ADDRESS OF THE RETIRmG PRESIDENT, 



(ELMES Y. STEELE, ESQ.) 



RBAD AT 



THE ANNUAL MEETING, THURSDAY, OCTOBER IOth, 1872. 



GENTLEMEN OF THE WOOLHOPE CLUB— By the rules of our Association, the 

 President is required to deliver an address at the Annual Meeting, on the proceed- 

 ings of the year, together with such ohservations as he may deem conducive to the welfare 

 of the Club and to the promotion of its objects. This places me in the somewhat difficult 

 and unenviable position of ha\ing to construct a discourse out of unusally scanty 

 materials, for the year just passed has not been signalized by any of those remarkable 

 discoveries which heretofore have generally rewarded our search in the mde field of 

 Geology and of Natural History. The annual pudding must perforce be served without 

 plums, and I must, therefore, trust to your forbearance and resignation in asking you to 

 sit patiently over a rechauffe of common doings— a mere omelette soulflde instead of the 

 generous and substantial compound more suitable to your national taste and vigorous 

 digestion. The seasons, too, have materially interfered with our field operations. At one 

 time rude Boreas has chilled our energies, congealing the marrow of the sciences within us 

 at another drenching rain, despite our cries of " Jam satis P' have marred the hoped for 

 results of our most undaunted efforts. Time, too, who ever flies fastest when we most 

 desire that he would linger, has, more than once, been sadly against us, for the advantages 

 due to raib-oads in brmging us together from distant points to the trysting place, are often 

 more than counterbalanced by the early hastening home demanded by the inexorable 

 whistle ; despite all these drawbacks, it is some satisfaction to me that none of the excur- 

 sions undertaken during the term, when by your mdulgence I have for the second time 

 been honoured with the Presidency of the Woolhope Club, have been absolute failures. 

 If no valuable discoveiies have rewarded our Geological explorations, if no Botanical 

 trophies have been carried off from the field of our excursions, we have mustered fairly- 



