president’s address. 
489 
APPENDIX. 
Summary of the President's Address. 
A rule of the Society, usually honored by its observance, is 
that the President shall annually deliver an address. During the 
term of years in which you have so kindly entrusted me with the 
position which I occupy I have tried to discharge that duty 
though quite conscious of the fact that I must fail in the effective 
presentation of any special subject along the lines of the particu- 
lar studies of an organization which has in it several eminent 
students of natural science. 
It is recounting an oft-repeated tale to refer to the three sum- 
mer outings which we had in the year just past. I was not able 
to get to (the first, that on Mr. Banks’s domain, at which several 
of our members came into pleasant contact with nature at least 
consciously — for the first time — and enjoyed most heartily 
inspection of some of her treasures ; but I was fortunate as re- 
gards that at Mr.. Hay’s summer cabin near our river, and that 
at the pleasant shack of Messrs. Leavitt and McIntosh in the 
Nerepis Valley. Those who participated in these delightful out- 
ings — not a small number by any means — cannot fail (to remem- 
ber how eagerly they quaffed the wine of delight which nature 
so generously held out to them as she enticingly urged them to 
follow her over hills and along pleasant slopes and Into charming 
glens, how readily they looked and listened under sheltering trees 
as their wise teachers unravelled before their wondering eyes 
some intricate piece of nature’s handiwork and illuminated them 
with knowledge of the life which seemed no part of their lives, 
and yet which existed all about them. Those of us who are not 
in the very centre of this learned society, who can scarcely even 
be called gleaners in ithe field of science, and whose best contribu- 
tion to scientific work is the close attention which we give, 
the hearty admiration which we bestow upon, the workers who 
are able to go to the very core of things, who by close study and 
patient investigation wrest from Mother Earth some of the secrets 
