INSULARITY. 
217 
INSULARITY. * 
BY THE REV. H. H. SLATER. 
This seems, perhaps, at the first glance, rather an odd 
subject to choose for an address to a gathering of Natural 
History Societies, but I mean to justify its selection, if I can. 
You are aware that foreigners call our British manners 
and ways of thought and action “insular”—a slightly con¬ 
temptuous way of hinting that our views and aims are as 
restricted as our boundaries. It is not for me to determine, 
nor is this the occasion to consider, how far this epithet is 
generally applicable—though I think that we shall mostly be 
inclined to admit its justice to some extent. I have no 
thought, however, of inflicting upon you a general ethical 
disquisition upon our national characteristics, but rather I 
would on the present occasion ask your indulgence while I 
consider whether we do not, in some degree, lay ourselves 
open to a charge of narrowness in our scientific aims and 
interests—whether we are not too easily satisfied in confining 
our studies within the narrow limits of our own islands, or 
even within the narrower boundaries of our own county, or 
even parish—and whether British science as a whole, and 
our own breadth of view, do not suffer in consequence. 
At present we shall have to admit that cosmopolitan 
scientific study is confined to London. There are, generally 
speaking, no other journals or publications, except those 
issued in the metropolis, which do not confine themselves to 
subjects, at any rate, within our own islands. If you 
purposed to visit any particular part of Asia, or Africa, for 
example, and desired to prepare your ideas beforehand as to 
the geology, or fauna, or flora—or some part of one of these 
in which you happened to be interested—you would find the 
back numbers of no provincial journal of much use to you. 
Or if you chanced to be studying some natural group of 
animals or plants—and by a natural group I mean a closely 
related group, wherever the members of it happen to be 
indigenous—you would be obliged to go up to London to do 
so, for it would be next to impossible to get the opportunity 
of examining any number of specimens, or to have access to 
any considerable amount of literature on your subject any¬ 
where else—for you would in other parts of the country be 
restricted to British, or even local, species and specimens, 
and the literature only respecting them. 
* Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Midland Union 
of Natural History Societies, held at Northampton, July 4th, 1888. 
