development. It is true we may cultivate fungi in our 

 laboratories, or higher plants in our gardens and greenhouses : 

 snakes will lay and hatch their eggs in captivity, and many 

 animals can be most conveniently studied as they develop in our 

 aquaria ; but field work in many cases saves us all trouble ; 

 shows us various organisms growing, not in an artificially 

 isolated, but in a natural condition, and shows us the life history 

 of others which we should find it difficult to cultivate or 

 domesticate. 



5th. — Hexicology. Perhaps the most valuable of all the 

 features of field work is that teaching of hexicology — natural 

 environment — which it alone affords. To observe plants or 

 animals living together in a natural state, struggling for existence, 

 individual against individual^ species against species, each more 

 or less dependent upon others in that marvellous order which we 

 term the " balance of nature," is to learn lessons in natural history 

 which we cannot receive in the botanical or zoological garden, 

 still less in the laboratory, museum, or library. 



Symbiosis, or the mutual dependence of organisms, presents 

 many problems to the observer of the very highest importance. 

 There is the partial dependence of certain plants, such as our 

 sundews and butterworts on some kind of animal life for their 

 nitrogenous food, and there is also the more remarkable case of 

 flowers, like some of our orchids, specially modified for the visits 

 of certain special groups of insects, whilst the legs and other 

 parts of insects are reciprocally adapted for the collection of 

 honey or pollen from these special types of flowers. 



Professor Boulger then proceeded to point out other 

 directions in which additional field work is required. Those who 

 live in the country may in the course of a series of years arrive 

 at very precise and valuable results by observing the exact dates 

 of the arrival of our migrant birds, of the hatching of new insect 

 broods, of the unfolding of the leaves of the different kinds of 

 trees, of the opening of particular species of flowers. He then 

 proceeded to quote a passage from Sir A. Geikie's Field 

 Geology emphasizing the opportunities which a ramble in the 

 country affords for a study of the soil and the rocks, and pointing 

 out what great problems may be solved by the intelligent 

 observation of the common and familiar phenomena of nature, and 

 went on to say : To these passages I will only add a few practical 

 suggestions of my own. It is probable that Tilgate Forest or 

 other parts of the not very distant Wealden area has still further 

 reptilian spoils to yield to the worker who will follow in the 

 footsteps of Mantell ; whilst it is certain that much detailed work 



