Collectanea de Diversis Rebus: Addresses and Papers

by Sir Peter Eade

The Society too, has, as a whole, continued to prosper, and appears to be effectually carrying out the initial programme set forth on the first page of each volume of its “Transactions.”

On looking back to some of our earliest annual reports, I find that our numbers have doubled and trebled themselves since that time; and further that the list now embraces the names of many both at home and afar off, whose reputations are well known to science, and who are powerful additions to our Society’s strength. As compared, too, with those earlier times, the increased plumpness of our yearly volume tells of the greater amount of matter that is now every year contributed.

So, too, if prosperous finance is any test of success, we may look to the larger figures in our balance sheet, and the sufficiently satisfactory state of our “balance at the bank” further to fortify the favourable position which I desire to point out to you.

We have had an accession of twenty-one new members during the year, whilst seventeen have been removed by death, resignation, or other causes. But though the total losses from these causes have been but few, and those from death not above the average, yet these latter include some well-known names—the names of members of valued attainments, and of men whom the Society could ill spare.

Especially do we note with regret the premature loss, in only middle life, of one who had been a member of this Society from its commencement, who was also a life member of the Zoological Society, and whose death would have claimed attention from us as Norwich men, were it for no other reason than that he bore a name the very sound of which is instinct with ideas of Norfolk Natural History; one who was also a member of a family to which this Society, and the neighbouring Museum, owe a long and ever-increasing debt of gratitude.

Although the late Mr. John Gurney’s talents were never, I believe, especially directed to our class of study, yet his tastes for the bright and the beautiful were well known. And though his affliction had of late years debarred him from the complete visual enjoyment of the beauties of nature, yet his devotion to the improvement of the rural charms of his own home, and his public-spirited expenditure upon the scheme for the laying out of Mousehold Heath, and its appropriate development, showed that he had in him that form of mind out of which the true lover of nature’s creatures, as well as nature’s charms, necessarily arises.

But this side of Mr. Gurney’s mind will come home to us as naturalists much more forcibly when we recall the great act of his life, in which he was so heartily and so earnestly engaged when death removed him so suddenly in the midst of his useful and public-spirited career. I, of course, allude to his great Castle-Museum scheme for the removal of our grand Museum collection, with its surroundings, to a new and larger and more appropriate position on the Castle Hill. We all know the generous liberality with which he sought to ensure this grand scheme being carried out. We have all noted the quiet and business-like sagacity with which the various steps necessary for the effective doing of this work were taken under his inspiration. And I am sure we recognise how he was actuated not only by a desire to raise the scientific status of the county and city generally, but also to assist those Norfolk workers in nature’s fields whose accumulated results are now to be seen under this roof.

His large and increasing views for the good of this city, and its general welfare, have been so thoroughly and so publicly appreciated on all sides, that it is not necessary for me to add one word more. His name will remain as that of a public man at once generous and right-minded. And I can only hope on behalf of this Society, and that of other kindred ones, that nothing will occur to prevent the full development and carrying out of that Castle scheme, which, if effected, will, in my opinion, have a large and important influence not only upon the future scientific progress of Norfolk generally, but also upon the intellectual position which our famous old city will hold in the time to come.

Mr. Hampden G. Glasspoole, who has also recently died, had been a member of this Society from its commencement, and had contributed two papers to its proceedings. These were entitled “Biographical Memoirs of some Norwich Botanists,” and “Memoir of Lilly Wigg.” He had also published several papers in Science Gossip. He was for several years a member of the late Norwich Microscopical Society; and of the London Quekett Club.

Mr. Glasspoole was an accomplished botanist. For many of the later years of his residence at Ormesby, he was honorary curator of Botany at the Norwich Museum; and after his removal to London he held, for a short period, the office of botanist to the Alexandra Palace.