190 THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 
ers, more appreciation? Many of us are teachers, and can do 
much to bring the children to look at our flowers in the right 
way. Far too common is the tendency to look on our bush 
with British eyes, and finding there nothing like the homeland, 
to decry and condemn. The fault is in the point of view, and 
we cannot help others to get this if we have it not ourselves. 
Have we? 
Do we co-operate to the full extent of our power with the 
Gould League and its noble work for the birds? Do we protest 
against the pea-rifle and the catapult. There is always work for 
us to do; always need, alas, to champion the cause of Nature. 
When we find trees hacked and torn, as they are to-day, we may 
wonder whether we are keeping Wattle Day in the right way 
Eyen where we expect to find appreciation and co-operation. 
we too often find indifference. By a change in the syllabus for 
teachers, we see that Nature Study is now no longer a compul- 
sory subject, as it should be, but merely optional. A short- 
sighted policy, as we should know, seeing that all of us are field 
naturalists and many of us teachers. Have we voiced a protest? 
Has it even’ occurred to us to do so? ; 
I have put these few thoughts before you, because just as a 
ship has to be put into dock from time to time and overhauled, 
so it is necessary for us to overhaul our work and our attitude 
towards the big things of life. No one, I am sure, will deny 
that our attitude to nature is important, or that even the best of 
us get slack at times in our service of her. 
In conclusion, I should like to draw the attention of my fellow 
naturalists to that little corner of the great field in which T 
have been interested for years. I cannot say that I have done 
much therein. My life is too full of other work to permit more 
than a mere scratching of the ground, but what little I have 
done has only convinced me of what a great deal remains to be 
accomplished. Ruskin calls the mosses “the earth’s first merey,” 
and finds in them and allied plants many useful and beautiful 
lessons. It is to a section of the Moss group that I should like 
now to draw your attention, a section in which the workers in 
our State are so few that we can count them on the fngers ov 
one hand. [ allude to the Hepaties. 
These beautiful and dainty plants have a charm all their own. 
and are interesting not only in themselves, in their varied 
forms, from the leaf-like Marchantia and Symphyogyna to the 
moss-like Chiloseyphus, but because they are a wonderful link in — 
