•^ uI J'g] Field Naturalists' Club — Proceedings: 41 



a better example of good Australian cabinet work, making good 

 use of our splendid Australian timber. The Royal Society 

 at home was presided over for many years by Sir Joseph Banks, 

 whose name is so well known to all field naturalists. He did 

 more than any other man to make Australia known in England. 

 He himself was well known in England, and commanded so 

 much respect as a scientist and a man, as well as a botanist 

 and field naturalist, that what he said of Australia carried 

 more weight than anything said by anybody else. He was 

 a great friend of my great-grandfather. He introduced a 

 Black Swan from Australia, which sailed about one of the 

 ponds at home until about the year 1830, when it was killed 

 as a natural pastime by some of the youths of the neighbour- 

 hood. At that time a Black Swan was a most remarkable 

 thing in England. No man was more closely associated with 

 the Royal Society than was Sir Joseph Banks, and it is an in- 

 finite pleasure to me to find myself in this hall, which shelters 

 a long-established society, and I trust that the Field Naturalists 

 will remain closely affiliated with that and other societies 

 pursuing similar interests. Your field excursions here are 

 very delightful. In all British towns, in all parts of the world, 

 the tendency is for the town population to segregate in masses, 

 and those of us who are country bred have always felt that 

 the town people would be better off than they are if they knew 

 more about the country. A society like this, with its ex- 

 cursions, its many interests, its power of making Nature known 

 to all who are members, and the greatly awakened interest in 

 life which follows from that knowledge, can do much good, 

 which cannot be over-estimated, especially when, as in modern 

 society, the town is crowded, and its people know so little of 

 the country. Townspeople look down upon us country folk, 

 but we know that certainly a man who is at home in the 

 country has two strings to his bow, and is the better fitted to 

 serve his king and country in time of war. The ceremony that 

 I have to perform to-night is the unveiling of this memorial of 

 the members of the society who have gone to the front. They 

 have done their duty ; they have done what was best worth 

 doing, and which those of us even who have not been able to 

 get to the front can estimate at its true value. Those of us 

 who have not been at the front will never feel on the same level 

 with those who have been there. Those who have gone have 

 suffered many hardships ; they have suffered pain ; many of 

 them have suffered death ; but, on the other hand, for all the 

 time they have been there they have never been worried by 

 any of those small cares that afflict most of us in our daily life. 

 They have, at a time of great crisis, when everything that is 

 worth having— our country, and the future of our race — is at 



