I
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ESSEX FIELD
CLUB; AS RECORDED, FOR THE MOST PART,
IN THE MINUTES OF ITS COUNCIL.
By PERCY THOMPSON, F.L.S., Honorary Secretary.
(With 4 Plates.)
THE occasion of the celebration of its fiftieth anniversary
has been adjudged a fitting one to write a resume of the
long history of the Essex Field Club1 as recorded in the minute
books of its Council, and the writer has, with the consent of the
Council, undertaken the task. The present relation deals princi-
pally, as one would expect, with the domestic and business as-
pects of the Club's activities rather than with its scientific
work as recorded in the Essex Naturalist, and will, it is felt, be
of informative interest to members who are comparative late-
comers, as well as serve to recall old times to that now small
and rapidly diminishing band of members who have been faithful
adherents to the Club since its early days.
The Essex Field Club owed its inception to a chance meeting
in Epping Forest, in the summer of 1869, of Raphael Meldola
and W. J. Argent with William Cole, each of them engaged at
the time in collecting lepidoptera. A poor carte-de-visite photo-
graph, taken by Argent, preserves the memory of this historic
event. From this meeting, a friendship, engendered by common
interest, and destined to be of lifelong duration, arose between
the three young men, which led to a desire to meet others of like
tastes ; and in the fullness of time the Essex Field Club was
inaugurated in January of the year 1880.
The actual foundation of the Club came about in this wise.
In the autumn of 1879 (probably in October of that year),
William Cole and his brothers Ben and Harry had, by request,
arranged a display of their entomological collection, in forty-
four drawers (the identical cabinet and collection are now in the
Stratford Museum), in connection with a church conversazione
at Buckhurst Hill, which was attended by many visitors. Among
them was Mr. Henry Vigne, the well-known Master of the Wood-
ford Harriers ; he was much impressed by the magnitude and
1 The late Professor Meldola, as will be seen later, admirably covered the ground in this
connection, as far as the year 1901, in his Address "The Coming of Age of the Essex Field Club"
(Essex Naturalist, vol. xii., p. 73).