PREFACE. 
The conclusion of another year of the existence of the 
“ Midland Naturalist ” provides its editors with a welcome 
opportunity for expressing their grateful thanks to the many 
friends and contributors of whose work its pages are a 
partial record. Some of their names will be found in a 
list upon another page ; but the regular, continuous, and 
unostentatious work of the secretaries of those societies of 
whose meetings periodical reports are received, merits equal 
praise, and, in some respects, even a greater meed of thanks. 
As an exponent of the more quiet and homely side of the 
scientific work of the Midlands, the Editors believe that 
Volume XV. will be found in no way to suffer in a comparison 
with its predecessors. While it is altogether impossible but 
that in a serial of this kind some of the papers published from 
time to time—and those, perhaps, from the standpoint of the 
future the more important—shall not be of an eminently 
readable kind, yet they believe that in the general interest of 
its contents this volume will vie with any which have gone 
before. It will be their endeavour in the future to maintain 
the high character which their periodical has borne in the 
past. 
With so much to be grateful for, it seems ungracious 
to utter a word of complaint; nor would the Editors make 
such repeated reference to the scanty length of the subscrip¬ 
tion list, but that their own efforts to improve the “ Midland 
Naturalist” are necessarily dependent upon the financial 
support received. It cannot be too clearly understood that, 
although all the work of writers and editors is voluntary and 
unpaid, for years the maintenance of the periodical has been 
