11 
no favourites, there being too much of interest in nature 
taken as a whole. A keen collector, observer and nature 
photographer, Mr. Barrett was at all times willing to 
pass his specimens and observations on to those who 
were making a specialist study of that particular group. 
Charles Darwin, too, was a field naturalist, although 
most of bis work was a careful noting of the observations 
of others and the grouping of these observations to prove 
or formulate theories. Perhaps his twenty years of obser- 
vations on the habits of earthworms will show that a life- 
time can be spent on a subject and still leave much to 
be discovered. 
Our great museums and their tremendous collections 
may suggest there is little to be done in collecting 
specimens. This is perhaps correct with respect to the 
larger forms of animal life, but there is much to collect 
in the lower invertebrate groups. 
To me it seems that the role of the field naturalist is 
not in the field of the systematies of nature or the 
description and differentiation of species or the pains- 
taking work necessary to show variation within the 
species. Such work is best left to the national museums, 
the reseai'ch institutions and the science faculties of the 
Universities. 
The field naturalist still can play his part; there are 
vast and practically untouched fields before him in the 
biological world. 1 suspect that not one oer cent, of 
the insects known from this country have their detailed 
life histories worked out, we still find interesting and 
new facts in the behaviour of birds and animals, and 
if we go to the microscope there are fields enough to 
enable all who will to become authorities on some 
particular section of plant or animal life. Truly here 
the fields are many and the workers few. 
I recall here a friend who, through a rare disease 
of slow but sure effect, was forced from employment to 
the status of invalid pensioner. He set out to make a 
study of the Rotifers, a most interesting group of micro- 
scopic animals, and now. five years later, is a recognised 
authority on this subject. Field work is possible to him 
also because in this study a few drops of water are almost 
the equivalent of an ocean to the larger animals, and 
almost any pool of water is teeming with microscopic life. 
From the foregoing I think I have made the point 
that field naturalists can be and are people from all 
walks of life, and that considerable contributions to 
