344 
president’s address. 
workers, and he will readily select from the published lists of 
papers those that deal with his own particular subject. He will 
soon learn what has been done, and in what ways he may aid in 
furthering knowledge. 
Among the many labourers in the science of Geology, perhaps, 
none is more important than the collector; and yet, notwithstanding 
the wider diffusion of knoAvledge, the number of large private 
collections appears to be less than it was twenty or thirty years ago. 
Of the older workers of the present century we have left to us 
but one, Robert Fitch, whose recreative labours have been devoted 
mainly to the acquisition of our Norfolk fossils. To him, as well as 
to those who have pursued a similar course, we owe a large debt of 
gratitude, for have not others made use of their stores of fossils, and 
made known to the world the information thus derived 1 Mr. Fitch’s 
work is accomplished ; but his treasures will remain as a memorial 
of his labours, in the Norwich Museum. 
The greatest drawback felt by the local student is, no doubt, the 
difficulty of naming his specimens, or in getting others to do it for 
him. This appears to be an ever-increasing trouble, whether we 
have regard to fossils or to existing species : it is verily the 
“pursuit of knowledge under difficulties.” The multiplication of 
names is certainly a vexation, to say nothing of the constant 
replacement of familiar names according to the law of priority : 
whereby species have as many aliases as a rogue. 
In some respects the multiplication of names seems a necessary 
process to the specialist who is anxiously studying the evolution of 
species. Modern research shows that there are two forms of 
divergence from what may, for convenience sake, be termed the 
type. There is the divergence among species due to varied conditions 
of habitat : these are the varieties which co-exist with the type, 
and they, of course, occur fossil as well as living. Then there are 
the divergences which follow the type in sequence : they are 
chronological variations which appear to mark the passage of one 
species into another, and they have been termed “mutations” ox 
“ exallagous forms” * It is the giving of distinct names, equivalent 
* See J. E. Marr , ' Natural Science,’ 1892, pp. 124, 240. 
