Wloolbope Gaturalists’ Field Club. 
ADDRESS BY THE RETIRING PRESIDENT, REV, A. LEY, 
Aprit 13TH, 1882. 
THE ROSES OF HEREFORDSHIRE. 
It becomes my pleasant duty to-day, in resigning my chair as your president 
to Mr. Thomas Blashill, to thank you heartily for the very pleasant year of 
office which you have accorded me ; and while asking your kind forgivenes for 
all the imperfections and faults the “office” has ‘‘ betrayed in the man,” 
to congratulate you upon the continued prosperity of the Woolhope Club. 
Like some generous Apple, far-famed as Ribston Pippin, our Club shows as 
yet no signs of that wearing out which (pace Dr. Bull) always happens at last 
to the best human things, if not to all things human. But our Club (witness the 
Pomona) is bringing forth abundant fruit in its age ; and so long as it continues to 
do plenty of honest work, so long will it flourish—like Charon, ‘‘ cruda deo 
viridisque senectas.” 
My paper will have accomplished an object to-day, if it sueceeds in showing 
you that there is likely to be no lack of work for us as a Club for some years to 
come. 
You must pardon me for sticking closely by my last, and claiming your 
attention once more to-day for Botany; and that, moreover, Botany in rather a 
narrow and restricted range. My choice in writing a retirimg Address lay 
practically between cutting the flowers from the gardens of other scientific 
workers, and arranging them before you in a nosegay, not one beauty of which I 
could pretend to have reared myself, and introducing you toa region—though it 
be only one of briers—where I have myself been at work for some years past. 
My subject then is—‘“‘ On the forms of Wild Rose, occurring in Herefordshire ” 5 
and I bring my paper before you recommended solely on the plea that it represents 
the results of a good many hours’ real work in the county for the past ten years. 
The study of Roses is essentially a study of varieties. It is nothing more ; but 
it is nothing less. I say that it is “‘ nothing less” because I do not think I need to 
defend, before a body of naturalists taking any deeper or broader views of natural 
phenomena, the study of variation, from a certain superficial contempt with which 
it is commonly treated by some observers. The luxuriance of variation observable 
in certain spots in nature (as for instance notably, in Botany, in the Bramble, Rose 
