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detail he should take up a much larger portion of their time than they were 

 prepared to surrender to him. He could therefore only briefly touch upon it. 

 They were all aware, from papers which had been published, how Mr. 

 Symonds and he had gone to Belgium — how by the reading of certain papers 

 before the Cotswold and Woolhope Clubs they had got themselves into a 

 scrape — how a London gentleman had written in a very angry and improper 

 manner, and how they had demolished their antagonist and set matters right 

 (hear and laughter). They were led to beliere, from what they saw in Belgium, 

 that similar things might be found along the line of the Wye in the carbon- 

 iferous limestone strata. Dr. Dupont was the first who had introduced any- 

 thing like a systematic investigation into the cave phenomena, and he had 

 found that these were traceable to three distinct deposits in these caves. 

 Investigations had been made at the caves of Torquay, and it struck Mr. 

 Symonds and himself that on examination of the fissures in the Wye valley 

 they might come upon analogous conditions. They had not done this, however, 

 but they had come upon a regular earthman, known by the name of " Jim 

 the Slipper" (laughter), who had for 30 years lived, he might say, in a hole in 

 the ground with "his old woman," as he called his wife, both arrayed in 

 loose and ragged costumes. They had to creep on their hands and knees to 

 get to his " habitation," and the quiet self-possession with which he handed 

 them to seats — blocks of stone — was something quite marvellous (hear and 

 laughter). They examined some 15 caves, but in none did they find anything 

 to lead them to believe that their conditions were analogous to those of the 

 caves in the Lesse valley. In one cave they found a quantity of bones, but 

 they were only the remnants of the exploits of deer and sheep-stealcrs. In 

 examining the caves of the Great Doward, however, they fell in with a civil 

 engineer who was surveying a line of railway from Ross to Monmouth, and 

 who told them that a large cave had been broken into in which there were 

 cart loads of bones. No attention at the time was paid to the discovery, and 

 it did not strike the men to make any researches among the bones, and it 

 was too late now to inquire about them. The investigation had not yet been 

 fully worked out ; but as the carboniferous limestone rocks were perfectly full 

 of fissures, and as he was inclined to believe that they were analogous to those 

 in the Lesse valley, he thought that a more complete investigation might 

 lead to some important discoveries in the caves of the Wye Valley (hear, hear, 

 and applause). 



The Rev. W. S. SfiroNDS, after paying a high compliment to the Wool- 

 hope Club for its management during the past year, which he had never seen 

 surpassed at the meetings of any club, read the following paper for the 

 President. 



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