Seventeenth Half-Yearly-Report of the Marlborough College Natural History Society for the Half-Year ending Midsummer, 1873

Abstract

ALTHOUGH the tone of the Preface to this Report is not quite so desponding as that of the previous one, still it contains a good deal of complaint. It seems to be the rule, for which we cannot see any reason, that members on entering the fifth form resign their membership. Is it because their school work occupies all their time? or is it considered beneath the dignity of a fifth-form boy to belong to such a society? Probably no satisfactory reason could be assigned for the practice, therefore we hope it may not be continued. Another discouragement to the society has been the difficulty of getting papers except from a very few, who, after a time, “struck work,” because they “felt that others ought to help in keeping up the interest of the meetings.” We think the few workers would have been more likely to attain this end had they continued to prepare and read papers amid all discouragements; by this means, we think, they would be more likely “encourager les autres.” We see no reason why the reading of papers should not be combined with the exhibition of objects and with discussions. Is not the Marlborough College Society too sensitive? From the reports of the field-work done and the collections made it seems to possess a few admirable workers, who possess energy, knowledge, and earnestness enough to keep any such society from collapsing. The Botanical list is a model one. The papers in the Report are,—“Heraldry,” by Mr. F. E. Hulme, F.L.S.; “On the Perception of the Unseen,” by Mr. G. F. Rodwell; “A Walk across the Karst,” by the Rev. J. Sowerby; and “The Luschari (Heilige) Berg in Carinthia,” by the same gentleman.

Seventeenth Half-Yearly-Report of the Marlborough College Natural History Society for the Half-Year ending Midsummer, 1873.

(Marlborough: Perkins.)