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the demand for it had lately obliged Mr. Cochrane to add largely to his 

 premises. 



On the 3rd of August the angry tumult of the County Election detained 

 me from the far more pleasing studies of nature— but the Club breakfasted 

 at Purton Vicarage, by the kind invitation of Mr. Prower, from whence 

 they walked to the Roman encampment at Ringsbury, and on to Lydiard 

 Millicent, where examining a deep well which was being dug in the village, 

 I And that they discovered not an Icthyosaurus, to raise conjecture as to its 

 own history, but, far better, Professor Daubeuy, ready to explain to them 

 the hidden meaning of the leaves of that stone book which the labourers, 

 like the worm, had simply bored through. 



On returning to the Vicarage, Mr. Light displayed some very beautiful 

 cases of Insects and of chalk fossils from his own neighbourhood, and Mr. 

 Lycett read the interesting paper, which is printed in our transactions, 

 " On the Fossil Conchology of the Great Oolite of Minchinhampton, 

 compared with that of the same formation in other localities," and Dr. 

 Daubeny kindly invited the Club to hold its winter meeting at Oxford. 



On Wednesday, September loth, I wasagain detained from the meeting by 

 Yeomanry duties, but a small party, who would not however vote themselves 

 a regular meeting, assembled at Shurdington, and walked through Badge- 

 worth, by the remains of the Roman Villa near Witcombe, visited by the 

 Club at our first meeting, to Cooper's Hill, and thence through Great 

 Witcombe to the quarries of Crickley Hill, and thus ended the second 

 summer of our existence as a club. 



On December 7th we met at the Botanical Gardens at Oxford, by the 

 kind invitation of Dr. Daubeny. I am loth to notice so lightly the objects 

 of interest which were unfolded to us by the preparation of our kind host, 

 and the attention of many of the eminent Professors of the University, 

 who themselves shewed us their museums, but were I to attempt to record 

 even my own recollections at this period, I will not say that I should weary 

 you, for the subjects are so full of interest, that even my narration would 

 scarcely deprive them of it— but I should detain you for an unseemly and 

 inconvenient length of time. The only alternative is simply to mention 

 the names of the collections we saw, and to leave it to the memory of those 

 present to recall the varied pleasures of the day. Suffice it then to say, 

 that our member, Mr. Strickland, shewed us the Ashmolean Museum, and 

 Dr. Buckland's Geological Museum in the old Clarendon. Mr. Walker 

 shewed us his collection of Apparatus for instruction in Physics. Dr. Acland 

 explained the collection, which he has so much increased, in the anatomy 

 schools, and we then returned to the Botanical Gardens to hear a lecture 

 from our kind host on Volcanoes, as agents of great importance to Agri- 

 culture, both by varying the surface of the ground, and by the creation of 

 necessary gases and the fertilization of the soil. 



We then accompanied the Professor through the garden, and after dining 

 at his hospitable board, concluded a day of rare enjoyment, to meet however 

 at breakfast next morning at Mr. and Mrs. Strickland's, and enjoy his 

 museum of Ornithology, and a walk through the Taylor Buildings, before we 

 bade adieu to Oxford. 



On May the 2nd, 1848, an invitation to breakfast with the Honorary 

 Secretary, appeared to muster the Club in almost overwhelming numbers, 

 and had such a gathering occurred in one of the small hostelries we most 

 usually frequent, we had been hard put to it. After breakfast Dr. Daubeny 

 gave us an interesting account of the fossil bone earth found in Suffolk and 

 in Dorsetshire, which so far tended to fulfil a prediction of Liebig, that, as 

 the northern districts of our Island possessed the Coal and Iron mines, so 

 important to a great manufacturing district — so it would probably be found 

 that the southern portions possessed those materials most adapted for the 

 promotion of Agriculture. The Honorary Secretary then shewed us his 

 curious apparatus for hatching eggs by steam, in which we wished him 

 all possible success, and we proceeded to the Royal Agricultural College, 



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