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iJRAlTHWAITK : THE STUDY OF MOSSES. 



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their distribuiion, and relation to each other and to the soil they 

 inhabit ; if such be the case, then, I say, keei) pegging away with 

 all that nortlicrn energy which has made famous so many of 

 our Yorkshire predecessors. 



To pass on to particulars —Geology I do not touch 

 upon except to note that in nothing; has modern science so 



upset the older theories than in Geology. Read Dr. Buckland's 

 Bridgewater Treatise, and his account o( the awful convulsi 



ons 



this poor earth of ours was supposed to have suffered, or the 

 opinions of Dr. Young of Whitby, and Mr. Bird, both known to 

 me in boyhood, and dear kind souls as ever lived; the glacial 

 epoch was then unknown, and the incalculable age of the early 

 strata a heresy ; yet the study of palaeontology has thrown a 

 wondrous light on past times and notably strengthened the 

 views of evolutionists by supplying missing links in the chain of 

 organic beings. 



In Zoology the Mammalia must occupy a very small corner, 

 but at least three of our societies occupy the sea-coast, and 

 here is a field ever ready to yield a harvest to the enquirer after 

 Fishes, Crustacea, Mollusca, and Polyzoa. 



The Insecta will of course be wx'll w^orkcd, especially by 

 our younger mcnibcrs, and I would advise that each of our 

 societies should have a cabinet, not for a general collection, but 

 for the local area, say within a radius of 15 miles. 



In Botany the same remarks apply, and we should have our 

 local herbarium, but remember that in both cabinets we have 

 but the mummies of a vast army of living things, ticketed and 



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stowed away like old documents for reference and verification, 



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