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It is, perhaps, some consolation to find that other Clubs, even 

 those standing high in public estimation, have had cause to make 

 similar complaints. Thus the President of the Cotteswold Club, in 

 one of his Annual Addresses, remarked that " Geology," which 

 seems to be a favourite pursuit with the members of that Club, 

 " should not wholly engross their attention, but that the other wide 

 domains of nature in plant and animal life should receive at their 

 hands equal and fitting illustration." With us the leaning has been 

 more towards antiquarian researches, which is perhaps not sur- 

 prising, considering we are located here in a spot so eminently 

 distinguished as an old Eoman station, and so rich in the remains 

 of that period during which the Romans occupied this part of the 

 country. And when the attention has been once drawn to the 

 subject of such .Antiquities, it is easily led on to those of earlier 

 as well as later date, embracing in the end the whole field of 

 Archaeology. 



But let us pass on to consider what is really wanted to make our 

 Club more worthy of the name it bears. We want, then, from its 

 members a more full account of the animals and plants of the 

 district, studied in connection with some of those great questions 

 which occupy the attention of naturalists at the present time. Not 

 mere lists of species, useful as these are to tell us what exists in the 

 neighbourhood, but papers containing all that relates to their 

 Biology. Mark the word I use. You will recollect it as the new 

 title given of late years to the Natural History Section of the 

 British Association instead of that of Zoology and Botany. It is a 

 more comprehensive word than either of these two, as including 

 both animals and plants bonded together by one common principle, 

 that mysterious thing called life. How much is implied in the 

 term Biology ; the science of life ; the study of all that goes to make 

 up the multiplied manifestations of life and energy, as exhibited by 

 the collective assemblage of organised beings on this globe, taken 

 each in its relationship to all the others, as well as in its relation to 

 the physical conditions of the spot in which it is located. I regard 

 the adoption of this term as indicative of a new phase which Natural 

 History studies have entered upon at the present day. The true 

 naturalist uo longer confines himself to the examination of stuffed 



