ii Journal of Proceed mja. 



Provincial Natural History Societies sent copies of their Transactions in 

 exchange with the Club. 



The following were elected members of the Club : — Messrs. C. Black, 

 B. E. Hutchinson, B. Pratt, J. L. Eeid, and A. H. Tozer. 



The President informed the Meeting that, at the Council held that 

 evening, the following gentlemen had been chosen as a Sub-committee to 

 conduct the exploration of the Ancient Camps in Epjiing Forest : — 

 The Officers, t'.r q^cio ; Mr. D'Oyley {Hon. Surveijor), Mr. Thomas, Mr. 

 Fisher Unwin, Mr. Eobarts, and Eev. W. Linton Wilson. The Council 

 requested the names of other members to act on the Committee ; and 

 Messrs. H. A. Cole, James English, and F. H. Varley were nominated so 

 to act. 



The Secretary exhibited, on behalf of the Eev. F. A. Walker, some 

 specimens of " Petrified Oak " from the stone-quarries, Isle of Portland, 

 and some large pieces of calcareous incrustations, or slabs of stalagmite, 

 caused by the percolation of water over the surface of limestone rocks, 

 and called by the guides ''congealed water''''; also from the Isle of 

 Portland. 



Professor Boulger remarked the idea that these slabs of stalagmite were 

 really composed of hardened water was gravely held in many places. In 

 the South of Ii-eland he had once pointed out some slabs to a limestone- 

 burner, asking him why he did not put them into his kiln, as they would 

 make excellent lime. From the man's replies it was e%ident he feared 

 that the congealed water would put his fires out ! (Laughter.) 



Sir J. Clarke Jervoise sent up a plan of some earth-works in the Holt 

 Wood, near Horndean, Hants, which he thought would be interesting in 

 connection with the Forest Camps explorations. He also sent some 

 pieces of flint, concerning which he wrote as follows : — " Near the camps 

 in Holt Wood is a cu-cular earth- work with high banks and a ditch ; there 

 is a pond in one part, pitched with flints, and on the mound and all about 

 the sides of the pond the ground is strewed with reticulated ' Pot-boiler ' 

 flints (see Tylor's 'Early History of Mankind'). I happen to have 

 specimens indoors, which I send. The late Mr. Albert Way gave me 

 credit for being the first to discover the use of these flints, which have 

 been heated and cooled rapidly in the operation of boiling food before 

 earthenware that would stand the fire was discovered. We find them in 

 heaps, generally near water. School-boys call them milk-stones. I once 

 found a flint celt lying upon a heap of 'pot-boilers.' " * 



* " There is Eui-opean sYidence of the art of stone-boiling Moreover, the 



quantities of stones, evidently calcined, which are found buried in our own country, 

 sometimes in the sites of ancient dwellings, give great probability to the inference which 

 has been drawn from them, that they were used in cooking. It is true that their use 

 may have been for baking in under-ground ovens, a practice found among races who are 

 stone-boilers, and others who are not. But it is actually on record that the wild Irish, 

 of about 1600, used to warm their milk for drinking with a stone first cast into the fire 

 (J. Evans, in ' Archaeologia,' vol. xli.j." — 'Eesearches into the Early History of Mankind 

 and the Development of Civilization,' by Edward 13. Tylor, D.C.L., F.R.S. 3rd Ed. 

 (1878), p. 2G8.— Kd. 



