Clifton College Scientific Society. 31 



At the close of the paper, J. G. Grenfell, Esq., made some 

 interesting remarks on the geology of the Cheddar district. 



The President then read the following interesting letter, which 

 he had received from the venerable Professor Sedgwick of Cam- 

 bridge, along with a large and splendid collection of fossils for the 

 College Museum : — 



' Cajtbridge, ApHl 27, 1871. 



' My Deak Sir, — T have stnpidly lost or mislaid your letter ; but I remember 

 the purport of it. You gently smote me — not with a smart rap of your ferrule, 

 but with a Laputan flapper, to rouse my slumbering memory — for not having 

 performed an old promise of fossils for your College Museum. 1 lost no time in 

 giving an order to my assistant to keep a good look-out for duplicates, while the 

 arrangements in the Museum of the University were going on. The work could 

 not be done in a day : it really required time and watching. And, as a forfeit 

 for my delay, or more trul}% as a mark of my good will towards your College, I have 

 at my own cost made considerable additions to the duplicates. Clifton has a very 

 dear place in my heart's memory, and I wish all honour and good speed to it. So 

 I now send you 440 species of fossils, and 1100 specimens. They are named, 

 and some of them are mounted, so as to be ready for their place in your College 

 Museum. Two of my assistants have taken great pains in doing their work 

 efifectually. Not only the name and species, but the localities and formations are 

 marked. So when the specimens are laid down in their true order of supra- 

 position, they will enable any studious boy, who has any elementary works on 

 geology (such as the works of Professor Phillips and Professor Jukes, or the last 

 work — indeed, any of the works — of Sir Charles Lyell), to read them with plea- 

 sure and profit, and learn to find his way among the mazes of geology. 



' The Tertiary series I send is the best. The Cretaceous has some good 

 things in it under that name, including the Upper and Lower Greensand and the 

 Gault. I have sent no Carboniferous Limestone fossils, because you are living 

 upon rocks which swarm with them, and of the older Palaeozoic duplicates I have 

 not many to spare. If any of the boys pick up specimens from the great Clifton 

 limestone (the Carboniferous), they may easily get them named by the curator of 

 your (Bristol) Public Museum, iu which there is, by the way, a very noble 

 collection. 



' I have made my old and irritable eyes very angry with me for sending such 

 a long letter. Accept my heartfelt good wishes, and with them an old man's 

 l)lessiug, for all the Members, young and old, of your beautiful College. — Very 

 faithfully yotirs, Adam Sedgwick.' 



'P.S. — I learnt my first practical lesson in Geology at Clifton, imder the 

 guidance of my late well-loved and honoured friend Dean Conybeare.' 



A cordial vote of thanks to Mr Sedgwick, proposed by the 

 President and seconded by J. Heath, was unanimously passed. 

 It was further announced that Professor Church had consented to 

 read a paper at an early meeting of the Society, and that A. Crutt- 

 well, Esq., O.C., had contributed a guinea to the funds, to be spent, 

 at the discretion of the Committee, in the interests of the Society, 



Visitors having withdrawn, an election of ordinary members 

 then took place. There were eighteen candidates for five vacan- 

 cies. The following gentlemen were elected : — E. B. Don, T. 

 Lang, T. Eankin, E. L. Mueeay, J. Vaughan. 



