16 The Presidents of the L.N.U. 
Darwins, inventing new methods of thought for old methods of 
investigation, but we can observe accurately, and help to build 
the foundation of all true knowledge.” Then he went off into a 
vivid description of what Lincolnshire was like in the days before 
the drainage (circa 1600-1650). ‘‘ When the storks and cranes 
were in larger or smaller flocks on the ‘eys’ and ‘holmes’ of the 
fenland ; and the blackterns made the waters resound with an 
incessant noise as they flew over their surface or fed on the deeper 
meres on water-insects or small fish, or more quietly nested on 
the tufts just above the surface ofthe dark waters. There too the 
trampled battle grounds of the rufls were common on every rising 
island of firmer peat ; and our unique white herons here and there 
varied the marshscape amid their cinereous brethren.” Picture 
after picture would follow one another from his well-stored mind. 
Everything of interest, when it was called for, at the happy 
moment when it was most appropriate to the subject under 
discussion. ‘To one, never more than two friends at a time, was 
John Cordeaux in his best vein. His vivid imagination and 
strong memory dulled in the presence of numbers or on the 
lecturer’s platform. A man had to be in full accord, and his 
welcomed guest, to get his very best from him. Cordeaux was no 
conversational protagonist like Johnson, nor intellectual giant like 
Huxley, who overawed even their intimates by the strength of 
masterful personalities and minds and trained tongues, and he 
quickly relapsed into silence, and remained there, if he were not 
understood and appreciated at his real worth. 
No one had more sympathy with our county and its ways, either 
in the past or in the eternal now, than our first President. Noone 
can regret more than we do that he left so little of his widely 
collected and intimate knowledge in print for his successors. Yet 
it was his constant complaint, when he was urged to write, that 
“it is so easy to write, and so difficult to finda subject to write 
upon freshly in these days.” We all deceive ourselves and mis- 
judge our own powers however acute we are. 
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