractive torm. So 

 distinguished a mineralogist as Mr. L. Fletcher, the Keeper of 



