ANNUAL ADDRESS, MDCCCLXXI. 15 



interest which the localities visited may possess. In other 

 words, they need instruction. They require the presence 

 of some better informed naturalist to call their attention to 

 objects and to interpret phenomena for them. The trudging 

 along country lanes and across fields, even in the company 

 of distinguished naturalists, is not edifying unless those 

 elite individuals condescend to be communicative, and to act 

 as showmen and teachers for the occasion. At almost 

 every excursion something is done in the way of instruction 

 by the reading of a paper, and mostly the papers have been 

 of late rather of archa3ological and historical than of natural 

 history interest. It is well that this has been the case, 

 and all those who have been present at their reading will 

 concur in valuing those papers and in thanking their authors. 

 It is well, I say, that the papers read have possessed that 

 character, for they were more fully and largely appreciated 

 than purely natural history papers would have been. 



This remark leads me on by way of explanation of it to 

 say that natural science must be entered upon from its 

 rudiments. The researches of its devotees cannot be appre- 

 ciated by the uninitiated. Each branch of natural history 

 has, so to speak, an alphabet of its own, and no advance 

 can be made in it until this alphabet is mastered. It is 

 the absence of this rudimentary knowledge on the part of 

 many members that, in my opinion, causes the excursions 

 to degenerate into mere country walks. The same want 

 likewise lessens materially the interest and value of our 

 winter evening meetings. What information or what 

 pleasure can be derived from a paper on botany, or on 

 geology, or on palajontology, or on archasology, on the part 

 of those to whom the terms used in description are equal 

 to so much Chinese in comprehensibility ? Ladies and 

 gentlemen, you will from what I have said apprehend 



