PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 343 



out a guide. Then again, I should wish to see in one concise 

 paper an account of our venerable parish churches, with the 

 principal points of antiquarian interest peculiar to each duly 

 indicated, and so described as to be of practical use to eccle- 

 siologists who have no opportunity of visiting the island. 

 Other ancient buildings also, such for instance as Ivy Castle 

 and the Chapel of St. Appoline, should be dealt with in the 

 same manner, and likewise "holy wells," and things of that 

 kind. All these should be classified and minutely described, 

 not from books or other published data, but from personal 

 observation made at the time of writing, so that we should 

 then have accurate and thoroughly reliable records of the 

 condition and appearance of these structures as they exist at 

 the present moment. 



And then there is a subject which must come in here, if 

 it is to come in anywhere within the scope of our Society's 

 work, and that is the Guernsey vernacular, the local patois. 

 No one has ever yet succeeded in writing the patois in such a 

 manner that it shall be read out and pronounced by a total 

 stranger exactly as spoken. And the reason is that it contains 

 peculiar sounds and accents which are unknown in both the 

 English and French languages, and consequently cannot be 

 phonetically reproduced without inventing an entirely new 

 system of vowel sounds. The phonograph would do in a 

 moment what the English and French alphabets are incapable 

 of doing, even when combined. 



Now let us turn to the Natural History of Guernsey and 

 see what remains to be done, even merely in the matter of 

 recording its indigenous fauna and flora. 



As regards botany, I have already told you what progress 

 has been made, but the Fungi remain untouched. A few 

 years of patient study devoted to this division of plants would 

 suffice to start a list ; though the place will be found, I think, 

 far less productive in these than in other sections of the 

 crypt ogamia. The entomology, like the "geology, is being 

 steadily worked at, and there is no need to urge diligence and 

 perseverance, for these qualities are conspicuously manifested 

 in the papers and lists which have already been published. 



But the one branch of Natural History which more than 

 all others prominently suggests itself to the mind in picturing 

 a naturalist on a small island, is, curiously enough, the very 

 one which has hitherto been persistently neglected by our 

 Society— I mean the Marine Zoology. Here is a coast hardly 

 to be equalled in the United Kingdom for productiveness, 

 teeming with life in all its most curious forms, and yet not a 



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