Clifton College Scientific Society. 5 



the country, that you will be able to obtain from them rare 

 and CTU'ious objects that you could not collect yourselves ; 

 and I advise you to turn sturdy beggars, and get a hold (by 

 all fair means) of anything and everything worth putting 

 into the museum, anything which you can coax or bully out 

 of anybody whatsoever, old or young. 



I should wish you to begin to collect in the next vacation. 

 What can you do better ? I am sure your holidays would be 

 much happier for it. I don't think boys' holidays in general 

 are so very happy. Mine used to be ; but why ? Because the 

 moment I got home I went on with the same work in which 

 I employed every half-holiday — natural history and geology. 

 But many boys seem to me in the holidays very much like 

 Jack when he is paid off at Portsmouth. He is suddenly 

 freed from the discipline of ship-board, he has plenty of 

 money in his pockets, and he sets to for a lark, and makes 

 a fool of himself, till his money is spent, and then he 

 is very poor, and sick, and seedy, and cross, and disgusted 

 Avith himself — and longs to get a fresh ship and fresh work 

 again — as a great many fellows I suspect long for the holi- 

 days to be over. They suddenly change the regular discipline 

 and work of school for complete idleness, and after the first 

 week is over, they get very often tired, and stupid, and cross, 

 because they have nothing to do, except eating between 

 meals and tormenting their sisters. 



How much better for them to have something to do like 

 this. Something which will not tire their minds, because it 

 is quite different from their school-work, and therefore a 

 true amusement, which lets them leave the muses for awhile, 

 and something which they can take a pride in, because it is 

 done of their own free will ; and they can look forward to 

 putting their gains in the museum when they come back, 

 and sajdng, ' This is my holiday work, this is what I have 

 done for the college since I have been away.' 



Take this hint for your holidays, and take it too for after 

 life, for I am sure that if you get up an interest in this 

 museum here, you will not lose it when you go away. 



Many of you will go abroad, perhaps spend much of your 

 lives abroad — and I am sure you will use the opportunities 

 you will then have to enrich the museum of the College, and 

 be its benefactors, each according to his powers throughout 

 his life. 



But there is one interest which I have more at heart — even 

 more than the interest of Clifton College, much as I love it — 

 and that is the interest of science herself. 



