124 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. XXVI. 



UNGARNERED GRAIN. 

 By T. S. Hall, M.A., D.Sc. 

 (Read before the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, 8th Nov., 1909.) 

 In the course of some remarks made before the Club a few years 

 ago,* I sketclied the causes which led to its foundation, and 

 and pointed out that as long as the Club fulfilled the conditions 

 which brought about its existence so long would the type of its 

 membership continue. It was formed first and foremost for the 

 study of natural history in the open air. We are field naturalists. 



Among the members of a club which contains such large num- 

 bers as ours does there will always be a certain proportion whose 

 inclinations lean more towards what we may call laboratory work. 

 But, relatively, their numbers are small. It is the living butterfly, 

 the nesting bird, and the flower of the field that we are chiefly 

 interested in, and there is enough in the study of what we see on 

 our rambles, and can examine by the wayside, fully to occupy the 

 time that most of our members can give to the study of nature. 



I should be very sorry mdeed to think that all our members 

 should look on an earthworm as merely an object to be cunningly 

 pickled and then cut into innumerable sections for microscopic 

 study. I would not regard it as an advancement of science if all 

 our members thought that the only way to study birds is to skin 

 them and to describe minutely the variations of a few tints on 

 their feathers. I should hold it to be disastrous for the growth of 

 knowledge if all our botanists lost their tempers over the question 

 of the name of a purple-flowering weed. 



These and a host of kindred questions must be studied, and 

 answers must be given ; but do not let the people who deal 

 in these things destroy our taste for simple food. Are we to 

 forget the pleasure in the pathless wood, or the breezy call of 

 incense-breathing morn ? Are we to take no joy in the way of a 

 bird in the air or of a fish in the sea? Are the cyanide bottle, 

 the collecting jar, the vasculum, or the geological hammer to be 

 our tyrants and not our slaves ? Worse, and still worse, are we 

 bound to describe what we see and tell what we think we know 

 in a hideous jargon of scientific terms ? Are we to be condemned 

 to wander for the rest of our days on dissected pene-plains 

 gathering Cerambycidse or Stylidiums and generally miscalling 

 technicalities? Why, if in springtime we go to the You Yangs, 

 should we imagine ourselves climbing over quartz mica diorite or 

 worse and looking at Bos taurus and Ovis allies being chased by 

 Canis Jamiliaris ? All these things have their place, and Meso- 

 potamia is a blessed word ; but if you make up your mind to it 

 you can do a great deal with the English language. Technical 

 terms are necessary — sometimes. There are ideas that cannot 

 readily be expressed without their aid, and objects that cannot be 



♦Presidential Address, 1902, Vict. Nat., xix., p. 44, July, 1902. 



