Professor Thomson's Address 129 



school to school with a guard of honour from among 

 the children. I may direct attention to the Liverpool 

 School Board's method of having travelling collections. 

 In summer, too, it would be most appropriate to dis- 

 cuss such curiosities as carnivorous plants, such funda- 

 mental facts as the interrelations between flowers and 

 their insect visitors, or such interesting enquiries as 

 the importance of animal industries to man — illus- 

 trated, for instance, by earth-worms and bees. In 

 connection with industries, I may refer to the numer- 

 ous exhibits of bees at work, which, if kept within due 

 limits, seem to me useful in places where the more 

 natural hive-life cannot be readily studied. 



In Autumn, the fall of the year, when school work 

 recommences, we have to deal with the problem of 

 restlessness before settling down to steady work, 

 and this would be the appropriate time to study 

 the autumnal restlessness in various animals — for 

 instance, the autumnal gossamer showers which 

 Jonathan Edwards, as a boy of thirteen, enquired 

 into and understood so many years ago. This would 

 be the time to return to the perennially interesting 

 problem of migration, whether in the birds who are 

 now leaving us, or in other cases, like salmon. It 

 goes without saying that merely informative state- 

 ments about the migration of birds are not what we 

 want; but some of the bird-records in the exhibition 

 show that this level is being transcended. 



A return should be made to the storing of food- 

 supplies by animals and in plants — the great fact 

 that connects the abundance of summer with the 

 scarcity of winter. 



Caterpillars on the search for suitable refuges. 



