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The Naturalist. 



contributes), the president of each section sets before the general 

 meeting the chief features of the day's work, selecting such as may be 

 considered most interesting or important. The next question which 

 suggests itself to my mind is, what is the outcome of the study of 

 Natural History as regards its effect upon ourselves and its results 

 upon the indigenous plants and animals of our country 1 If carried on 

 in the proper spirit of honest research, as a true naturalist, not as a 

 mere collector, the result is undoubtedly of the highest benefit to the 

 community. Nothing tends to refine and humiliate a man more than 

 Natural History pursuits of one kind or another ; humiliate, because 

 every atom of further knowledge gained only goes to prove to an 

 honest thinker the vast extent of his own ignorance ; and what can be 

 more refining than to become conversant with the infinite loveliness 

 and exquisite refinement of Nature ? There are, however, naturalists, 

 and naturalists — men of the collector type, to whom the possession of 

 an object is of far more attraction and importance than any history 

 or knowledge about that object. Collectors certainly do discover a 

 new species, or occasionally an unrecorded diatom ; but what assistance 

 is given to Natural History investigation by men who do this, when 

 they are ignorant of the life-history of the commonest objects in 

 Nature, and totally insensible to their beauty — merely because it is 

 common, and what every one has got, therefore (lovely and interesting 

 though it may be) beneath their notice ? This is not Natural History, 

 nor will science be advanced one whit by such a type of naturalist. 

 No. The greater the man, the more the common objects around his 

 every-day life open out marvels to his imagination, and picture 

 wondrous images to his restless fancy, leading him onward deeper 

 and deeper from the known to the yet unknown. 



I am told that there is a great rage just now amongst " insect 

 collectors " for varieties. No one can say one word against the study 

 of varieties whereby some scientific problem can be elucidated as the 

 outcome of natural inherent tendencies, or as an evidence of the results 

 of obstruction to natural development. But there are processes 

 whereby varieties of lepidoptera are manufactured to meet the existing 

 requirements of the insect market. I hear of entomologists who first 

 feed the larvae upon its own wholesome diet, and then upon something 

 else totally at variance with the natural tendencies of its appetite. At 

 the same time the unhappy caterpillar is subjected to the alternate 

 heat of a warm fire, and the cold of a damp cellar. Now these 

 experiments are all very well in their way, but they have clearly a 

 tendency to divert men from the true objects and aims of Natural 

 History study — in fact, to make them followers of artificial history. 



