82 MR selby's address. 



But to proceed. — Our twelfth Anniversary having been appointed 

 to be held at Ford, the Members, by special invitation, breakfasted 

 at the delightfully situated, and tastefully ornamented cottage of 

 Captain Carpenter. There a sumptuous and substantial repast had 

 been prepared by the hospitality of our host, to which ample justice 

 was done by the numerous party assembled, the appetites of the ma- . 

 jority having received an additional whet from a long and early 

 drive. 



The morning being remarkably fine, and well adapted for a ramble 

 in search of the rarer productions of nature, the sky being clear and 

 cloudless, the sun shining bright and warm, but tempered at the samo 

 time with " refreshing zephyrs," the party determined to traverse 

 Ford Moss, and the ridge of moor in the direction of the picturesque 

 glen in which the Routing Lynn is situated, anxious to renew, in 

 this romantic spot, a search, which, at a former meeting, had proved 

 unsuccessful, and which had for its object the re-discovery of that 

 most elegant of our native ferns, the Osmunda regaliSy or Royal 

 flowering Fern, the original discovery of which had been made some 

 years before by Mr Mitchell, now deceased, a former Member of 

 the Club. Leaving the cottage ornee of our hospitable host, the 

 party passed through the court of the old baronial Castle of Ford, 

 now the property of the Marquis of Waterford, as representative of 

 the ancient family of Delaval, and after inspecting the extensive im- 

 provements already effected, and still in progress, in the village, by 

 the noble owner, proceeded by way of Ford-hill farm, where the 

 margin of a pond, bristling with a thick entanglement of Brambles, 

 caught the keen and scrutinizing glance of the botanists, and pro- 

 duced a halt in that important section of the Club. Of this, advan- 

 tage was taken by Captain Carpenter, who conducted others of the 

 party to the site of one of those ancient forts or camps, so common 

 in this district, where the mounds and fosses which defended it, are 

 still distinctly marked. Antiquarian curiosity being satisfied, and 

 the botanists having stored each their vasculum with specimens of 

 the Rubi, the party again united and proceeded to the Horse Bog, a 

 large morass, covered in drier parts with a growth of the various 

 species of the Willow, Stunted Birch, Alder, and that sweet-scented 

 shrub the Bog Myrtle, Myrica gale : there several Coleopterous In- 

 sects, and a few species of the smaller Moths, were taken by Mr 

 Selby, and a fruitless chace was instituted by some individuals, after 

 a specimen of the Admiral Butterfly, Vanessa atalanta, which has 



