210 NATURAL BEAUTY 



he thus has true vision and can really see a country, 

 and when he has acquired the capacity for expressing 

 either in words or in painting what he has seen, so 

 that he can communicate it to us, then he will have 

 reached the standard which this Society should 

 demand. And this is nothing less than saying that 

 we expect of him that he should have in him some- 

 thing of the poet and the painter. 



Careless snap-shotting in the field and idle 

 turning on of lantern slides at our meetings will no 

 longer satisfy us. A traveller if he is going to photo- 

 graph must spend the hours which a real artist .would 

 devote to discovering the essential beauty of a scene, 

 and to composing his picture before he dreams of 

 exposing his plate. But we want more than photo- 

 graphs : we want pictures to give that important 

 element in Natural Beauty the colour. And we 

 want pictures painted in words as well as on canvas. 

 Not shallow rhapsodising of the journalese and 

 guide-book type, but true expression in which each 

 noun exactly fits the object, each epithet is truly 

 applicable, and each phrase is rightly turned, and in 

 which the emphasis is placed on the precisely right 

 point, and the whole composed so as distinctly to 

 bring out that point. 



Then in time we shall gather together the most 

 valuable knowledge about the Earth. And when a 

 stranger from a far land comes to us to know about 

 any particular country, we shall be able to provide 

 him .with something worth having. When an 

 Australian comes to England and wishes to know 

 its essential characteristics, we shall do something 

 more than hand him over maps and treatises on the 



