Notes and Comments. 319 
excellent naturalists of this type, and in most cases their 
success has been greatly due to the opportunities given by local 
Field Clubs. . . Clubs like these gave the requisite assistance to 
young men of sagacity and intuition, and started them on a 
career of fruitful observation and discovery. I am anxious 
to claim the utmost credit in the past for Field Clubs in the 
performance of functions such as these. The question now 
arises : are these functions performed with equally good results 
at the present time? I think that anyone who has had long 
and practical acquaintance with the working of such associations 
will, on consideration, answer this question in the negative.’ 
FIELD CLUBS, 
While there is, at the present time, a slight falling off in the 
attendances at the meetings and excursions of some of our 
Field Clubs, we hardly agree with Prof. Lebour in considering 
that they are not doing such good work at the present time. 
A variety of circumstances exist to cause an apparent lack of 
interest just now, but these will be removed. The encourage- 
ment and help given to young men is quite as great now, if 
not greater, than before; only the young men are not there 
in such great numbers, for obvious reasons. But they will be, 
probably in greater numbers than ever later on. Young minds 
moulded at Field Club Meetings frequently result in the for- 
mation of eminent naturalists. No doubt, the greater propor- 
tion of the audience — among which were many prominent 
naturalists—listening to Prof. Lebour’s address, received their 
first introduction to natural history at these meetings. 
COLLEGES AND FIELD CLUBS. 
Prof. Lebour goes on to say, ‘A turning-point in the 
history of local societies, and more especially of those of the 
Field Club character, came some forty or fifty years ago. It 
coincided, I firmly believe, with the great increase in the 
number of subjects taught to the masses of the people and with 
the establishment of college after college and university after 
university in every part of the country. Weare here concerned 
with the scientific results of the new order of things. One of 
these results was a marked—though some will think by no 
means sufficiently marked—increase in the number of young 
men trained in the principles of science and practised in some 
branch of it. This was all to the good. A class of potential 
workers in science had come into being. At the same time, 
however, a still larger class had been turned into the world 
with what may not unjustly be termed a smatter of science. 
SMATTERERS. 
It need not be insisted on that the smatterers were not by 
any means always the less noisy, the less self-assertive, or the 
less pretentious of these two sets of men. It could scarcely be 
1916 Oct. 1. 
