39 



THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB. 



The 144TH Ordinary Meeting, 



Saturday, February 3rJ, 1894. 



The 144th Ordinary Meeting of the Club was held in the Lecture-room of 

 the Grosvenor House, Walthamstow (by the kind permission of the CommiUee 

 of the Walthamstow School of Science and Art) at 6.30 p.m., Mr. T. V. Holmes, 

 F.G.S , Vice-President, in the chair. 



Mr. J. H. Dowsing, M.I.C.E., was elected a member. 



The Secretary announced some very important gifts to the Museum (which 

 are enumerated in the Report of the Council, page 30), and the cordial thanks 

 of the Club were accorded for these interesting and valuable donations. 



Mr. W. Cole exhibited on behalf of Mr. Wonhington G. Smith, a photograph 



of a section in a clay-pit at Caddington Hill, near Dunstable, showing a layer of 



old flint implements (a " Palaeolithic Floor ") at a height above O.D. of about 590 



feet. Also a photograph of a drawing by Mr. Smith of a Celtic interment in a 



round tumulus on Dunstable Downs, with skeletons of a woman and child, 



I surrounded by a double or triple row of fossil Echini, which must have been 



I collected in Celtic times and put in the grave round the bodies, as shown in the 



I drawing. These observations of Mr. Smith's will be given in his forthcoming 



I book, entitled " Man : The Primeval Savage — His Haunts and Relics from the 



] Hill-tops of Bedfordshire to Blackwall. ' 



Mr. Walter Crouch exhibited the interesting old Sheet Almanack mentioned 

 in his paper on " Astronomy in Wanstead " {vide EsSEX NATURALIST, vii., p. 

 160). In this is shown the alteration of style in 1752, when eleven days, from the 

 3rd to the 13th September were omitted from the Calendar, so that "j'e Month 

 contains but 19 days." 



Mr. Crouch also exhibited two specimens of a new Murcx {Ocinebrd) from the 

 Mauritius, which had recently been figured and described, with other new forms 

 from that locality, by Mr. G. B. Sowerby, F.L.S., etc., under the specific name of 

 M. crouchi, in a paper read before the Malacological Society on the loth No- 

 vember, 1893 {vide Proc. Mala. Soc, vol. i., p. 41). At present only four shells 

 of this small but prettily sculptured species are known : the type, and one of a 

 bright red colour, var. rtifescens, in the collection of Mr. Crouch, and two in the 

 British Museum collection. 



PHOTOGRAPHY AS AN AW IN PHYSICAL AND 

 NATURAL SCIENCE. 

 [Abslract.'] 

 Prof. R. Meldola, F.R.S. {Vice-President), then delivered a lecture on the 

 above subject. The lecture was illustrated by a large number of photographic 

 slides shown by the oxy-hydrogen lantern, many of them having been lent to 

 Prof. Meldola by the Secretaries of the British Association Committees established 

 for collecting, and encouraging the production of, Geological and Meteoro- 

 logical Photographs.^ 



Prof. Meldola emphasised the historical fact that science had advanced con- 

 currently with the invention of methods for extending the perceptibility of the 

 senses, instancing the balance, the telescope, the microscope, and the spectroscope 



I The Editor gladly acknowledges his indebtedness to the excellent report of the lecture in 

 " Photography " for the basis of the following abstract. 



