THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 133 
take up his beloved study; and his monument is the en- 
dowment of the Linnean Society and its Fellowships. 
Everyone of us, when looking back, can call to mind 
the influence some person has had upon our lives in 
opening up new lines of thought and making a turn- 
ing point in our life; and I, looking back through the 
records of the Victorian Naturalist the other night, came 
upon the obituary notice of Richard Henry Nancarrow, 
1889. Though I had great advantages in having a father 
and mother who took a keen interest in natural history, 
and had a box of beetles among my treasures as a very 
small boy, it was environment that made me a bush na- 
turalist. Living on the outskirts of the town of Bendigo, 
Victoria, we school boys spent most of our Saturdays 
voaming over the ranges and gullies of the whipstick 
serub. It was on the edge of the whipstick scrub that 
Nancarrow had a quartz reef, which he worked with his 
brother, and in his spare time studied the wonders of 
the bush land. He took an interest in the bush-loving 
boy, and was the first bush naturalist who helped me. 
He was a remarkable man; he could call all the birds out 
of the bush round him; he painted the wild flowers; he 
collected all kinds of specimens and corresponded with 
authorities of the Melbourne Museum and Bendigo School 
of Mines, and was an original member of the Field Na- 
turalists’ Club of Victoria. 
This was the first Field Naturalists’ Society, and was 
founded in Melbourne in 1883; its first reports were pub- 
lished in the pages of the Southern Science Record, 
the first volume of the Victorian Naturalist appearing 
in April, 1885. 
An important event took place in 1888, when the 
first meeting of the newly-formed Australian Association 
for the Advancement of Science was held at the Univer- 
sity of Sydney. In _ spite of its formidable name, it 
gathered in all our Field Naturalists, together with the 
specialists in all branches of science. It did a great deal 
in bringing together people with kindred thoughts from 
all the Australian States. In the list of the first Council 
Mr. Thos. Whitelegge’s name appears as representative of 
the Natural History Society of New South Wales, which 
had been formed the previous year. 
The Field Naturalists’ Society of New South Wales, 
of which the present one may justly claim to be the de- 
scendant, was formed in 1890, with Dr. George Bennett 
