Midland Naturalist/Volume 10/Preface

Once a year the appearance of Title Page and Index enables the editors of the "Midland Naturalist" to temporarily establish personal relations with its contributors, subscribers, and readers. A great many people—how many the list of contributors only partially shows—share in the labour of laying its monthly numbers before the public, and amongst these the editors are far from the most hardly worked. It is meet, then, that we should, as most gratefully and willingly we do, express our own indebtedness, as well as that of the general body of readers, for the hearty assistance without which it would be impossible to maintain the issue of our monthly numbers. Both to old and tried fellow-workers, who have stood by us from the beginning, and to the recruits who year by year are added to our ranks, we desire to offer this expression of our gratitude, and, we may add, also of our hopes.

But though the labour of producing the "Midland Naturalist" is shared by many, the responsibility is borne by the editors alone, and how anxious this responsibility is few of our readers can know. A Magazine which has completed ten years of active useful life ought to be out of the reach of accident, and the only care weighing upon its conductors ought to be that of properly editing the materials at their disposal. This is, however, very far from being the case, and it is fully within the power of our readers to relieve us of the more anxious part of our responsibility. Contributors and subscribers alike are needed. Weare quite sure that our pages could be made far more interesting and far more valuable, but we cannot do it ourselves. We are not ubiquitous; we should only be a nuisance if we were; but in the Midland district, at any rate, our readers are well-nigh everywhere, and it is not unfair to ask them to try to repay the pleasure they receive from the observations of others, by contributing their own observations to enhance other people's pleasure, and to broaden the general knowledge. Every accurate observer is a potential public benefactor.