Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/349

Rh seem to be no branches of knowledge so remote and unconnected that they cannot upon occasion benignantly illumine each the other. Therefore a Congress like ours aims at bringing together men engaged on different lines of research, that from time to time and in a measure all may understand what all are doing. It aims also at bringing together men pursuing the same line, that they may learn from one another the best methods and the best results. It aims at bringing together those who are willing to learn, that the men of long practice and mature counsel may explain to the inexperienced, and to beginners full of youthful vigour and energy, what is worth observing and how to observe it. The object of our Union is to win for science such benefits as are found to accrue in manufactures from division of labour, and in trade, commerce, and finance from co-operation. We think that the good work which is being done by numerous local societies in isolation will be better done if they are brought into sympathetic contact and join hand to hand in unselfish brotherhood.

The present Union is not the first of its kind. In this world, as we know it, nothing ever is the first of its kind. To ourselves there is this advantage, that we can explain our hopes and purposes by reference to valuable work already done elsewhere. For instance, the important and long-established Yorkshire Naturalists' Union, besides having monthly summer excursions, and an annual congress and an annual subscription, issues transactions, publishes a monthly journal, and maintains a library. It is divided into sections, with their several presidents and secretaries, and it has a great many committees of research, of research connected with the great county from which it is named. Mutatis mutandis, the sort of work which we hope to do may be inferred from the list of these Yorkshire committees—the boulder committee, the coast erosion committee, the fossil flora committee, the geological photographs committee, the marine zoology committee, the micro-zoology and micro-botany committee, the wild birds'-eggs committee, and the mycological committee. Another suggestive indication may be borrowed from the proposal for a photographic survey of Devon, made to the Devonshire Association by Mr. C.E. Robinson. He says: "The subjects for inclusion in the survey might comprise the following:—