BY THE PRESIDENT. 161 



Britain where the rainfall is greatest we have the older rocks 

 exposed. For instance, in Scotland, Wales, and the English Lake 

 District, where the rainfall is heavy, we have the Silurian and 

 other old rocks at the surface, the more recent ones having been 

 washed away. In Hertfordshire, where the average annual rain- 

 fall is about twenty-five inches, we have the Tertiary and Secondary 

 rocks, the Silurian being underneath, as discovered at Ware. I 

 have read that it is calculated that denudation is always going 

 on at the rate of one foot in 3,600 years, at which rate all the 

 land would be removed in about ten millions of years ( ' Science 

 Gossip,' April, 1878). I mention this to show that the remains 

 of the intermediate man may exist in rocks or formations at 

 present submerged. I am inclined to believe in this theory of 

 evolution, because it has for its support the testimony of the rocks, 

 and explains many facts otherwise inexplicable. 



Among the events which have occurred I may mention two 

 very high floods that we had at Watford — one in July, the highest 

 perhaps ever known. At the Nether Wyld it was one foot higher 

 than the highest remembered, and it was remarkable for its sudden 

 rise and its sudden subsidence. It was aggravated, no doubt, by 

 the quantity of hay that was washed into the rivers and impeded 

 the flow of the water. The Rev. James Clutterbuck and Mr. 

 George Tidcombe, in letters to our local papers, have advised a 

 plan of preventing the effects of these floods by sinking in various 

 places swallow-holes into the Chalk. I am not enough of an 

 engineer to give an opinion on this subject, but I think it is a 

 suggestion well worth mature consideration. 



I might mention that in the spring of 1877 hydi'ophobia created 

 a great deal of alarm in Watford and in other places. This disease 

 is fortunately rare in Hertfordshire, for fourteen local doctors 

 whom I asked had never seen a case in our county. A short 

 time after this two cases occurred; a child at Hemel Hempstead 

 and a man at Bushey. I saw the latter case, and I quite agree 

 with Sir Thomas Watson, who says: "No one who has ever 

 seen a case of hydrophobia could mistake it for any other disease, 

 or ever forget it." Last June I read a note on the fatal and 

 singular disease among the deer in Cassiobury Park, lly remarks 

 were copied into some of the London papers, and soon afterwards 

 this subject attracted a good deal of attention in the daily papers. 

 Many suggestions were made by various writers, but I have not 

 yet come to any satisfactory evidence of the cause of the disease. 

 Some suggest that the deer may have eaten hemlock [Conium 

 maculatiim) or cowbane {^Cicuta virosa). These are not common 



