192 COMMITTER’S ADDRESS. 
club; but he must tell them that he considered it most thoroughly 
and decidedly a political club. He conceived that they united 
the broadest republicanism, with the staunchest conservatism. 
They were conservative in their love of nature, and their reverence 
for it; whilst,in their own meetings, they were entirely republi- 
can. And if their club had succeeded, he asked them to whom 
did they owe it? To whom did they owe that and many other 
evening gatherings? To whom did they owe their successful 
excursions? It did not require them to go back many years to 
arrive at the time when a microscope was needed to detect the 
members of the Tyneside Naturalists’ Field Club while upon one 
of those excusions. To whom did they owe those holidays which 
they all sought and studied to enjoy? To whom did they owe 
those pleasant meetings which began in the merry month of May, 
when so many of them met together at the Central Station, for 
the purpose of visiting different parts of the country? They 
were now a complete army in numbers, upon those occasions; 
but they had in their secretary, Mr. Mennell, a gentleman who 
was a wonderful commissariat officer, an admirable adjutant- 
general, a master of the quarter-master general’s place, and one 
who certainly deserved to be in the chair of a railway company, 
for his land transport arrangements. All the enjoyments he had 
enumerated they owed, more than to any other man, to their 
senior secretary, Mr. Mennell. Therefore, he presented that 
testimonial, as a slight expression of esteem, in the name of the 
club, to Mr. Mennell for his acceptance, in the assurance that 
they had been for years perfectly cognizant of his value to them; 
for had it not been for his own modesty, they would, long ago, 
have done that which they now did. They knew that the club 
had been successful from the moment that Mr. Mennell had 
undertaken the secretaryship; and that success was due to Mr. 
Mennell, and not to himself and other gentlemen, who acted in 
the ornamental capacity of chairmen. He concluded by present- 
ing the testimonial to Mr. Mennell, and expressing a hope that 
he would long live to possess that microscope, and to study 
the world within worlds which it revealed. 
Mr. Mennell, in responding, begged them to excuse his own 
