president's address. 235 



ADDRESS TO THE MEMBERS OF THE TYNESIDE 

 NATURALISTS' FIELD CLUB, 



READ BY THE PRESIDENT, THE EEV. ALFRED MERLE NORMAN, M.A., AT 

 THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY MEETING, HELD IN THE MUSEUM 

 OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, ON 

 THURSDAY, APRIL 19th, 1866. 



Gentlemen, — In rising to address you I desire, with my opening 

 words, humbly to thank you for the high honour which it has 

 been your pleasure to confer upon me in elevating me to the 

 position of your President during the past year. The office of 

 directing a Club which is continually gaining for itself a more 

 distinguished rank among the scientific societies of Great Britain, 

 which can count at the present time more than six hundred mem- 

 bers, and embraces many naturalists who have achieved for them- 

 selves not merely a European, but a world-wide reputation, is 

 year by year becoming a more distinguished honour. I felt it 

 to be an honour of which I was myself wholly unworthy. A 

 comparative stranger to most of you, who had not been resident 

 in the North for any lengthened period ; younger in years than 

 any President you had previously elected, and holding no dis- 

 tinguished social position among you, I believed that there were 

 others who would more worthily fill the office than myself, both 

 on these accounts, and also by reason of their higher scientific 

 attainments. Added to all this, though devotedly attached to 

 Natural History, its pursuit was not — must never be — the busi- 

 ness, but merely the relaxation and pleasure of my life; and 

 duties higher even than those which I should owe towards you, 

 gentlemen, must, I knew of necessity, interfere with the proper 

 discharge of what would be incumbent upon me as your President. 

 Upon all these grounds I believed it, on a previous occasion, to be 

 right to decline the distinction which your Committee desired to 

 have conferred upon me. But when last April you a second time 

 expressed your kind desire that I should undertake the office, 

 it was obvious that refusal again on my part would have been 

 both uncourteous and ungrateful. I could therefore only reply, 

 that if it were your wish I would do my best to promote, during 



