PRESIDENT a ADDRESS. 9 



view of the bridge, with its tall piers and semicircular arch, as 

 seen from below, amid the surrounding scenery, was very beau- 

 tiful. They afterwards visited the church. 



The next morning the party proceeded in a hired conveyance 

 to Romaldkirk, and were much pleased with the beauty and 

 good preservation of the old church — the Cathedral of the Dales 

 as it is called — and they were kindly permitted to look through 

 the old registers. They strolled down the river, and found the 

 bed at this part was of the millstone grit, and that there lay, here 

 and there, on the edge of the stream, millstones ready cut, but 

 which, from some cause or other, had never been moved. They 

 observed that all the bridges in that neighbourhood are of ancient 

 date, and appear to have been built with an eye to military de- 

 fence ; they are generally very narrow in the middle, or main 

 part of the bridge, with a recess on each side of the road, at the 

 centre, while the ends of the roadway widen out, so that they 

 must have been easily guarded in the state of warfare which pre- 

 vailed at the remote period of their construction. After a plea- 

 sant ramble by the side of the river, the party returned to 

 Romaldkirk by the fields, and thence to Barnardcastle, in time 

 for the train to Darlington, and home. 



The Sixth and Concluding Field Meeting of the year was 

 at Ovingham and Cherry burn, on the 15th September, and there 

 were eleven members present. The larger section of the party 

 left Newcastle by the 10.15 train. Some of them alighted at 

 Wylam, on the invitation of Mr. George Clayton Atkinson, to 

 inspect his meteorological instruments at Wylam Hall. His 

 thermometers, by Negretti and Co., engaged especial attention. 

 The party availed themselves of Mr. Atkinson's pleasant privatt; 

 walk aloi^ the northern bank of the Tyne towards Ovingham. 



The first act of the Club, at its First Field Meeting, on the 

 20th May, 1846, was a pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas 

 Bewick, at the western end of Ovingham Church — an appropriate 

 tribute to the memory of the great illustrator of the Natural 

 History of Birds and Quadrupeds ; on this occasion the place 



VOL. IV. PT. I. B 



