448 CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES 



In the preface of a little work entitled ' A Natural History,' published by 

 Sir Thomas Blount in 1693, is to be found this sentence : ' The deeper 

 insight any Man hath into the Affairs of nature, the more he discovers of 

 the Accurateness, and Art, that is in the Contexture of Things,' and that 

 might well be taken as the creed of your societies. It signifies two things. 

 It signifies in the first place that, where two or three are gathered together to 

 recount and discuss in a scientific spirit (which is just the spirit of controlled 

 inquiry) the discoveries made by others, insight into the ways of Nature is 

 being stimulated and deepened. That might almost be regarded as an end 

 in itself. It is the justification for the lecture syllabuses and summer 

 excursions of your societies. It has this further justification, that it is 

 spreading the notion of science and scientific method among the people, 

 and until the scientific spirit of co-operation and of undeviating adherence 

 to truth permeates the populace, there can be no hope that science will take 

 its proper place in guiding the affairs of the nations. 



By all means expound, and continue the natural history lectures and dis- 

 cussions. That is one of your contributions to the spread of knowledge, 

 and it has been made the more necessary because of the specialisation to 

 which I referred, and which threatens to divide our science into isolated 

 compartments, to make it a Babel of words and ideas, with, in the language 

 of the geneticist, no crossing over value. In Milton's words : 



' A jangling noise of words unknown. 

 Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud 

 Among the builders ; each to other calls 

 Not understood.' 



And the words are from ' Paradise Lost ' ! 



But there is a second implication in Sir Thomas Blount's phrase. ' The 

 deeper insight any Man hath into the Affairs of Nature ' points to the study 

 of Nature herself at first hand, and that is the greater part, the most attrac- 

 tive and at the same time the most elusive target at which a natural history 

 society may aim. It is to this aspect of the activities of your societies, the 

 direct study of nature, and to the change which specialisation has wrought 

 in the opportunity of original amateur observation, that I wish specially to 

 refer. 



The Influence of Specialisation upon the Outlook of the Societies. 



The stable work which has kept the local societies alive as contributors to 

 knowledge has been the building up of local lists. Sometimes it was an 

 all-round naturalist, sharp of eye, keen in the discrimination of minute 

 differences, overflowing with general interest in the world around him, who 

 ventured, and ventured successfully, to name all kinds of plants and all 

 kinds of animals. That general activity has ceased ; the accumulation of 

 knowledge enforced restrictions, and the local naturalist limited his collect- 

 ing and his identifications to a particular group which came to be his own 

 pet hobby : he became an entomologist, though even there he concentrated 

 his labours particularly upon butterflies and moths, or bees and wasps, or 

 beetles, or he became a conchologist and collected shells, or an ornithologist, 

 or a microscopist, which covers a multitude of subjects. So he made his 

 local collections, and from them his local lists, and the result is that, owing 

 mainly to the painstaking and persistent labours of the naturalists of the 

 societies, we possess a knowledge, second to that of no other country, of 

 the distribution of the major groups of British animals. 



But, alas, this safe and comparatively simple outlet for the energy and 



