174 Addvess to the Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union. 
In making this general survey of the state of our knowledge, 
one feels much handicapped by the fact that the Victoria 
History of this County, which was to have included a full sketch 
of what is known in every order and class, is not yet published. 
On the whole the Naturalists of Lincolnshire have to be 
congratulated on the great advance which has been made in our 
knowledge of the physical conditions and the animal and 
vegetable life of their county since the time when suitable media 
for publication became available. 
Apart from other journals, the Transactions of our Union, 
and the pages of the Naturalist from about 1884 to within a 
short while ago, are full of Lincolnshire observations and informa- 
tion—not all of it the dry bones of science, but replete with 
suggestions for the future, reminiscences of the past. 
The work that lies before us is to complete and co-ordinate 
our knowledge of our county, to work out the bearings which 
each subject has upon the others. In this connection the 
counsels of the Rev. Alfred Thornley, set forth in his presidential 
address of 1902 (Nat., April 1905, pp. 118-120), are as full of 
force now as ever they were—in which he commends to the 
specialist the cultivation of a general interest in the work of 
others, the necessity of detailed note-taking and the adequate 
labelling of all specimens, and above all the study of our objects 
in a state of nature, and with due consideration of all surround- 
ing circumstances. 
To which I would add the supreme importance of the study 
of the common forms, the working out of their distribution in 
detail as well as of their life-history and their variation. For it 
is the common species that are the dominant ones, and offer the 
most suggestive field for detailed observation. With regard to 
our museum specimens, too, it is necessary that these dominant 
forms should be exhibited so as to illustrate fully their 
characteristics and variation. Our records, too, should be 
more detailed and comprehensive, as the bald statements that 
have so long done duty to the discredit of our science are now 
ntirely inadequate. 
