Dr. Dallinger has spoken of the “vast area of activity and research in this direction;” and Professor Huxley has said, “that those who have toiled for the advancement of science are in a fair way of being overwhelmed by the realisation of their wishes.” We appear indeed to be still only on the threshold of knowledge, to have merely touched the fringe of the vast and infinite life-history which the living world, that inexhaustible stream of life which we see everywhere around us, contains. We are proud of the amount of our natural history knowledge. We think to have accumulated a large store of information as to that especially of our own district. We can point to the lists of animals and plants which the research of the members of our Society, and others, has so laboriously gathered together. And we can look to the stores of our Museum as illustrations of what has been done. And yet a little further consideration at once shows us how small a part this is of what is yet to be known. We know the gross form of the specimens; we know something of their habits during life; and yet how little is this of what there is to be known about them. Who is there of the most learned who can properly explain the meaning of one hundredth part of what these creatures present in form, size, colour, and intimate structure? We have a general idea that their special peculiarities have relation to the two primary essentials of life—the daily bread, and the perpetuation of the species—but we are largely unable to explain the _raison d’etre_ of many of the commonest facts which they present. It will be a great day when we can also explain the object or utility of all the variations which they present. Of course I do not forget the powerful impulse given by the researches of Darwin in the direction of explaining the why and the wherefore. I only indicate how large a portion of this explanatory field is yet untilled. In this county a Naturalists’ Society will never lack either for material to work on, or for variety and interest of subject. Much, even in its grosser form, still remains to be learned. And the vast variety presented by the county, in respect of climate, soils, strata, heath, woodland, marsh, stagnant and running water, as well as the proximity of the great ocean with its shore—presents an almost unexampled field for the work of the scientific naturalist—a field, too, which is constantly changing in accordance with the physical and other changes steadily going on in the district.