WATFORD NATTJEAI, HISTORY SOCIETY. XXXV 



ORDrN-ARY Meeting, 13th April, 1876. 

 Alfred T. Brett, Esq., M.D., Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Mr. David Carnegie, Eastbury, "Watford; Lieut. Richard B. 

 Croft, R.N., F.L.S., E.R.M.S., Great Cozens, Ware ; Mr. Charles 

 Durham, Aldenham Abbey, Watford; Miss Littleboy, Huntou 

 Bridge ; Mr. Francis Lucas, Hitchin ; Mr. William Lucas, The 

 Firs, Hitchin ; Mr. Robert McFarlane, Kildare, Rickmansworth ; 

 Miss Marfitt, Aldenham Abbey ; Mr. Joseph Pollard, High Down, 

 Hitchin ; and Mr. Isaac Ridgway, Kytes, Watford, were elected 

 Members of the Society. 



The following lecture was delivered : — 



" On the Polarisation of Light." By James IT. Harford. 



Field Meeting, 29th April, 1876. 

 St. Albans. 



Rain, which had been falling rather heavily in the morning, 

 still threatened to descend, and the air was damp and chilly, when 

 the President and a small number only of the members met to- 

 gether at St. Peter's Church. Leaving the church at thi-ee o'clock 

 they proceeded direct to the brick-fields at Bernard's Heath. 



Here there are extensive excavations in the brick-earth and 

 glacial gravels capping the summit of the hill on the side of which 

 St. Albans is situated, and which rises to some 400 feet above the 

 level of the sea. In places the Chalk is reached in the deeper 

 excavations or by shafts, and the Woolwich and Reading beds, an 

 outlier of which rests upon the Chalk on the slightly higher ground 

 towards St. Peter's Church, doubtless extend to the western edge 

 of the biick-fields, and are probably present over some portion of 

 them, for at one spot evidence was obtained that the surface of the 

 Chalk seen was the actual surface upon which, in this neighbour- 

 hood, rests a layer of unworn green-coated flints forming the bottom 

 bed of the Woolwich series. 



After the examination of these excavations the party returned to 

 St. Albans, again passing St. Peter's Church, and skirting the' 

 ancient eastern boundary of the borough. Then leaving the old 

 boundary- wall on the right, the fields above the ruins of Sopwell 

 Nunnery were crossed, — the ruins of the Nunnery and the old 

 Abbey of St. Alban forming most interesting objects in the land- 

 scape. Unusually fine specimens of Cardamine prafensis were here 

 gathered by the botanists, while the attention of the geologists was 

 directed to a heap of stones by the roadside a little further on, in 

 which were seen pieces of the Hertfordshire conglomerate, and 

 fragments of quartzite and other rocks ice-borne from a distance ; 

 and after inspecting a gravel-pit in the lane leading towards 

 Napsbury Farm, the members passed, by permission, thi-ough Mrs. 

 Worley's Park to a wooded dell formed by an old chalk-pit. The 

 little moschatel {Adoxa MoschateUina) with its pale-green leaves, 

 stems, and flowers, especially attracted attention heie, and in the 



