135 
The President^ s Address. By Dr. C. T. Hudson. 
Such a book should give as little of the classification as possible, 
it should avoid the use of technical terms, and above all it should be 
written with the earnest desire of so interesting the reader in the 
subject, that he should fling it aside and rush off to find the animals 
themselves. By this means we should not only get that active army 
of out-of-door observers which science so greatly needs, but by 
bringing the account of each group into a reasonable compass, we 
should enable students of natural history to get a fair knowledge of 
many subjects, and so greatly widen their ideas and multiply their 
pleasures. 
For why should we be content to read only one or two chapters of 
Nature’s book ? To be interested in many things — I had almost 
said in everything — and thus to have unfailing agreeable occupation 
for our leisure hours, is no bad receipt for happiness. But life is 
short, and its duties leave scant time for such pursuits; so that 
to acquire a specialist’s knowledge of one subject, would often be 
to exchange the choice things of many subjects, for the uninteresting 
things of one. And how uninteresting many of these are ! How is 
it possible for any human being to take pleasure in being able 
to distinguish between a dozen similar creatures, that differ from one 
another in some trifling matter ; — that have a spike or two more or 
less on their backs, a varying number of undulations in the curve of 
their jaws, or differently set clumps of bristles on their foreheads ? 
Why should we waste our time and our thouglits on such matters ? 
The specialist, unfortunately, must know these things, as well as a 
hundred others equally painful to acquire and to retain, and no 
doubt he has his reward ; but that reward is not the deep delight 
that is to be found in the varied study of the humbler animals ; of 
those beings “ whom we do but see, and as little know their state, or 
can describe their interests or their destiny, as we can tell of the 
inhabitants of the sun and moon : — creatures who are as much 
strangers to us, as mysterious, as if they were the fabulous, 
unearthly beings, more powerful than man, yet his slaves, which 
Eastern superstitions have invented.” 
Those, then, who are blest with a love of natural history, should 
never dull their keen appreciation of the wonders and beauties of 
living things, by studying minute specific differences ; or by under- 
taking the uninteresting office of finding and recording animals, that 
may indeed be rare, but which differ from tliose already known in 
points, whose importance is due solely to arbitrary rules of classifica- 
tion. 
This eagerness to find something new, errs not only in wasting 
time and thought on matters essentially trivial and dull, but in 
neglecting tliing;s of the greatest interest which are always and 
everywhere within reach. Take for instance the case of Melicerta 
ringens. What is more common, what more lovely than this 
well-known creature? And yet how much there remains to 
