ANNUAL MEETING—PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 187 
MIDLAND UNION OF NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETIES. 
SECOND ANNUAL MEETING AT LEICESTER, 
MAY 20rn, 1879. 
ADDRESS BY GEORGE STEVENSON, ESQ., PRESIDENT OF THE UNION. 
Tf my predecessor regretted that his attainments in science did not 
sufficiently qualify him to preside over your first annual meeting, pray 
believe me when I assure you that by an unfortunate coincidence the 
same cause of regret oppresses me in a double degree. For not only am 
I rushing into a region where even he fears to tread, but, after reading 
his address, I know too certainly how much less I am able to direct your 
inquiries. It is, however, a consolation to me that the success of these 
meetings and of your organisation depends so much less upon the 
President for the year, whom chance has given you, than upon the spirit 
which impels us to unite for local research, and, if possible, to advance 
the interests of science. It is the more earnest and united cultivation 
of this spirit in the prosecution of our work that I would respectfully 
urge upon your consideration. We have an organisation comprising 
representatives from the active centres of scientific life in the midland 
districts of England. We have a medium for discussion and corres- 
pondence in the “‘ Midland Naturalist,” conducted by gentlemen who are 
not only excellent editors, but themselves able explorers and lecturers. 
We have, or may have, a fund adequate to such enterprises as the scope 
of the Union may justify us in undertaking. Our Council has problems 
of local and scientific interest numerous and important enough to invite 
and reward co-operation ; and all we require is that hearty union and 
concentrated exertion for selected and specific objects which will, by the 
convergence of so much power upon them, ensure their attainment. I 
venture to urge this policy with the more earnestness because it is 
practical, and may be fruitful ; and because little systematic effort in 
this direction has, I believe, as yet been made. I observe in the ‘‘ Midland 
Naturalist” that transactions and reports of some of the Natural 
History and other Scientific and Literary Societies are collected, but not 
with much tendency, as to any one subject, to a definite result. Your 
late President suggested various topics, few of which have left their traces 
in the pages of our periodical recorder ; that of Dr. Spencer Cobbold being 
an exception, but which had been previously commenced. Now, most of 
the Societies to which I have referred, if constituted like our own 
in Leicester, address themselves mainly to supply such general and 
popular expositions of science as fall within the scope of the average 
mind and education of the people. But the prosecution of special 
topics of inquiry or research is relegated in our Society to the section 
that is organised with reference to the specific subject. In large 
towns, as in Birmingham, separate societies exist for prosecuting the 
definite objects in question. But, either through a section of the Society, 
or the Society itself, a connected series of observations and researches 
might be undertaken and collected from the Midland district; and, 
Vv 
