EQUIPMENT OF THE FIELD NATURALIST.* 



Kr:\. AI.FKKP TFIOKNLEY, M.A., F.L.S., F.E.S., 

 ■South f.rvi'Hoii, Lincoln. 



It may be expected from the title of these notes tliat I am 

 g"oing" to refer to butterfly nets, kilHng" bottles, vascula, and 

 such necessary impedimenta of the field naturalist. My object, 

 however, is to call attention to another kind of equipment, much 

 more important, I venture to think, than these thins^s to whicli 

 I have just referred. 1 allude to that mental equipment without 

 which field work becomes vain and unprofitable. Do we not 

 see everywhere around us g-hosts of the temporary passion for 

 natural history which held us at one time? In this way nothing- 

 is more pathetic than the sig^ht of the microscope standing in 

 enforced idleness under its glass shade in the sitting'-room or 

 study, or the dusty collection of insects somewhere about the 

 house, all telling- the usual story of a short-lived ardour. Why 

 have we abandoned the hobby that once fascinated us so g-reatly? 

 It is perhaps not alwaj's easy to answer this question ; but I will 

 dare to say that the ideas with which we started to investigate 

 Nature were not adequate to the task. That which we thought 

 so fascinating- proved at last monotonous, and so was g-iven up. 

 When we had collected all we could — when we had amassed 

 heaps of plants and animals, we did not know how to study 

 them. Then there came a time when there was but little more 

 to collect, and then what next? The ideal was attained, and in 

 its attainment proved most unsatisfactory and there was nothing- 

 beyond. The first thing- then in the field naturalist's thoug-hts 

 should he ' study,' wot the mere amassment of material. It is 

 better to know the life-history of a single beetle than to possess 

 the three and a half thousand species which the British list 

 contains. Then it is important that this study should be wide 

 enough. The field naturalist should learn all he can, all he has 

 time for. It is a common thing to find some who pay exclusive 

 attention to some order or group of living things and refuS;e 

 almost to look at anything else ; consequently they are shock- 

 ingly ignorant of things which lie close around and beside them, 

 and are inextricably correlated with those ver}' objects in which 

 they are most interested. There are lepidopterists who will not 

 look at beetles, or flies, or bees, or birds, or flowers ; and there 

 are botanists who will not look at insects. Now, whilst it is an 



■* Presidential address delivered to the Lincolnshire Naturalists' Union, 

 nth December iqoj. 



1903 April I. 



