ite fhnuuji llaturalist : 



A Penny Weekly Magazine of Natural History. 



No. 53. 



OCTOBER 30th, 1880. 



Vol. 1 



THE PAST VOLUME. 



A- YEAR has gone, and yet it seems 

 but as yesterday when the Young 

 Naturalist was first proj ected. How time 

 speeds along ! It, to us at all events, 

 has been a year of work, of hard work, 

 yet after all it has been a happy year, 

 for work is one of the sweets of life. 

 Idle hands that hang all day long 

 dangling by the owner's sides with 

 nothing to do, are always in the way. 

 If you have nothing to do, find some- 

 thing, don't be idle, for that makes 

 life dreary, and hardly worth having. 

 But we need not say this, the naturalist 

 has no idle time, if he has, he is not a 

 naturalist. 



We dare say that our readers have 

 some cause of complaint, but it has not 

 all been smooth sailing on our part, 

 and we should like those who find 

 most fault just to change places with 

 us for one month. Many of the 

 promises we gave at the commence- 

 ment have been fulfilled, but some few 

 have not, as for instance the lectures 

 by Geo, Brook, F.L.S., the cause in 

 this case being that the M.S. reports 

 of the two last lectures were lost. The 

 papers on the Lepidoptera of the months 



were discontinued after June be- 

 cause we found the number of species 

 grow so bulky and our limited space 

 required for other matter, so we decided 

 to discontinue them as Mr. Gregson's 

 excellent articles covered very much .of 

 the same ground. 



While we have thus fallen short of 

 our promises in one or tw T o cases, in 

 others we have greatly exceeded them. 

 At the commencement we only promised 

 an occasional plate, but we soon de- 

 cided to issue one every month, and if 

 the circulation gets up, as we hope it 

 will, we may issue them even oftencr. 

 These plates we believe have given 

 every satisfaction to persons who make 

 a business of drawing and lithography, 

 and the hand-colored ones we are told 

 are superior to anything that has before 

 appeared at the price. 



At the beginning of the year we pro- 

 jected an Exchange Club, which has 

 not been carried into effect, from the 

 simple reason that so few seemed to 

 take an interest in what we proposed, 

 but we have since discovered that 

 several were waiting for some one else 

 to speak, and all being silent we in- 

 ferred that the time had not yet come. 



