14 Presidential Address. 



still untouched mountains and valleys we may have the discovery 

 of insects and plants not known to our geographic range ; and 

 when the countr}- shall have been mapped on the large scale by 

 the Ck)vernment surveyors there is nothing that shall prevent an 

 active club to fill up in a few years a list of the productions 

 within their beat, and so lead ort to a complete and accurate fauna 

 and flora of our own time and age ; and generations succeeding 

 would be al)le, not only to mark the change of the productions, 

 l)ut t<i judge and reason upon the effects which their now so-called 

 improvements have produced on the climate and soil, and the 

 fertility and increase of the latter. These clubs have yet to write 

 the Natural History of Great Britain."* 



Looking through the series of our Transactions I think it 

 will strike all of us that the ideal aimed at by Sir William Jardine 

 is not yet by any means attained. True, much j)rogress has been 

 made, and faithful and diligent work has been done, but there 

 remains plenty more for us to do. 



In these days, when secondary education looms large in the 

 programme of the Government's educational policy, I have often 

 thought that the time is not far distant when scientific societies 

 like ours may be called upon to fill a role which our founders 

 never c<intemplated. Presuming, that amongst our members are 

 to be found the local experts in all the branches of Antiquarian 

 and Natural Historj- Research which form our raison d\tre, what 

 could be more right and proper than that these should give 

 periodical lectures to the young? You have probably seen, when 

 in London, the parties of school boys and girls taken on their half- 

 holidays to the British or Natural History- Museums, where, under 

 the guidance of some expert, studies and lessons, wjhich were dull 

 and tedious to them in the class-room, became real and interesting 

 when illustrated by objects which could be seen at close quarters 

 in the Museum. I should like the Injy or girl who was learning 

 Scottish historv, to see at the same time the quaint illustrations to 

 Hollinshed's " Historie of Scotland,'" oy to read Graham's 

 "Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century." Such 

 books as these help to make history more than a collection of 

 odious dates; and bring the reader back into days and customs 

 of vears gone by. Again, " Nature study ' ' now forms a recognised 



*" Memoirs of Hugh Edwin Strickland, M.A.," 1858. pp. ccli., cclii. 



