PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 141 
(whom we are proud to number among our members) is now issuing a 
work which has already a reputation as widely distributed as the birds 
which it describes—I mean the Monograph of the Alcedinide; two dis- 
tinguished entomologists, resident in our county, assist us by contributing 
and subscribing to our magazine; and geologists, too, are not wanting. 
T have not referred to our President, because I really do not know 
how to classify him; perhaps the best way would be to rank him with 
each of the above, and add that he is an astronomer, a chemist, and a 
first-rate microscopist, and that he has a supply of objects illustrative 
of each science, which I verily believe to be inexhaustible. I know that 
some have not much time to devote to such pursuits, but, surely each 
could do a little to forward the work. One niight keep a meteorological 
table ; another could note year by year the time of foliation, flowering, 
and fruiting of the trees; another could with very little trouble, rear 
caterpillars of different moths or butterflies, noting their food, and the 
dates of their transformation; a miniature aquarium and its inhabitants 
would amuse and instruct a fourth; the natural history of a limited 
district might occupy those who take their constitutional in some parti- 
cular direction ; in fact there is plenty to do, and nothing in nature is too 
small to be worth notice. There is such acharm of variety in nature ; her 
rules as we define them, are so full of exceptions, which are perhaps really 
governed by other rules at present unknown to us; there is so very much 
to be done, and there are so few todo it. Notonly are there many distinct 
branches of natural science, but each of these so divided and subdivided, 
and is so capable of further and further subdivision, that the difficulty is, 
not to know how much to attempt, but how little. And we need not go 
far afield to make discoveries. It is true, as our President told us, that 
we ought not to confine our researches to the insects, the plants, the 
animals, the birds of our own neighbourhood, or even of our own 
country, but we must remember that it is by the careful working of 
small districts that the productions of a country areascertained. Neither 
need we hunt for rare objects on which to make our observations; some 
of Mr. Darwin’s most important discoveries were elicited by his study of 
such common plants as the primrose and cowslip, the flax of commerce, 
and the purple loosestrife. When we think how absolutely little we 
know of the life-history of plants; when we think how many objects are 
connected with plants at one stage or other of their existence, how many 
in the larval state, feed upon the leaves, and in the perfect form of bee, 
or butterfly, or moth, derive sustenance from the flowers, in many cases 
at the same time fertilising these flowers by the transmission of pollen 
