201 
May 31, 1911. The Queensland Naturalisi’.^ 
a Club — not a purely scientific society, piling up geologic 
fossils ; making collections of botanical specimens ; pinning 
up rows of beautiful butterflies, well ordered series of 
moths or arrangements of strange beetles ; nor collecting 
exquisite forms of dainty rotifers and specimens of grace- 
ful birds to dumbly stare at us from behind glass case- 
ments. These are useful in their way, helps to the remem- 
brance of orderly scientific arrangements, but they are 
not the objects of our work, and do not represent the highest 
spirit of the Club. We are to be Nature’s students, in 
our own ways unfettered and free : no text books to master 
or examinations to pass. Our eyes open to the infinite 
gradations of Nature’s gorgeous colours, to the wondrous 
adaptibility of her living forms to meet changing con- 
ditions of climate or of foe ; our ears tuned to catch some 
of the music of the trees as they bend and sway in the 
soft grasp of the wind, and every branch and leaf quivers 
joyously as at the meeting of a friend. The swift dash 
of a bird and its joyous notes waken a responsive echo in 
our hearts. Who has not experiei;Lced this 1 Have not 
our souls been uplifted in some of our excursions as we 
have been awed by the majesty of the hills, and thought 
how calmly they have stood there while generations of 
men have passed under their shadow^ and mouldered into 
dust ? The high places where we climbed to peer over 
precipices, and deep fissures telling of the mighty con- 
vulsions w'hi^ch ages ago shook the mountain’s breast, have 
made us realise how weak and insignificant we are in the 
presence of such scenes. And then as the sunbeams falling 
athwart the gloom dispel the mist, so the splash of falling 
water hurrying down the steep cliffs has stirred us with 
pleasure — the contagious pleasure of the laughing waters — 
as they rushed down to spray the feathery ferns and leave 
their blessing on the parched grass and drooping flowers. 
And as the mists arose, our thoughts have followed them 
in their ascent to the sky, as the sun dyed them in sheen 
of purple, crimson, and gold. Then came the passing of 
gold into grey, the union of the misty particles with each 
other to softly fall upon the dry mountain’s brow, there 
to steal through mossy nooks in trickling channels, which 
by and bye burst forth in streams wreathed with hurrying 
foam. 
Do not the memories of these soenes arise, lifting us 
above our ordinary life, so that the best part of our nature 
has gone out and held communion with the unseen. Oh ! 
I think it is good to keep before us the ideal club life ; not 
to permit ourselves to be isolated into units or d.etach- 
ments as we are so prone to do, and in which I confess 
myself to have been a sinner, but to seek to preserve the 
entirety of the organism. 
