40 



Forest from the hands of its depredators, and it is only 

 natural that the Club should take the keenest interest in the 

 welfare of the Forest. This it has done in no half-hearted 

 manner ; in frequent touch with the verderers, it has often 

 been able to advise on important matters, and on more than 

 one occasion to defend their action against the attacks of an 

 ignorant but noisy public. On three separate occasions, 

 when railway companies have sought powers to run lines 

 across the forest, to its general detriment and the destruction 

 of much of its natural beauty, their bills have been thrown 

 out by Parliament largely on the opposition raised by the 

 Club.* The Club was also instrumental in establishing the 

 " Epping Forest Museum " — a free public museum of objects 

 illustrative of the history, geology, and natural history of the 

 Forest district — which is housed in the building known as 

 "Queen Elizabeth's Lodge "at Chingford,and has undertaken 

 the whole of the work of arrangement and organisation from 

 the beginning. It is pleasant to know that this little museum 

 is deservedly popular. But Epping Forest is not the limit of 

 the Club's operations, nor was the establishment of the Ching- 

 ford museum the height of its ambition. Accordingly, on the 

 founding of the West Ham Technical Institute, it undertook the 

 arrangement of a museum and library representative of the 

 whole county of Essex in that building, which it has carried 

 out in the same satisfactory manner as the smaller and earlier 

 undertaking, and this now is the headquarters of the Club. 

 Its publications are the " Essex Naturalist " (a quarterly 

 journal of its transactions and proceedings), and the 

 museum hand-books ; it has also from time to time pub- 

 lished special memoirs on "The Birds of Essex," "The 

 Mammals, Reptiles, and Fishes of Essex," "A Report on 

 the East Anglian Earthquake of 1884," and similar sub- 

 jects, and it also issues a " Year-book and Calendar." 



I have already said enough to indicate the lines on which 

 a local natural history society may undertake useful work r 

 and, in conclusion, it may not be out of place if I refer 

 briefly to the origin and progress of our own Society. To do 

 this I shall have to go back to a time some years before the 

 actual establishment of the Society, but I will endeavour to 

 condense my remarks into as short a space as possible, as I 

 feel that I have already detained you too long. 



In an earlier part of my remarks I referred to the Ento- 

 mological Club as a social institution ; but this was not its 



* On one of these occasions the South London Entomological Society 

 also materially assisted. 



