48 
The Queensland Naturalist. 
VoL. 2 
In regard first to excursions. As you all know, the 
fauna and flora of Australia are unique, but owing to the fact 
that they are rapidly disappearing, they must be studied 
now, or it will be too late. A Field Naturalists’ Club is 
admirable for this purpose. Its excursions give us the chance 
of getting to, perhaps, out of the way places. We want not 
only collections of material from various sources, but also 
much in the way of natural history notes, e.g., what plants 
are characteristic of certain classes of country, what insects 
feed on or injure those plants, and how the flowers are 
fertilised. Much has been already done by individual members 
of this Club in collecting plants and compiling locality records, 
but I would suggest that even more might be done on our 
excursions if a leader were selected, and an object for the 
particular afternoon decided upon. Take as an illustration 
an excursion to Sunnybank. If the leader were Mr. C. T. 
White, and the object wild flowers, for the afternoon our 
main energies would be directed to observing species, of 
plants, seeing their habits of growth, where possible, taking 
photographs of those plants and flowers, and, in some cases 
only, collecting specimens. Where all members were working 
with one object, those who knew but little to begin with, 
would soon find from the leader the commoner plants, and 
begin to recognise the rarer ones, and would glow with 
satisfaction on, perhaps, discovering a plant new to the 
locality. I venture to predict that by such methods the 
whole Club would do good work. The scheme is followed 
with excellent results in the Field Naturalists’ Club of Victoria, 
where for each excursion a definite leader is appointed, and 
a definite object decided upon for the outing. Further, in 
London, I had the pleasure of going to two or three excursions 
of the Hampstead Scientific Society, where the same thing 
was done. Not only would beginners benefit by this method, 
but those who are specialists, in a particular group would 
find themselves able to learn something about other groups. 
These specialists have practically always other opportunities 
for collecting, and when doing their own collecting, would 
then be able to recognise a possible rarity in fields other 
than their own. Much good and important collecting can 
be done in this way, for example, on the return of the 
Victorian Club, one year from an excursion to Wilson’s 
Promontory, we landed on a small island in Corner Inlet. 
Here there was a danger of the native plants dying out, owing 
to the rapid growth of a few introduced plants which grew 
round a deserted hut. We landed all the party, fourteen in 
number, of whom only two or three were botanists, collected 
for two hours, and found, on comparing notes afterwards. 
