 Addvess to the Lincolnshive Naturalists’ Union. 105 
actually present at the meeting. The Lincolnshire Naturalists’ 
Union was then definitely established, and has ever since 
continued to do good and useful work, and during Mr. Baker’s 
term of office the first part of its Transactions was published. 
This year I am pleased to say that we have had a series of 
good meetings at which some excellent work has been done, 
thanks to the care and attention which our accomplished 
Secretary, Mr. Smith, has paid to them. 
The subject which I propose to take for my Presidential 
Address is the 
: History and Present Condition of the Investigation of the Land 
and Fresh-Water Mollusca of Lincolnshire. 
Iam afraid that I shall find it difficult to make it as interesting 
as I could wish, or as those delivered by my predecessors on 
subjects of more general interest. 
The beginning of the investigation of the Lincolnshire 
Mollusca dates back to the time of the great revival of human 
knowledge which followed the commotions of the Civil Wars ; 
and the age when the Royal Society was founded, the age in 
which flourished our great Lincolnshire worthy, Sir Isaac 
Newton, was also the age when the foundation of the Natural 
Sciences on the scientific basis as we now know them, freed 
from the sophistries and the pedantries of the old schoolmen, 
and of the philosophers of the middle ages, was laid by three great 
Englishmen, the precursors of Linnzus, who flourished a 
entury after them. 
_ These men were Ray, Willughby, and Lister. John Ray 
was of Black Notley, in Essex; Francis Willughby, of Middle- 
ton, in Warwickshire, and of Wollaton, in our neighbouring 
sounty of Notts. ; and Martin Lister, of Craven, in Yorkshire, 
and of Burwell, in Lincolnshire. These three great men, 
between them, covered practically the whole range of the 
tural Sciences. Ray was the botanist, and Willughby 
voted himself to the department of vertebrate zoology; while 
dr. Martin Lister took up the investigation of various forms of 
“invertebrate life, as well as interesting himself in fossils and in 
“geology. 
% 
wey. 
‘ 
