THE FUNCTIONS OF A LOCAL NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. I9 
the record of facts observed in our own immediate neighbour- 
hood. 
In carrying out this work, of course the foremost place must 
be given to the reading of papers. No one can write a paper to 
communicate his knowledge or ideas to others without learning 
much himself. He will almost certainly be obliged to look into 
matters of which he had only a hazy notion beforehand, and some 
of his hearers, at all events, will carry away fresh ideas. Not only 
formal papers should be read, but a part of the business of the 
meeting should be the exhibition of specimens, and short notes of 
interesting observations made by any of the members, in order 
that they may be recorded in the Minutes of the Society. And 
although I have always used the word “he,” I have not meant to 
exclude ladies, whose papers and notes are always welcome. 
Secondly I place the compilation of complete lists of the Fauna 
and Flora of the district. In this our Society has made an 
excellent beginning by the publication of the catalogue of Macro- 
Lepidoptera, and I hope that before the termination of this 
session this list may be followed by that of the Micro-Lepidoptera, 
for which the materials have been accumulating for some time. It 
is the more incumbent on us to carry out this work because we have 
such an admirable foundation upon which to build in the ‘‘ Natural 
History of Tutbury,’’ by Sir Oswald Mosley, where the late 
_ Mr. Edwin Brown gave, almost single-handed, such comprehensive 
lists of the Fauna and Flora of Burton-on-Trent ; and, in addition to 
_ this, we have the ‘‘Fauna and Flora of Repton,” which owed so much 
to the labours of the late Mr. William Gurneys, a former member 
of our Society. For a century past this neighbourhood has never 
been without its naturalists, from the time when Erasmus Darwin, 
living in Lichfield, sang, “ The Loves of the Plants,” and formed 
one of a Lichfield society which published what was then a very 
valuable work on systematic botany. 
Perhaps I may be allowed to read two short extracts from his 
‘poems, which, although couched in the stilted and pedantic 
language of the period, show that he was an accurate observer of 
