session 1909-1910. 
liii 
and of Clare Island initiated by the Dublin Naturalists’ Field 
Club, the results of the former survey having been published in 
the ‘ Irish Naturalist,’ vol. xvi, while those of the latter will be 
published by the Royal Irish Academy. 
He then proceeded to the consideration of ethnographical and 
historical inquiries on a geographical basis, mentioning several 
publications in illustration of his views, and urged the importance 
of photographic record surveys. In his concluding remarks he 
said: “I would like to ask your consideration to the advisability 
and feasibility of local societies making it a part of their function 
to consider their area as a whole. By doing so they can attract 
new members and stimulate both the newer and the older 
workers. Wherever an individual’s interest may lie there is 
almost certain to be something of local interest that will appeal 
to him. . . . Even while details are being amassed there should 
always be kept in view the reasons for their accumulation. . . . 
Facts by themselves are liable to be but dull things ; it is their 
interpretation that really counts. ... I would therefore suggest 
that those in authority in the local societies should definitely 
direct local effort.” 
A discussion ensued in the course of which your Delegate 
spoke as to the importance of surveys, whether geographical 
or biological, being undertaken on a definite plan and by 
concerted action, and as to the false impression which might 
arise from one district, be it a county or other division, having 
undergone thorough investigation, while others had been entirely 
neglected. At anytime from about the year 1865 to 1890, he 
said, it might have been inferred from the recorded distribution 
of the Freshwater Rhizopoda in the British Isles that they were 
almost exclusively confined to Ireland ; but as they have not 
been investigated there for the last thirty years or more, and 
have been assiduously collected in a few districts in England, 
Wales, and Scotland, Ireland would now have been far behind 
in the number of its known species had not he, collecting in 
County Wicklow last year (1908), more than doubled the 
number hitherto known for the whole of the Emerald Isle.* 
A more striking instance of the misleading effect of isolated 
instead of concerted effort was that of our knowledge of the 
Diptera of Hertfordshire. In the British Museum there is 
a collection of about 1,000 species of flies from Felden, Boxmoor, 
not one quarter of which are known to occur in any other part 
of Hertfordshire. The collection was formed by Mr. Albert 
Piffard, and in it there is only one flea, whilst the Hon. N. Charles 
Rothschild has found thirty species of Pulicidse at Tring, not 
one of which, except the Felden species (which is not Pulex 
irritans), has been recorded from any other part of the county. 
The list was published last year in the ‘ Transactions ’ of the 
* The list, incorporating previous records, appeared in the ‘ Irish 
Naturalist,’ vol. xix (1910), pp. 1-4. 
