PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 7 
in preparation a full account of this valuable find, which I hope 
before long to bring before our Club. 
The attention of our members being drawn to this subject, I 
think it probable that some facts may occur in our own district» 
which will bear upon this most deeply interesting subject. It 
is not impossible that in deposits, within our limits, similar to 
those in which they have occurred in France and in the south 
and other parts of England, some of these singular implements 
may be found, and I trust our members will keep their eyes 
and ears well open to any discovery of flint articles, whether 
they be of the ruder kind, like those above mentioned, or of the 
more elaborate and highly polished kind, the relics of a much 
later yet still early period. 
Having justified, I hope, the appointment of ‘an archeologist 
to your Presidential chair, I will now pass to a short.account of 
the various places we visited and the objects we noted on our 
field meetings during the past year. 
Tur First Mzetine, on May 29, was at Finchale Abbey and 
Durham. The members met at the Leamside station of the 
North-Eastern Railway, and from there walked to Finchale, 
crossing the river Wear by a colliery railway bridge, a few yards 
below which are the remains of the first habitation of Godric, 
the saint of Finchale. Bishop Flambard, about the year 1110, 
had granted this spot to Godric, who, having been merchant and 
sailor and having visited many holy places, among others, Jeru- 
salem, at last settled down toa life of themost complete mortification 
and solitude, literally fulfilling the command to sell all he had, 
and give to the poor, and follow Christ. No more remarkable 
instance of the ascetic can be found in the whole annals of 
christian heremitical life than that of Godric; he lived here, 
cultivating the small plot of ground, whence he obtained his 
sustenance, subject to the inroads of wild beasts and of men not 
less savage, to the flooding of his hut by the overflowing of the 
Wear, and adding, to all these miseries from without, the self 
inflicted torments of flagellations, vigils, of coarse and unwhole- 
some food, for he mixed his half-crushed grain with ashes, and 
never eat the herbs, which he gathered round his dwelling, until 
they became fetid by long keeping. ‘The stone, which served 
