president's address. 93? 



assumption, the members of the Club were looking on the ex- 

 piring effort of a race. Mr. Hancock exhibited models of eight 

 other eggs, of the same bird, so admirably executed as not to be 

 distinguished from the veritable egg. There were, he stated, 

 but fifteen of the eggs of the Great Auk existing (as far as he 

 knew) in this country. Upwards of a hundred years ago, said 

 Mr. Hancock, the Great Auk was a plentiful bird in Newfound- 

 land and Iceland ; and he was himself inclined to believe that it 

 was not yet extinct. His own specimen he had got from Flens- 

 berg, but it was taken on the N.E. side of Iceland. 



Dr. Charlton thought, with Mr. Hancock, that the Great 

 Auk was not extinct. He had that day been reading some 

 documents on the subject, which he would translate for a future 

 meeting ; and I believe we are to be favoured with a paper by 

 him on the subject to-day. 



Mr. Mennell exhibited a digest of the rain-fall of Northum- 

 berland and Durham, in 1858, accompanied by some editorial 

 remarks, showing that the rain-fall of the year was but one-half 

 of the average. He also stated that our fellow-member Mr. 

 John Watson, F.R.A.S., Washington, had kindly undertaken 

 to prepare a paper on the Drought of 1858, for the " Transac- 

 tions." 



As the room in which these Evening Meetings have been held 

 is about to be dismantled, and its site incorporated in the new 

 Lecture-room of the literary and Philosophical Society, it will 

 be the duty of the officers now to be appointed to make arrange- 

 ments for a place in which to hold our Evening Meetings. We 

 owe a debt of gratitude to the Society and to the Farmers' Club 

 for the accommodation afforded to us ever since the establishment 

 of the Club. 



In response to the frequently expressed wish that members 

 would forward to the Secretary brief notices of interesting facts 

 in any branch of Natural History, the following intimations have 

 been received. 



Mr. John Thompson communicates the following list of 

 mosses new to the district, or found in localities previously 

 unrecorded : — 



