PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 91 



concluded with a description of the various'processes employed in dressing and 

 preparing the different ores for smelting, and finally for the public market. 



The attendance upon these lectures has not been throughout so numerous as 

 we could have wished ; for though the subject was not, possibly, the most popu- 

 lar that could have been selected, the information which was conveyed was of 

 that kind which could not fail of interesting a large class of the population of a 



country so rich in mineral productions as Great Britain. Cheltenham 



Looker-on. 



GLOUCESTERSHIRE ZOOLOGICAL, BOTANICAL, AND HORTICUL- 

 TURAL SOCIETY. 



The first annual meeting of this society took place Jan. 1, 1838, at the Ro- 

 tunda. H. N. Trye, Esq., the High Sheriff of the County, having been called 

 to the chair, the Secretary proceeded to read the report of the Sub- Committee of 

 Management, which took a review of the principal objects which during the past 

 year had engaged the attention of the Managers, and gave a highly satisfactory 

 account of the progress that had been made in the various works, and the present 

 state of the Gardens. The Committee having limited their operations to a por- 

 tion of the design, speak with great confidence of their hope that this portion 

 will be in a sufficiently advanced state by Spring to justify the opening of the 

 Gardens on the 24th of May, the anniversary of their commencement and the 

 birth-day of the Queen. A circumstance was adverted to in connection with the 

 quality of the soils composing the Gardens, the report of which is of so much 

 importance to those who are interested in the success and prosperity of the un- 

 dertaking that we think it cannot be too generally known ; we therefore feel it 

 incumbent to give the passage alluding to the subject as near as may be in the 

 precise words of the official document : — 



" The Sub-Committee deem it right to inform the Shareholders in this under- 

 taking, that while engaged in excavating and cutting through the ground for the 

 insertion of these various drains and watercourses, they had an opportunity 

 afforded them of verifying the report of the scientific gentlemen who at the for- 

 mation of this Society examined the ground, for the purpose of ascertaining its 

 adaptability to the purposes for which it was designed ; the only important 

 variation from that estimate which they observed being in the extent of the 

 underlying sand beds throughout the ground, which, they have great pleasure in 

 stating, were found upon examination to contain a much larger proportion to the 

 other soils than was at first expected. In these sand beds a number of springs 

 were discovered, the streams from which have been carefully collected and con- 

 ducted into the lake, thus securing to that important feature an abundant supply 

 of fresh water, and thereby rendering the Gardens in some measure independent 



