Fowler: Presidential Address to Lincs. Naturalists’ Union. 41 
It is the privilege of a President in his address to wander 
somewhat from his special subject and to be allowed a certain 
license of generalisation, if I may so call it, and such a privilege 
is certainly a good thing for his hearers, for a man is too apt to 
think that his hearers know as much of his special subject as he 
himself does, and to burden them, as I have been often burdened 
myself, with the ‘sesquipedalia verba’ of a technicality that is 
meaningless to the uninitiated. 1 would therefore say a few 
rule, t 
up to contempt and reprobation, but unless he is wantonly 
destructive, there is very much to be said for him; in the first 
place he gets an infinite amount of harmless enjoyment ; there is 
no pleasure greater than that of a keen collector who steals 
a half or a whole day to visit some historical locality which 
he has not explored before, and who finds his expectations more 
than realised, unless it be that of a collector who unexpectedly 
strikes a new locality for himself, and comes away with his box, 
bottle, or vasculum filled with good species which he knows will 
be a delight for some time to come to himself and his friends. 
I say to ‘his friends’ advisedly, for the collector who will not 
share his treasures nor part with them except on the rule of 
a strict quid pro quo, and who, moreover, is always keeping his 
localities a dead secret (except strictly in the interests of science 
to prevent extermination) is no true naturalist but only a mere 
huckster; we are told that it is ‘by mutual confidence and 
mutual aid’ that ‘great deeds are done and great discoveries 
made,’ and nowhere is this more true than in the field of Natural 
History: the field is a vast one and only a small corner can 
be explored by one individual, but it is a field in which the 
very humblest may do good work, and where the greatest 
workers are necessarily dependent on the most obscure; 
observers, systematists, and generalisers owe a very great 
debt, as Darwin himself would have been the first to allow, to 
individual collectors over limited areas, through whom many of 
the most important facts on which they frame their inductions, 
have over and over again been brought to light. At the same 
time to rest as a mere collector, to collect for the sake of filling 
deprecated ; it is much the same with these as with certain 
Febery in 7 
