well to the roll call and enjoyed the pleasant flow of social intercourse, the mutual 

 interchangfe of thought on subjects congenial to our minds, which are by no means the 

 least valuable, or soonest forgotten amongst the results of such an association as ours. 

 Et nos meminisse juvabit. 

 Our first field meeting was appointed for Great Malvern on the 17th of May, in con- 

 junction with the Malvern Field Club and the Bath Natural History Society. At the 

 Belle Vue Hotel, a goodly muster of Woolhopeans assembled, but, alas ! no sunny smiles 

 gave- us welcome, for a northeaster was blowing about our ears, and the landscape 

 was shrouded in misty vapor, holding out a cheerless prospect to those of us who hoped 

 to see something of the far-famed view from the summit of the Worcestershire Beacon. 

 May, more than usually coy, was shivering in a wintry garb. The atmospheric gloom was 

 however counterbalanced by the cordial greeting of our Malvern friends, amongst whom 

 we recognised many of our old comrades of the field in days gone by. At their head were 

 the Rev. W. Symonds, facile princeps in the Geology of the district, late President ; 

 Mr. Lees, the Veteran Naturalist of Worcestershire, actual President ; and the Eev. 

 Reginald Hill, Honorary Secretary of the Malvern Field Club. To the courtesy of Mr. 

 Lees I am indebted for the assistance afforded me in preparing my account of this meeting, 

 by his able report of the proceedings of the day, couched in his usual style, a happy com- 

 bination of the florid with the substantial. I shall not venture to embellish my more 

 humble recital with any feathers of ornament borrowed from his lustrous plumage, but, for 

 the sterner facts I shall strictly adhere to his narrative as my safest guide when treading 

 ground with which he is far more familiar than I can possibly be. The Bath Naturalist 

 Society was represented by Colonel St. Aubin ; Lieutenant-Colonel Younghusband, 

 Major Chandler, Messrs. H. Holland Bume, and W. Allen, whose arrival from the distant 

 springs of Aquse Soils, known to Imperial Rome nearly 2,000 years since, on a visit to the 

 Nineteenth Century Waters of Malvern, was greeted with a cordial brotherly welcome. 

 After transacting the formal business of our Club— mainly consisting in the proposal and 

 election of new members— we joined the Bath and Malvern Naturalists for the start, 

 under the guidance of our leaders, Mr. Symonds, Mr. Lees, and Mr. Hill, and sallied forth 

 in a long string of coaches and flys to North Malvern, the first point laid down in the 

 programme. Here, taking advantage of the massive display of the characteristic chry- 

 stalline rocks of the Malvern range, Mr. Symonds gave us, with his wonted eloquence, 

 an able account of the present state of knowledge as to the composition of that remarkable 

 protrusion of the earth's sxu-face, till recent times supposed to consist almost entirely of 

 sienite, but nowsatisfactorily determined to be one of the oldest formations of sedimentary 

 rocks, probably the most ancient in the world, corresponding mth the Laurentian rocks of 

 Canada and sjmchronous with the gneiss of Sutherlandshire, the rocks having been, since 

 their original deposition, metamorphosed by sienite and by the intrusion of trap dykes, 

 and upheaved at different times in the lajise of ages. At a favourable spot the remarkable 

 striations, called slicl,ensidee, were pointed out. These, formerly attributed to the tritura- 

 tion of ice in masses, were proved to be due to the grinding of the rocks one against 

 another, under the impulse of upheaving forces. The last upward movement of the 

 hills was shown by the red sandstone, of Permian age, exhibited at several points, 

 folded back on the eastern flank of the hills, and this feature was formerly well displayed 

 at the base of the rocks near this very locality, but the ground being covered with debris, the 

 junction is now concealed. The party then moved on to where, by the roadside at the 

 base of the end hill, there is a very instructive exhibition of intrusive trap with 

 numerous joints that curiously simulate basaltic columns, and on which Mr. SynKmds 

 made some explanatory remarks, intimating that the intrusion of trap dykes at various 



