Annual Address to the Cotteswold Naturalists' Club, 

 January 27, 1857. 



By Professor JAMES BUCKMAN, F.L.S., F.G.S., F.S.A., &c. 



IN order to account for my presence before you at this period, 

 it will be sufficient for our members to be told that, the President 

 had requested me to prepare the annual address for this meeting. 

 We all know how his slightest wish is law, and how attention to his 

 laws has usually resulted in benefit to our community ; if there- 

 fore the present instance of obedience to, and respect for, his high 

 commands should end in disappointment, pray cut me up as much 

 as you please but, for our President, I only hope he may con- 

 sider me a sufficiently juvenile offender to warrant him in extend- 

 ing towards me his philanthropic support and protection, when, 

 in all probability, I shall by next year be so far reclaimed as not 

 to venture upon the like offence again. 



Before reviewing the proceedings of our past session, I would 

 call upon you to pay a tribute of respect to our departed associate 

 the Rev. H. J. Bolland. I need not speak to you of his goodness 

 of heart, of his kind and gentle manners, of his keen perception 

 of natural beauties, qualities for which he was endeared to every 

 one who had the good fortune to know him ; yet I may say that, 

 though no professed natural historian no classifier of genera or 

 species yet was he a naturalist in the best sense of that term, 

 as he was a lover of nature, who could draw from tier contempla- 

 tion abundant proof of God's Wisdom and Power, and the book 

 of Creation was, in his hands, not a hindrance but a graceful help 

 to the lessons drawn from the one he was ordained to teach. 



The few secessions of the past session have been filled up by 

 the election of Mr. Pierson, of Cheltenham, who will long be 

 remembered for the active part he took (in conjunction with our 

 talented associate Dr. Wright) in supplying and arranging the 

 beautiful Geological Museum to which the British Association 

 was welcomed at the Cheltenham meeting. An addition has also 

 been made to our ranks by the election of Mr. G. F. Newmarch, 

 solicitor, of whom it may be said that although his profession obliges 

 him to pore over other deeds, even drier than the species list of 

 the geologist or botanist, yet he chooses the study of nature as his 

 relaxation, and to this end we hope he will frequently join the 

 ranks of our field ramblers. 



In reviewing the field proceedings of the past session, I shall 

 have to refer you to our places of meeting, premising that in no 

 former year have we experienced a more regular attendance of 

 members ; and if, on review, it be found that our papers have not 

 been so numerous as on former occasions, it could only arise from 

 the always too brief interval between dinner and the departure of 

 the train being amply and profitably filled up either in comparing 

 notes of the ramble of the aay, or in the discussion connected with 

 some matter or object introduced by the members. 



