98 YORKSHIRE NATURALISTS' UNION. 



any real work at all, for then, as ever since, there were 

 many associated with our Union merely through having- a 

 sort of general interest in objects of nature, and consequently 

 interested in what others did, but who did practically nothing 

 themselves. The collectors obtained their specimens and made 

 a collection, and there was an end of it ; in most cases no 

 record even of the locality in the collector's cabinet, much less 

 in the Union's journal or record books for the benefit of fellow 

 workers 



Now, far be it for me to decry either collectors or collections. 

 Perhaps few in the United Kingdom have during the past thirty 

 or more years been greater enthusiasts over both than myself, and 

 I shall probably continue to be so as long as I am able to do it 

 at all. But what I mean is that a collection should be ' the 

 means to an end,' instead of what it so often was in the old 

 days ' the end of the means.' 



No naturalist will for a moment deny the use of collections. 

 Such when well labelled and accurately named, become at once 

 standards of reference, and are indeed necessities for biological 

 research in the particular branches of science they represent ; 

 theyareindispensablefora proper study of the variation, distribu- 

 tion, and even the origin of the various species ; they are instru- 

 ments of civilization by which our thoughts are widened ; apart 

 altogether from the intense pleasure and relaxation with which 

 we regard them, when every specimen brings back to our mind 

 some enjoyable outing, or associate^ some place, probably a 

 lovely wood, or mountain, heath, marsh, river side, or stream, 

 where with some friend, — possibly now gone to his rest, — we 

 captured or found these identical specimens. 



I have already incidentally alluded to the labelling of 

 specimens in collections, and as labelling at the present day 

 means giving on a small ticket or label a complete history as 

 to the locality, date of capture (or find as the case may be), 

 name of captor, etc., it will at once be seen what an advance 

 this was on the old method, which involved in the case of 

 entomology, merely the filling up of a short space in the drawer 

 with two to four specimens of the species for which it had been 

 prepared ; but the specimens might have come from the 

 extreme north of Scotland, or the remotest corner of Cornwall, 

 so far as the collector either knew or cared. One thing only 

 was essential for the comfort of the possessor, they must be 

 British specimens, — or supposed to be so ! But even that 

 method of collecting, poor as it now seems to us, was a big 

 advance on the custom of our earliest entomologists (they 

 called themselves entomologists even then), whose highest 

 notion of the use of insects was that the showiest of them might 

 be collected or bred in large numbers, and made up into 

 pictures. Many old members of our Union remember those 

 pictures well : let us be thankful it is but a memory, the reality 

 being now a thing of the past ! 



