Work foF Lineolnshire JiatUFalists, 



BY 



Professor of Biology, the Yorhshire College, Leeds. 



I CANNOT refuse the request of your Secretary to put on 

 paper some notions about more or less promising subjects 

 -- for Natural History work, and yet there are reasons 

 for shrinking from the task. To give advice which seriously 

 conflicts with the opinions and practice of one's friends and 

 neighbours is not a pleasant undertaking. It raises all manner 

 of questions about one's competence to put other people right, 

 and I have more than once made up my mind to let things slide, 

 and go quietly on with my own work. But there are occasions 

 when steady silence becomes cowardly and selfish. If your 

 juniors, men zealous to do useful work, ask you what you think 

 they ought to attempt, you are bound to give them the best 

 you know, at all risk of seeming presumptuous. 



We talk of investigating the Natural History of Lincolnshire. 

 How shall we set about it ? Many people, by their example, 

 though not in so many words, give you to understand that it 

 does not signify what you do. Write papers on Natural History, 

 in which the names of Lincolnshire places occur frequently, and 

 someone will be found ready to print it. Whether the observa- 

 tions tend to advance science, whether anyone will be the wiser 

 for reading what you write, whether indeed anyone will read it 

 at all, may be left undetermined. Of such writing the officers 

 of the Lincolnshire Union can, I imagine, have as much as they 

 please. I hope that they will have the courage to refuse it all. 



