ANNUAL ADDRESS, 1870. 



BY ROBERT GARNER, F.L.S. 



I THINK at one of our late meetings I must have convinced 

 you that I was ready to fight as an earnest soldier in the 

 ranks of science, and natural science in particular. I am not 

 disposed to admit that natural history, in any of its branches, 

 is but an amusement, or at most an unimportant study. And 

 on this point I will descant a little more. I understand some 

 of our friends call us " grub-hunters." Well, let it be so ; but 

 I have been inclined to retort, What then are you, ever toil- 

 ing, burrowing, spinning, after pence ? You must be the real 

 thing itself. We were lately, apropos of grubs, handsomely 

 treated by our Leek friends, but in one thing I find fault with 

 them. Their prosperity depends upon grubs ; their daily 

 bread. I might almost indulge in a pun, but I will not. 

 At the present moment, probably, in the Far East, millions 

 of grubs or caterpillars are at work for them. Nearer home, 

 in the plains of Lombardy, or of South France, as summer 

 comes in, millions will be at work there, fed by thousands 

 of country people, till they have spun their cocoons, which 

 are brought to our Moorland town and there unravelled 

 and re-spun, ready again to employ and enrich other districts 

 and other people. 



Grubs, then, are important creatures, and one of our 

 Moorland members ought to illuminate us with the history 

 of the silkworm of the new one, the ailanthus, exciting 



