ADDRESS OF THE RETIRmG PRESIDEIsT, 



(REV. JAMES DA VIES) 



Gentlemen of the Woolhope Club,— The time has arrived when, 

 according to custom, your President should make his bow, and deliver his 

 retiring address, and I will not disguise from you that a whisper of a lazy 

 spirit has suggested to me that (inasmuch as your undeserved kindness wills that 

 I should hold office for another year), I might pnptj one a retiring address 

 until an actual retirement. But second and better thoughts have counselled 

 me that to do so would he to prove myself unworthy of your confidence ; and 

 that it is my duty, after the custom of my predecessors in this chair, to review 

 our last year's work, and to venture on suggestions and speculations as reganls 

 that which we are commencing. Yet when I remember the masterly grasp 

 displayed by Dr. Steele a year ago of all the subjects within the cognizance 

 of the Woolhope Club, I cannot help feeling the inadequacy of my own super- 

 ficial acquaintance with them to furnish more than a perfunctory survey, or 

 to enhance the collective credit of the Society of which we are members. 

 Under these circumstances it is a relief to know that my duty is to "speak 

 right on," and so I will begin by reminding you that, with the exception of 

 the aijpointment of an Editorial Committee to provide for the due publication 

 of our Annual Transactions, our first notable work in the year 187.'^ was the 

 visit of the Club to Waplej' Camp, a locality in which every genuine Hereford- 

 shire man has a vested interest, but of the antecedents of which, as of many 

 other of our Camps, most Herefordshire men have been singularly incurious. 

 For years it passed in local estimation for a Eoman Camp, and I am not sure 

 that its recent proprietor, the late Lady Langdale, ever quite forgave me for 

 acting as guide in 1803 to those Cambrian Archaeologists who decided (beyond 

 doubt soundly), from its formation and features, that it was a British. It 

 was peculiarly seasonable to revert, as we did, to the question last May, for 

 whereas our visit on the 15th of that month led to a further examination of 

 the connection of this Camp with the struggles and standpoints of Caractacus 

 in his gallant retreat before the Eoman general and his legions. In the 



