president's address. 17 



Let us believe, in the last place, that our Antiquarian brethren 

 of the Club will not long withhold the interest that would largely 

 accrue to our Transactions, from their important contributions, 

 extracted from the relics of the successive occupiers of our territory. 



Such, gentlemen, is our past progress, such our future work. 

 Let us now, in conclusion, glance at the great ends we have in 

 view, and the ways and means employed in their attainment. The 

 Student of Natural History does not go forth merely to enjoy a 

 healthful summer day's ramble over hill and dale, or to pick up 

 isolated scraps of information about plants and animals; but to 

 amass stores of well-digested knowledge, to be turned to the 

 material benefit of his kind, and to search into the truth of nature; 

 to be enabled to demonstrate the ways of God to man, and thus 

 to promote the glory of God, and to contribute to the good of man. 



Every discovery of a new mineral, vegetable, or animal, or of a 

 new organ in any living being, is a step, however small, towards 

 these great results ; even the verification, by the tyro, of any new 

 item of science may be said to help us on in the same direction. 



The cultivation of our scientific field demands various imple- 

 ments and processes, and requires all possible aids and appliances. 

 Our excursions bring us at once face to face with nature, and then 

 come to the help of the eye and hand, in their multifarious research, 

 the hammer, the pick, the spade, the net, the dredge, the knife, 

 the vasculum. Much is thus obtained, both of matter and know- 

 ledge; and these might, perhaps, be turned to greater general 

 profit in Zoology and Botany, than has hitherto been the case, by 

 somewhat curtailing the extent of our day's wanderings, and pro- 

 viding for the giving of some explanatory viva voce address, at any 

 convenient time, during the ramble, or at any place which, from 

 the peculiarity of its characters and productions, might seem to 

 require it. Such notices of Geological features have already been 

 given with great benefit to the Club. Much more, however, of 

 information remains to be extracted from the day's collection, 

 when we reach home; for we are not field Naturalists exclu- 

 sively. The specimens are to be carefully examined, compared, 

 classified, and preserved ; new forms, organs, or tissues are to 

 be carefully studied, now with the unaided eye, now with the 



VOL. II. PT. I. c 



