Address read to the Cotteswold Naturalists' Club, at their 

 Winter Meeting, held at Bristol, Feb. 10, 1852. 



By T. Babwick Lloyd Baker, Esq. of Hardwicke Court, 



President. 



Again, Gentlemen, do we meet at the end of our summer — a 

 summer, wo trust, not unprofitably spent, whether as a Club or 

 in our own separate avocations, and still do we find our Club 

 flourishing, our papers increasing, and the interest felt by the 

 members, as far as we can judge, growing more and more vivid. 



Our Winter meeting of last year was at Cheltenham, where a 

 party of twelve members and two friends sallied forth from the 

 Lamb — after breakfast — to examine choice specimens of nature — 

 not altered, but assisted and preserved by art — in the drawers of 

 our friend and most valuable colleague, Dr. Wright, and amongst 

 them the beautiful, and, at that time, undescribed species, of 

 Pteroceris, which he has permitted our Club to have the honour of 

 first making known to the geological world. We then received 

 the kind permission of Mr. Fowler to examine his collection — 

 less extensive, but most curious in the beauty and perfection of 

 the specimens; and the Club then divided into a Geological 

 and an Ornithological section, and separated — to meet at dinner. 



The Geological section (to which we will give precedence by 

 right of numbers) proceeded in an omnibus to the base of Leck- 

 hampton hill, and then walked up to the quarries, where Mr. 

 Brodie called the attention of the Section to the " Bone Bed" at 

 the base of the inferior oolite, and other strata well exhibited 

 there ; and on their way back they had the pleasure of meeting a 

 brother Geologist, in the person of a professed dealer in " ancient 

 fossils and antidiluvian remains." What were the relative pro- 

 portions of the specimens knocked out with a silver hammer at 

 the bottom of the hill, and those discovered by an iron hammer 

 at the top, is not accurately stated in the notes of the Secretary ; 

 but one recipe recorded therein merits publication, namely, a 

 method of preserving delicate and fragile fossil shells from injury, 

 by steeping them in one-eighth of an ounce of gum tragacanth 

 dissolved in a pint of water. When dried after this saturation 

 their consistency is greatly strengthened 



So far is recorded of the Geological Section of the Club. 



The Ornithological Section, on the other hand, loftier in its 

 aspirations though smaller in its number, required not an omnibus 

 for its transport, but borne alone by the two legs of the President, 

 proceeded to a large field on the Tewkesbury road, in company 

 with two gentlemen Falconers, and an attendant bearing a noble 

 Falcon and a cast of Tercels, hooded and belled. I had much 

 conversation on the way with the chief of the party, and whatever 

 else may be said of him, he certainly possessed, much curious in- 

 formation relative to the races of falcons used in sport, whether 

 those races be, as some hold, distinct species ; or, as others may 



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