42 WINTER WORK, 



III.~By The Rev. C. L. Acland, M.A., Two Prizes, 

 30s., and 10s., for the two best collections of Insects, 

 (excluding Lepidoptera.) 



CONDITIONS : 



Specimens to be collected personally during the present year ; to be 

 collected within an area of five miles radius from the Town Hall ; and 

 to be delivered into the care of the Secretary (properly named), before 

 December 1st, 1869. 



The Prizes are open only to Members of the Society. 



WINTER WORK. 



Read before the Society, Deceniber 2nd, 1868. 



The glorious Summer weather of 1868 is all past, and the 

 usual October and November gales sent us rather sooner than 

 we expected into the regions of winter. All around us now 

 is inhospitable and bleak, and there is little inducement to 

 follow out in the open air the practical study of Natural 

 History. So we are tempted, perhaps, to sit still and ponder 

 over the rambles we took in the summer, to regret that they 

 are over, and to wish they would soon come again. It is 

 well, perhaps, that we should do so, for they ought to have 

 supplied us with a whole treasure-house full of " studies," 

 from which we may draw one after another to gaze at and 

 admire. It is well to ask ourselves now, with these pictures 

 set in the golden frame of memory still fresh before us, 

 whether we valued them so much before they were thus ' 

 framed — in plainer words, whether we thought at the time 

 that we really had great opportunities for gathering food for 

 thought in quiet hours. Did we do all we might have done ? 

 In what respects did we fall short ? So we may gather expe- 

 rience to guide us when the swallow and the cuckoo return 

 again. Perhaps some of us made a tolerable collection of 

 objects, which we had not then time to arrange, perhaps, 

 not even to name. Now is the time ; the collector would 

 never get through his work if he were always collecting, if 

 he never had any seasons of leisure, for simply gathering 

 objects is but half the work; they have to be compared, 

 classified, and specified ; general laws deduced, hasty conclu- 



