305 



and almost literally recited ' the Fiend's part ' by saying to me " I told you, 

 Sir, how it would be if you put ' Annual Address ' on the title page ! " The 

 incident was instructive. 



Nevertheless, owing either to a dearth of disengaged presidential material, 

 or a too easy acquiesence in " the ills they had " in the Club, I still had, for 

 many succeeding years, to encoimter the annual experiment of reviewing our 

 pleasant field excursions of the past summer ; but always under a somewhat 

 stinging remembrance of the fate that impends over an " Annual Address," and 

 a taste on entering upon the task, of that after instinct which makes a horse shy 

 extempore on approaching the spot where an accident has happened to him ; and 

 which you may have often seen exemplified in a certain leading article of The 

 Times which appears about quarter-day, in which after enticing the eye through 

 half a column of agreeable preface, the wTiter lands you high and dry in the 

 statistics of the Registrar General's Quarterly Report of Births, Deaths, and 

 Marriages. 



I cannot, however, enter upon the duty of endeavouring to recall the pro- 

 ceedings of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club during the past year without 

 indulging a reflection, which occurs to me very strongly, upon the great extension 

 of interest which has taken place in those pursuits which form the out o'door 

 study and objects of Societies like our own, and have led to their increased 

 establishment in the surrounding counties and districts. Nothing, perhaps, in the 

 year has been more remarkable than the evidence of this which it embraces in the 

 growth of these kindred associations around us, and the joint meetings, and 

 augmented interests to which they have from time to time given rise. 



Besides the Jlalvern, the Cotteswold, and the Warwickshire Clubs, which 

 we formerly recognised in the adjoining or neighbouring counties, we have now 

 to welcome the restoration of the Dudley and Midland Geological and Scientific 

 Society, the Severn Valley Field Club, the Oswestry, the Bridgnorth, and the 

 still more recently established Caradoc Club, occupying areas that well deserved 

 the scrutiny of separate Societies, while their establishment has increased the 

 opportunities of mutual acquaintance and united labour amongst the members 

 resident in the different districts. 



There can be no doubt that the Geology alone of each of these districts, 

 as now occupied, affords an ample field of operations ; and it is impossible to 

 witness the rise of these numerous local societies without being struck by the 

 prospect of the immense accession they promise to the scientific knowledge of the 

 areas they represent, an advantage likely to be rapidly extended to the whole 

 kingdom. I only wish— and I will take the liberty of here expressing it— that 

 some medium more central and comprehensive might be made available than 

 the annual reports of each separate society, for giving to those acquisitions to our 

 knowledge a form more easily accessible, and condensed, such as has suggested 

 itself to me on looking over the various papers that have been printed (to say 

 nothing of those of equal value that have been read but not printed), in the de- 

 tached form of publication which the nature of the Societies at present necessitates. 



