PROCEEDINGS OP PROVINCIAL SOCIETIES. 313 



The session closed with a very brilliant lecture from Mr. R. 

 Winterbotham, " On the Pleasures and Objects of Taste /' in the 

 course of which the lecturer defined the word " Taste/' which he 

 considered an acquired quality of mind ; and then proceeded to give 

 illustrations of the very different manner in which the same scenery 

 in the external world are regarded by different beholders. He next 

 adverted to the pleasure which may be derived^ by the cultivated 

 mind, from the associations of history, the associations of our perso- 

 nal experience, and the associations of literature. 



We regret our limits will not permit us to give an analysis of 

 this interesting discourse. 



SHROPSHIRE AND NORTH WALES NATURAL HISTORY AND 

 ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY. 



This Society held their first scientific meeting at the Museum, 

 on Tuesday, the 5th of January. The chair was taken, soon after 

 7 o'clock, by Dr. Du Gard, vice president, who, after a few prefa- 

 tory observations on the order which was to be observed in the pro- 

 ceedings of the meeting, commenced the reading of portions of a 

 paper in refutation of one by Mr. Trimmer, read before the Geolo- 

 gical Society, relative to the supposed remains of a forest, underly- 

 ing a deposit of sea sand abounding in recent species of shells, which 

 had been exposed to view by the late alterations in the London 

 Road, near the Horse-shoe public house, seven miles from Shrews- 

 bury. Dr. Du Gard, in company with Mr. Murchison, had care- 

 fully examined the spot, and had succeeded in extracting the re- 

 mains of one of the supposed trees, which proved to be a pile, of 

 considerable length, which, with other hewn pieces of timber, had, 

 at some early period, been employed in the construction of a dam. 

 The author, in comparison of the relative position of the Roman 

 station Uriconium and the exposed deposit, came to the conclusion 

 that it had probably formed a portion of the Roman Wattling-street 

 road, and that the sand had been removed from the deposit which 

 more or less prevails all over the plain of Shropshire, to fill up some 

 previously existing hollow. 



Mr. T.' C. Eyton next read an interesting paper, illustrated with 

 drawings, on the beautiful adaptation of form to habit observable 

 in the bill of the adult and young bird of the Common Oyster- 

 Catcher (Haematopus ostralegus^ Linn.) The bill of the adult bird 

 was of a taper wedge-like form, with the edge placed vertically, 

 and admirably adapted for striking off the rocks, at one blow, the 

 limpets upon which it feeds ; whilst the bill of the young bird, 

 whose proper food was small moUusca, Crustacea, and marine insects. 



