26 CHELTENHAM COLLEGE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
“BIRDS AND THEIR HABITS,” 
BY MISS REID. 
&\\n November 2nd, 1894, Miss Reid, of the Ladies’ 
} College, gave a most interesting lecture on 
“Birds and their Habits,” which ‘was much 
appreciated by a large audience. The following 
is a resumé of it :— 
Do you know what is the right thing to 
say to the members of a field club when one is 
asked to address them. It is this—Collect 
Facts. This custom has been followed by so 
many great men that I should not like altogether to depart from the 
precedent. But perhaps you will consider that I have done my duty 
in saying this and allow me to go on at once to the subject about 
which I have to speak, and that is—What are we to do with facts 
after we have collected them? If we do nothing we might just as 
well collect penny stamps, or buttons. What have these men who 
advise us to collect facts themselves done with them? Well, first they 
arrange and classify them, and then they try to find a reason why 
things are as they are and not otherwise. To these reasons we give the 
name of theories, and a theory must not only account for all the 
facts that we have collected, but must also give us the power of fore- 
telling facts not yet observed, and if it fail in either of these 
requisites the theory must be abandoned. Now we see the benefit of 
having collected our facts carefully. 
The story is told of a meeting of the Royal Society in its early 
days. The subject under debate was ‘‘ Why does a dead fish sink P” 
After several reasons had been adduced and discussed someone 
suggested “ But a dead fish does not sink, it floats.” A fish and some 
water were immediately sent for, the experiment was made and—the 
fish floated ! 
Or, to take a similar example from our own subject, you will find 
it stated in many books that the legs of a flamigo are long and that 
her nest is raised on a mound some inches above the level of the 
water, and that (here comes the false theory) the reason of the raised 
position of the nest was that the sitting flamigo might be able com- 
