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delegate sent a small fee is payable to the funds of the 

 Union. Its affairs are managed by a council consisting of 

 the officers of the Union and members elected from the 

 societies, the delegates and the council together forming a 

 general committee. The management of the Union is, 

 therefore, entirely in the hands of the affiliated societies 

 themselves. 



During the eleven years of the Union's existence it has 

 made satisfactory progress ; the number of societies at 

 present affiliated is fifty-two, and the total attendance at the 

 Congress held at Woolwich, in June last, including members 

 and associates, was, in round numbers, four hundred. That 

 the Union is doing good work there can be no doubt, as will 

 be seen by a reference to the pages of the " South-Eastern 

 Naturalist" for 1907, a volume of some 158 pages of closely- 

 printed matter and eighteen well-executed plates in illustra- 

 tion of the various matters dealt with. Our own Society, 

 although not one of the originators of the South-Eastern 

 Union, joined it during the first year of its existence. 



The primary object with which these unions of local 

 societies are formed is to encourage and facilitate friendly 

 intercourse among the members of the affiliated societies, to 

 keep them in close touch with each other's work and to 

 systematise it. But they have a higher function than this. 

 There is an old and very true saying, that is no doubt well 

 known to you all, that " unity is strength." These unions, 

 as representing a large number of local societies, carry an 

 authority that no one of the individual societies can hope to 

 attain, and they are therefore able to, and, as a matter of 

 fact do, undertake, with good prospect of success, work that 

 an individual society would have no hope of carrying through. 

 Many a local society has died of an overdose ot ambition, 

 whereas its fatal draught would have been but a mild 

 stimulant to the Union. 



I have thus far dwelt only upon the advantages of the 

 association of societies under proper organisation. I would 

 now turn for a few minutes to the local societies themselves. 



To fix the exact date at which the idea of forming local 

 natural history societies was first conceived would be an 

 exceedingly difficult task ; it is, however, as already stated, 

 known that upwards of a century ago societies dealing with 

 a general round of subjects, in which natural history was 

 included, were in existence in various parts of the country. 

 Their origin is equally obscure, but as it is on record 

 that the Royal Society, the leading and oldest scientific 



