Address read to the Cotteswold Naturalists' Club at their 

 Annual Meeting, April 2?> 1858. 



By T. BABWICK LLOYD BAKER, ESQ. of Hardwicke Court, 



President. 



AGAIN, my friends, have we met for our Annual Meeting, to 

 review the pleasant gatherings which many of us at least nave 

 enjoyed during the last summer, and to plan the excursions which 

 we hope to enjoy in the present year. 



Much do I, for my own part, regret that I have been able to 

 attend so few of those of tne past season, for slight as may be my 

 knowledge of the sciences so ably followed by many members of 

 our Club, I can safely say that few days in the year afford me so 

 wholesome or enjoyable a relaxation from the work which more 

 and more engrosses me, as the gatherings of the Cotteswold Club. 

 My own lack of knowledge, however, I must supply from the 

 accounts given by others of the meetings, I would fain have 

 described as an eyewitness. 



On Jan. 27th, a party of Ladies and Gentlemen met at what 

 we may term our most hospitable head-quarters, the Royal Agri- 

 cultural College of Cirencester, where, as always, we were most 

 kindly received, took a walk to the Corinium Museum, Water- 

 moor Church, and the City Walls, and returned for business to 

 the College. 



The said business consisted of the re-election of the President 

 and Secretary, till such time as fitter men could be persuaded to 

 take the offices ; and the election of Edward Holland, M, P., of 

 Dumbleton, and David Nash, Esq. the eminent scholar of Syro- 

 Egyptian literature. 



At the dinner (happily we had many good things to counter- 

 balance it) was exhibited a jar of the Anacharis alsinastrum, that 

 most to be dreaded of water weeds, which threatens, if all we hear 

 be true (fortunately for us, little more than half we hear is so) to 

 choke every stream, navigable or not, and every canal in the 

 kingdom, in a very short space of time. This fearfully rapid weed 

 had been found only the day before in the Canal, near Cirencester, 

 and now at the end of fifteen months (which brings us to the pre- 

 sent time) we anxiously ask our friends from the neighbourhood 

 of Cirencester, Is the Canal yet passable ? Happily, for us, many 

 evils which appear dreadful at first sight, are more bearable when 

 we come to closer terms ; and I trust we may find this the case 

 with the Anacharis alsinastrum. 



The Eev. P. B. Brodie also read a paper which we trust to see 

 recorded in our transactions, and the party separated with much 

 gratitude to Mr. and Mrs, Hay garth. 



