not had a very large circulation. Then another branch of its work: 
I have alluded to, viz., the efforts to procure a public museum, and 
then to make it attractive and instructive at the same time. The 
soeiety spent nearly £100 over this branch of work, and the hours. 
of time given to it I cannot reckon. The gentlemen to whom the 
society has been most indebted in the past are the Rey. C. L. Acland, 
Dr. Fitzgerald, and Mr. H. Ullyett. The Rev. C. L. Acland, 
unfortunately for us, left the town when the society was very young, 
the amount of time and thought given to it by the original President 
and the Secretary is simply incredible. I find Dr. FitzGerald 
would even read two papers at one meeting sometimes, and the- 
range and the interest of the subjects he has treated of are immense.. 
Mr. Ullyett’s incessant labour I have already alluded to earlier to- 
night. Now what do we want to make the society a useful agency 
in the town for the future as it has been in the past? Well, we- 
want those who love natural history or one branch of it, and who 
have the leisure to work steadily on at some subject in which they 
are interested, and to let us have the results, that we may all benefit 
by them. It is time our local lists were revised and brought up to a 
level with present knowledge. I hope Mr. Walton will let us have 
a local list of flowering plants, that it may be published in our 
annual report. Then it has been suggested, and I quite agree with 
it, and shall propose it later, that our microscopical evenings shall 
be only quarterly instead of monthly, and then, I hope, every 
microscopist in the society will try to bring something of interest 
for exhibition, that we may all profit by one another’s work; and 
‘let us remember that the smallest portion of nature’s handiwork,. 
studied thoroughly, will show much of interest never known before: 
to the observer, or perhaps to other workers. 
What it was that made the original founders of the society 
anxious to push forward all this work, I cannot exactly say, as I 
had not the honour of being one of them; but 1 can give many 
reasons why I personally delight in anything that spreads far andi 
wide, the love of nature, and the knowledge of her productions.” I 
find nature so charming in all her moods, and her works so beauti-- 
ful on every side of me, that I wish that everyone may share some 
of this pleasure. Nature’s works are God’s works, and the worry 
and the weariness and the pettiness of our daily life, the friction of: 
things going wrong, the interminable trials of our temper by small 
matters,—all these things may often be triumphed over and defeated’ 
by simply turning from them and losing oneself in the contemplation: 
of some of the beauties of nature. How contemptible all these trifles. 
seem when one turns to the glorious picture of the heavens, as seen. 
on a fine night at this time of the year. Only a few evenings ago,. 
as I was walking home, the moon was at its first quarter, shining 
softly and clearly ; the cluster of the Pleiades, Jupiter brilliant im 
