Address read to the Cotteswold Naturalist*' Club, at their Winter 

 Meeting, held at Cheltenham. 



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



President. ~ 



Gentlemen, 



Another year has passed over the Cottcswold Club— another 

 year of joyous and instructive summer meetings — and again wo 

 have assembled at our winter gathering, with, ostensibly at least, 

 the solemn purpose of a business meeting, for auditing accounts 

 and levying taxes — somewhat relieved perhaps by a review of the 

 pleasures and profits of the past year, which it becomes my 

 pleasing duty to lay before you ; and by such anticipations of the 

 future, as may be given by our fixing on tho localities to bo visited 

 next summer. 



Five summers have now passed over our Club — and hitherto I 

 think all will agree, that each succeeding year has brought us 

 additional strength, prosperity, and enjoyment. Our numbers 

 have increased to such a degree, as to compel us to throw almost 

 churlish difficulties in the way of more admissions, lest we should 

 become weakened by the very exuberance of our strength, and bo 

 obliged to relinquish one of tho most agreeable of our habits, 

 namely, tho meeting in the small and unambitious hostelries of tho 

 remoter parts of the country, and be driven to seek accommodation 

 for our increased numbers in the larger inns of the towns. "While 

 — with regard to riches — it is a fact well known to all political 

 economists, that wealth is best evidenced by the amount of taxa- 

 tion ; how greatly, then, has our prosperity increased, since we have 

 risen from our first annual contribution of sixpence, to our present 

 call of two shillings a head. 



But let us commence our recapitulation of last year's proceedings. 



On Jan. 22, 1850, our Club met for tho winter gathering, on a 

 truly wintry day, at Cirencester ; and after breakfast proceeded to 

 the Museum of the Boyal Agricultural College. On our way thither, 

 meeting Mr. Wilson, the Principal, he shewed us a deep cutting 

 which was being made to lower a hill in tho road behind the College, 

 which, in spite of the frosty air, detained many of our geologists in 

 a warm discussion. Thence, accompanying tho Principal through 

 the spacious Laboratory of the College, we found our kind and 

 zealous friend, Mr. Buckman, in the Museum, in which, besides a 

 good fire, were tho numerous trays of fossils in their geological series. 

 Through these he led us in one of his animated and instructive 

 lectures, commencing with tho Encrinites Trilobites and Terebratuh 

 of the Ludlow Limestone, when having arrived at the borders of the 



