FIRST WINTER MEETING— OCTOBER i8th, 1904. 



•*A PliEA FOR A STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY."— PRESIDENTIAL 

 ADDRESS BY Mk. SIDNEY HARVEY, F.I.C., F.C.S. 



The annual meeting of the East Kent Scientific 

 Society was held at the Beaney loetitute, Canter- 

 bury, on Tuesday ev» ning', October 18rh, 1904-, Mr. 

 Sidney Harvey, F.I.C., F.O.S., presiding over a 

 large attendance. 



At the conclusion of the ordinary business of 

 the meeting, the Fre&ident delivered an address, 

 selecting as his subject "A Plea for the Study of 

 Naturul Histoiy." 



Mr Harvey prefaced his remarks by observing 

 that he had been enrteavouriLg for the past three 

 montfas to get out of the Piesidential office, or 

 otherwise he would have prepart-d something 

 which might have been more acceptable than the 

 addre>'S which he proposed to give them that 

 evening. In dealing with his subject. "A plea tur 

 a study of Natural Hiaiory," he would like, he said, 

 to revert to his youthful aays when he found him- 

 self in a village in Suffolk — a lon^, long time ago 

 — enjoying the hospitality of two elderly people 

 with whom he had little in common, except great 

 friendship; and left entirely to his own r«-sources 

 he had to spend some weeks practically alone. 

 He therefore employed himself in taking many 

 long walks and trying to acquaint himself with 

 Nature's doings about him. He had very little 

 sympathy from hia friends in that direction, and 

 he sadly wanted a companion, but he had to go 

 without. He would not f'lrget his feelings when 

 one day, in the course of hia rambles, he saw, for 

 the first time in his life, some fossils. He gladly 

 took them home to his friends' house, and was 

 met with a serious rebuff. He was told 

 that they were old rubbish, that the sand 

 pit he had taken them from was only an 

 old dust heap, and th^t it was a pure waste of 

 time to brintr those things in to litter the house 

 with. He thought differently. Those were the 

 days when all those present manuals to foster the 

 taste for natural history had not ai rived, when 

 they were without the host of books which now 

 made the study of natural history perfectly 

 delightful. Those were the days when books on 

 natural history were much too expensive for the 

 ordinary Fchooiboy to get holdof.and were worded 

 in too elaborat*' and technical language to take in 

 readily. During his absence from the pit be found 

 that men bad been at wot k, and fiesh searches 

 showed thai he was perfectly rii*ht in treasuring 

 those things. He found shells in situ in perfect 

 order : he found shells as though they had lived 

 on the spot and fossilised there. He found a 

 number of other fossils, and resolved to take care 

 of them. That gave him bis first taste fornatural 

 history. They might say ' But that is only a 

 branch of it." He maintained that for those who 

 desired to acquire a knowledge ot natural history. 



or to study the wonderful world in which they 

 lived, the safest pltn was to make geology their 

 first study ; foi the leasin that they could ac- 

 quire a very resptctable kiiowledge of geological 

 phenomena bj botks. He was perfectly sure that 

 if anyone would tbke the trouble to master S( m© 

 ot the rudiments ot gei'L gy, it would tend to 

 extend his researches in other directions, such as 

 chemical study, mineralogical study, the study 

 of tempeia'ure aLd weather, the study of con- 

 chology and botary. 'I'bey could go to the way-side 

 or the waste field and put tbeir hand over some 

 small plaut goint; on in the pr'^cess of growth, 

 and they ivould find going on thi-re phennmenSr 

 which embtaced a side of pretty well everything. 

 They had cell gnmth and ctll devtlopment. the re- 

 production of the species therw ; they had those 

 wonderful changes by which the air itself and the 

 moisture was traobterred and edified by the sun's 

 rays, and built up into their pres-ent organit-me. 

 One had not to go far into geology without coming 

 to the conclusion that the order was int> Uigible 

 and that it was elt quent as regarded the past. 

 They had there not in hieroylypbies, but they had 

 it in a kind ('f nature's picturw, a history of the 

 past, of the hont'Uied past— a history ot the past 

 so far a? it might be possible to understand it, and 

 a disclosure ae regard to the past creations, the 

 past surface worJdi^ of this planet, which must be 

 read; and every time it was read, it developed 

 into something still more wonderful. la 

 their own Couoty of Kent, without going 

 further, they had some remarkable illustratioos 

 of that. Let them take for instance their chalk 

 cliffs — that range of cbffs running from St. 

 Margaret's Bay neaily to Folkestone. They were 

 80 accast<»med to them, that tbey thou^iht very 

 little of them, but it was a wonderful pt-'y that 

 they told. For why ? Tht^y were thw work 

 almost entirely of animal life. Eunning op 

 to 500 or 600 feet, they were almost tniiiely the 

 result of small creatures living, or rath»r who did 

 live, at the bottom of the deep ocean. Now the 

 material which built up those cl ffs was the well 

 known one of carbonate of lime, only supplied to 

 those creatures through the medium ot the sea 

 water. In other words, they saw in those 

 cliffs a great triumphant force at work. They 

 were accustomed to look upon life as a fleeting 

 thing. They might regard those cliffs as a kind 

 of huge crater, where the buried remains of the 

 once innumerable living creatures, lay. But they 

 had left sometbin;; behind which was v. ry 

 impressive — tbey had helped to form a very large 

 portion of the crubt jf the earth in the Licali'ies 

 in which chalk was prevalnnt. It was impressive 

 that creatures so small should be able to 



