EDITOR'S ADDRESS. 3 
To put a case which I never heard of happening, although it 
might well occur :—A man fishing, entomologizing, or botanizing 
along a stream encounters, one after another, a dozen King- 
fishers; yet perhaps for days, weeks, or even months, he may 
_have taken almost precisely the same walk, perhaps for the same 
purpose, without ever having seen more than a single bird of the 
species in one day, and that only at rare intervals. He will 
record the fact, and it is worth recording, but the probability is 
that in so doing he will rather dwell on its personality or local 
character—the circumstance that he, and he alone of mortals, 
was so favoured as to be the witness of such an unusual sight, 
and that his favourite stream was the scene; and he will be 
tempted to relate the happy accident which led him on that 
particular day to start with rod, net, or vasculum on that par- 
ticular excursion. The cause or causes which induced the 
appearance of so unusual a number of Kingfishers will be most 
likely passed over altogether, although herein lies the sole im- 
portance of the communication. The observer's personality is 
of little or no interest to any one but himself: it is the bird or 
the number of birds observed under such circumstances that 
alone can have any zoological bearing. 
In like manner, by too many naturalists, is the capture of a 
scarce insect or mollusk in a particular locality regarded rather 
as an instance of the lucky captor’s prowess than as having 
reference to the appearance of the species. Still more forcible 
are these considerations when the species may be, after all, one 
that is not rare, and one that may be safely expected to show 
itself in the locality at the proper season. 
There is some reason to suppose that the prevalence of notices 
of this kind (and I think no one can assert that past volumes of 
‘Tyr Zoonogist’ have been free from them) has been the means 
of deterring excellent observers from recording in this or other 
journals discoveries of considerable interest and importance. One 
such may perhaps be cited as having been brought to my knowledge 
