170 NATURAL SCIENCE. September, 



Riding Consolidated Naturalist Society comprised six societies within 

 an area of twenty miles, numbering more than two hundred members. 

 For them primarily The Naturalist was started, and between 1865 and 

 1867 three goodly volumes were issued from Huddersfield. Then, 

 unfortunately, the journal died from want of support, coupled with 

 too low a price having been placed upon it. In July, 1872, however, 

 it was rehabilitated for a short time as the Yorkshire Naturalists'' Recorder, 

 and since 1875 has appeared continuously as The Naiuvalist, while 

 there were in 1878 no less than twenty-seven societies in the York- 

 shire NaturaHsts' Union. Union is so truly strength that these 

 Yorkshire naturalists have been able not only to maintain this 

 interesting httle monthly journal, but also to issue valuable Transac- 

 tions in which have appeared such substantial works as Lees 

 and Davis's " West Yorkshire " and J. G. Baker's " Flora of North 

 Yorkshire." 



A county union, or one embracing several of our smaller counties, 

 and made up of delegates from each society, could arrange committees 

 for joint investigation, and select papers for publication from among 

 those laid before the constituent societies. In this selection it may 

 well be hoped that they would be more likely to choose exclusively 

 local matter than a body more narrowly local and perhaps, therefore, 

 more amenable to purely personal considerations. 



Joint publication is by no means the only object, however, of 

 such unions. In the inaugural meeting of a south-eastern union of 

 scientific societies, held at Tunbridge Wells last April, under the 

 presidency of the Rev. T. R. R. Stebbing, F.R.S., it appeared that 

 the ideas of the founders did not, at first at least, even include joint 

 publication, but that the notion of union had sprung from the inter- 

 change of geological lantern-slides and a wish for joint field meetings, 

 and, possibly, the re-reading of interesting papers at various centres. 



These were only some of the uses of union that appeared in the 

 initial stage, and the main object of the present paper is to suggest 

 that such unions may not only tend to greater precision of work, 

 economy of labour, and publicity of results, but may also afford a 

 valuable means by which the smallest local societies, with their other- 

 wise isolated observers, may be brought in touch with more central 

 institutions, such as the Selborne Society, the Commons' Preservation 

 Society, and, above all, the Biitish Association. The peripatetic 

 character of this great association does much in this direction for our 

 largest towns, and the committee of delegates from those local societies 

 that publish, which meets annually by its invitation, has also greatly 

 helped to spread the influence of the association annually into many 

 channels ramifying over almost all the country. There is still, how- 

 ever, a want of systematic completeness in the carrying out of this 

 scheme, which might be to a considerable extent supplied by county 

 associations, or unions embracing several counties. 



It is most important that large erratic boulders, earthworks, 



