80 
CARDIFF NATURALISTS’ SOCIETY. 
CENTUNCTJLUS. 
C. minimus, Linn. Bastard Pimpernel. 
Native: In damp, sandy drives in woods. Very rare. July, August. 
I. In Bull’s fields, and near Moor Hall, Sutton, J. Power , B.G. 
II. Damp, sandy drive in Oversley Wood ! J. T. Slatter and J.E.B.; 
sandy waysides, Balsall Heath, H.B .; damp, sandy drives, 
Combe Wood, 1880. 
SAMOLUS. 
S. Valerandi, Linn. Brook-weed. 
Native: Near rivers, and in damp, marshy meadows. Bare. July 
to September. 
II. Biver Alne above Oversley; in some boggy ground near Bidford 
Grange, Purt. i., 120; near the Biver Learn, Leamington, 
Perry FI.; Itchington! Bree. Mag. Nat. Hist. iii., 163; Lud- 
dington; Itchington Holt! Straford-on-Avon, IF. (7.; near 
Leamington, W.G.P., Herb. Perry; Salford Brook, Rev. J.G.; 
near Halford, Neivb.; Kmeton, Bolton King; wet meadows 
west of Blackwell, F. Townsend; Birdingbury, Y. and B. 
(To be continued.) 
CABDIFF NATUBALISTS’ SOCIETY.* 
I had intended giving (according to the custom of inaugural 
addresses) some account of the progress of scientific discovery during 
the last sixteen years, but the range is so wide, and its history has 
already been told so well and so often elsewhere, that I do not feel 
justified in doing more than glancing at a few of its more salient 
points. The development of scientific knowledge, which during the 
19tli century has been unexampled in the history of mankind, has 
been especially marked during the period of our existence as a society. 
The most important of the more recent developments are Spencer’s 
and Darwin’s theories of evolution. Mr. Darwin’s great work, “ The 
Origin of Species,” was published ten years before the birth of our 
Society, but at the time this commenced its career it was still com¬ 
paratively unknown. No single person in Cardiff, so far as I know, 
believed in it, or, at any rate, no one dared avow a belief in it. I 
shall never forget the intense interest with which I read that wonderful 
book. The marvellous theory seemed to influence every event and 
circumstance, however trivial or however important, and invested 
every department of human enquiry with a new and absorbing 
interest. That such wide-reaching consequences could follow from a 
principle so simple is astonishing. What can be more simple or 
obvious than the fact that the production of organic beings is vastly 
in excess of their means of support ? We know, for instance, that 
corn is so productive that a bushel of it re-sown would, if unchecked, 
cover the whole surface of the earth in nine or ten years. We learn 
that the common watercress, introduced by English emigrants, already 
* Extract from Inaugural Address read before the Society, 24th January, 
1884, by Peter Price, President and Treasurer. 
