APPENDICES 1453 



when (for threepence) he obtained it, and had thus the beginning of 

 his first (attic-shelf) Museum. 



Much as the inroads of the industrial age aroused painters to 

 appreciate and record nature and cities in their undestroyed beauty, 

 and thus soon to bring their art to foremost rank, so also it has 

 given a like impulse to our scientific appreciations and records, alike 

 for nature-studies and for humanities: thus largely our modern 

 biology, indeed sociology as well. 



In our age of speech and press, the exponents and advocates of 

 biology must needs lecture and write books; yet science, like 

 society, needs organisations too, and of all kinds, from public to 

 specialistic — in time directive, as from army-recruiting to staff. 

 Hence, then, the values, both individual and social, of naturalist 

 societies, small to great, local to metropolitan. 



Their fuller development and linking are next needed, as in the 

 civic and regional society with its museum; and these for a good 

 many years have been in progress. Among the foremost of these — 

 on Flower's widest authority, and not merely our own experience — 

 is the Perthshire Society of Natural Science, of which the active 

 regional exploration and initiative — ^well headed by men like 

 Buchanan White for botanist, James Geikie, then on Geological 

 Survey, and first-rate sportsmen-zoologists too, but also suppoited 

 by keen naturalists of all social classes and levels of education — 

 produced the first of our British regional and type museums. There 

 are many other good examples of active societies; but let us here 

 next specially signal their larger regional unions, e.g. the now well- 

 advanced Union of South-Eastem Naturalists' Societies, which 

 meets by turns at Woolwich, Croydon, etc., and publishes excellent 

 work. Thus too the annual conference of Naturalists' Societies at 

 the British Association is well worth attending, as also the annual 

 gatherings of the new profession of Museum Curators; and latest, 

 yet most comprehensive of all, the vacation outings of the Regional 

 Associations. For in all these ways we have the needed regional 

 network of nature-studies spreading over the land, and preparing 

 to net in the embryonic Darwins, at any rate the young Flowers, 

 and fish for active-minded men and women too. 



All these movements are essentially of our elder generation, and 

 thus might pass with it; were it not for the young hopefuls of the 

 world-wide Boy Scout movement, and of its smaller, yet very pro- 

 mising congeners or offshoots, like Woodcraft Chivalry and Kibbo 

 Kift. Hence now to hand on the tradition of our passing generation 

 to the eagerness and initiative of the rising one is immediate and 

 urgent for both. Indeed, the problem confronting the active 

 spirits of these movements, of how the education of the bulk 

 of their adolescents leaving them is not to lapse, is now actually 

 b.eixig put to us aU; hence museums, societies, and imiversity 



