152 Goulding: Lines. Naturalists' Union at Mablethorpe. 



seriously to heart this one maxim : that he is to study plants 

 and animals as living things. If he studies structure let him 

 incessantly recall that these tissues and parts are the organs of 

 a living" animal or a living plant. How are they meant to act — 

 why are they found in this organism and not in that ? If he col- 

 lects, let him try to find out why a particular aquatic insect, for 

 example, is found in this stream and not in the next.' Human 

 interest, he continued, readily attached to things that had 

 a history. ' The chalk hills, the raised beaches, the straths of 

 sand and mud — how did they come to be what they are? If 

 your curiosity is roused about anything, try to express it in the 

 form of a question. What is it that you really want to know ? 

 The effort to solve a question that has been put into distinct 

 words is seldom thrown away. The very statement of the 

 question reveals whether it is worth answering or not.' 



Professor Miall's suggestions are as valuable to-day as they 

 were when he made them seven years ago. But the truth that 

 he enforced, viz., that it is only by intelligent inquiries of this 

 sort that a knowledge of nature can be obtained, was fully 

 realised by the great naturalists of past generations, whose 

 books are still of interest and utility because they embody 

 the results of careful, patient, and critical observations. 

 ' What make ye of Parson White in Selborne ? ' asks Thomas 

 Carlyle, ' He had not only no great men to look on, but not 

 even men ; merely sparrows and cock-chafers ; yet has he left 

 us a Biography of these ; which, under its title ' Natural History 

 of Selborne,' still remains valuable to us; which has copied 

 a little sentence or two faithfully from the Inspired Volume of 

 Nature, and so is itself not without Inspiration.' To take 

 another example, of earlier date — the eminent John Ray, writing 

 in 1667 to his friend Martin Lister at Burwell, tells him : ' You 

 have taken the right course and method; that is, to see 

 with your own eyes, not relying lazily on the dictates of any 

 master but yourself, comparing things with books, and so 

 learning as much as can be known of them.' 



Martin Lister's name brings us back to Mablethorpe and 

 some of the plants that grow there, the most conspicuous shrub 

 on the hills being the Sallow-thorn or Sea Buckthorn, about 

 which it is interesting to know that more than two hundred 

 years ago Lister communicated to Ray a note of its plentiful 

 occurrence 'on the sea-banks on Lindsey-Coast. ' It is also 

 interesting to recall the fact that he has placed it on record that 

 in his time another plant growing plentifully on the same coast 



Naturalist, 



