the dissecting knife, the pocket-lens. They get the invaluable 

 advantage which every novice requires — direction and encourage- 

 ment. Thirdly, such societies are directly useful to the future of 

 science. Old-fashioned people like myself who were trained in the 

 rigid inductive school of Bacon, and who look askance at "The 

 Scientific use of the Imagination " which oiir new lights so con- 

 fidently inculcate, believe in the enormous value of fact-accumulation, 

 of patient, carefully sifted, and carefully registered obsei-vations, 

 in eveiy branch of natural science. And it is this that such local 

 clubs can best achieve. If it be true that science is built iip on 

 piles of monographs, then it is no less true that the practical 

 monographs, i.e., the result of caref idly digested observations made 

 by accurate workers in local districts are the stuff of which the 

 really valuable generalizations of our scientific posterity will be 

 composed. Nor, must I omit from the uses of Natural History 

 Societies like ours, the advantage to all alike, to the man 

 of science and to the babe that is to grow into the 

 man, of standard works on eveiy branch of science 

 elucidating and correcting personal observations, and of those 

 scientific periodicals which keep us all abreast of the progi-ess of 

 scientific discovery throughout oiir own coiiutry and throughout the 

 world. And now for a word or two as to the dangers of Local 

 Natural Histoiy Societies. Their chief danger is that they are 

 prone to encourage superficiality, especially in young students. 

 The study of classics, whether modern or ancient, and of the exacter 

 sciences, does not lie open to this insidious peril. Those who would 

 show knowledge in these must needs possess it or the imposture is 

 very speedily unmasked. Not so with the natural sciences. In 

 these a very little knowledge goes a very long way. An intelligent 

 lad or girl soon picks iip enough of fact, and enough of scientific 

 phraseology, effectually to impose upon themselves, — for the 

 imposture is quite unconscious, and so far innocent, — and enough to 

 throw dust in the eyes of others. Care ought to be taken in mixed 

 scientific meetings that every paper read should be thorough and 

 searching, and those who read or speak should not think it beneath 

 the dignity of the occasion to condescend to the unlearned, to enter 

 gladly into detailed explanation and to encourage free questioning. 

 There is another way, however, in which societies for the promotion 

 of natural science may serve to retard, not promote it in any 

 neighbourhood ; and that is when the morbid mania for wholesale 

 collecting is widely spread, and threatens a rare flora or fauna with 

 extinction. Perhaps collecting is inseparable from the thorough 

 stiidy of botany and zoology ; no sui'cr sign, however, exists of the 

 spurious pursuit of either or both of these sciences than when rare 

 plants are torn up, and rare animals made still rarer by that selfish 

 acquisitiveness which passes with so many for love of science. No 

 doubt every botanist should secure the entire plant of all typical 

 species, common as they are, thanks to Natiu-e's lavish prodigality. 

 But is it not a blot on the fair fame of science that the chalk woods 

 of Kent are now searched in vain for Orchis Hircina, and the 

 basaltic crags of Upper Teesdale for Woodsia Ilvensis, all because 

 greedy collectors have obliterated every trace of them .with their 

 wanton selfish trowel. Turn to Zoology. If by chance any rare 

 butterfly appears on some sheltered hedge-bank, or rare bird along 



