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ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF PYRITES
AND GYPSUM.
Being the Presidential Address Delivered io the Essex Field Club at the
Annual Meeting on April 16th, 1904.
By F. W. RUDLER, I.S.O., F.G.S., President of the Club.
(With Plate XII.)
THE Essex Field Club, over whose concerns it is my
privilege at present to preside, is a group of some three
hundred persons banded together by a common interest in the
Natural History, the Geology, and the Prehistoric Archaeology
of this county. It is curious to note that while the term
"Natural History" stands bound, literally, to cover the history
of every department of Nature, it is a term which is often used
now-a-days in so narrow a sense as to suggest its limitation
to living things. A "naturalist" is commonly understood to
be either a zoologist or a botanist, or both, but hardly a
mineralogist. Natural objects which lack the fascination of life
are apt to be kept outside the pale of natural history, as though
minerals were rather beneath the attention of those who are
attracted by the study of plants and animals. There may be
some justification for drawing a sharp line between living things
and lifeless things, but surely no shadow of justification for
cutting off the Mineral Kingdom from the vast Empire which
is embraced by the study of Natural History.
How we drifted into this practice of shutting our eyes to one-
great department of natural science and narrowing the meaning
of the simple expression "Natural History" in a way which
even if tolerated by convenience is clearly unjustified by logic,
I never could discover. The name of that man who first had
the coolness to shelve one-third of Nature is not, I believe, on
record. I am anxious this evening to put in a plea on behalf
of Mineralogy to take its place by the side of Zoology and Botany
in the grand trinity of Natural Science.
It should, perhaps, be admitted at the outset that the
mineralogist has himself largely to thank for the popular neglect
of his science. Very little has been done, at least in this country,
to place mineralogy before the public in an attractive form. So
distinguished a mineralogist as Mr. L. Fletcher, the Keeper of
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