164 



Woolbope llaturalists' Jfidtr Club, 



First Field Meeting, June 3RD, 1856. 



BROMYARD. 



On Tuesday, June 3rd, the members held their first Field Meeting for the 

 season. Bromyard having been fixed for the place of meeting, a party of mem- 

 bers left Hereford for that town about 7 a.m. The morning being brilliantly 

 fine, and the effects of the late rains and subsequent warm days being everywhere 

 visible in the luxuriant beauty of the vegetation, the ride was a delightful one. 

 About 9 o'clock the members arrived at the Falcon Hotel, Bromyard, where they 

 were joined at breakfast by several members and visiting friends from the neigh- 

 bourhood. 



In the absence of the President (Mr. Hewett Wheatley, of Hereford), Mr. 

 R. M. Lingwood, of Lyston, was called to the Chair, and the usual routine business 

 was transacted. 



About II a.m. the party started on a scientific exploration of part of the 

 exquisitely beautiful scenery which surrounds the clean and quiet town of Brom- 

 yard. Taking the Tenbury road for a short distance, they crossed Buckenhill 

 Park, leaving on the left Edvm Camp, and Edvin Ralph, and making their way 

 through the valley near Saltmarshe Castle to Edvin Loach. 



After examining the quaint little church at that spot, as well as the various 

 small quarries on the line of route, the party made their way by Norton to the 

 beautiful heights above Linceter. 



Here the magnificent view stretching from Titterstone Clee by Abberley Hill, 

 Clifton-on-Teme, Ankerdine Hill, the wooded vale of Teme, the " fair cham- 

 pagne " of Worcestershire, to the lofty heights of the Malvern ridge, contrasted 

 with the pictmresque wooded valley at their feet, long detained the admiring gaze 

 of the party. For its scientific interest alone, the landscape could not be surpassed 

 anywhere ; the working out of the Silurian system by Sir R. Murchison, from 

 those very hills, making the scene classic ground, while the variety of strata, 

 palaeozoic and mesozoic, aqueous and igneous, sandstones, limestones, coal, and 

 the volcanic syenite, towering high over them all into the blue heavens, suggested 

 to the geologist abundant matter for thought. The unknown vastness of the 

 bygone periods indicated by the view, no less than the vast number of the forms 

 of life represented by the fossils garnered up in hill and dale before the eye, gave 

 an added charm of the highest kind to the wondrous natural beauty of the scene. 



