12 
rocks in one place and their softness in others produce the mountain and rocky 
scenery we so much admire. 
Let the observer mark at Builth and around it, how a trap-dyke stands out 
in its hardness, and the softer shales weather around it; or how some rocks are 
hardened into limestone by the decomposition of shells and other organic remains ; 
and, again, how a hard silicious mass defies the elements; and how the stream 
corrodes the channel; and Builth, Aberedw, and Pwll-ddit may teach him a lesson 
which hereafter may be useful on the Alps, or the Andes. It is in the upper 
Silurian strata (Lower Ludlow series) and in the Passage Rocks, between those 
deposits and the Old Red, that we first meet with the relics of vertebrate life in 
the bones and plates and teeth of a few small fishes. Here we, too, meet with 
evidence of the progression of life, and of development throughout unnumbered 
ages. It was my friend Mr. Banks, of Ridgebourne, brother of our President, 
who first found numerous fish remains in the Upper Ludlow Passage Rocks, and 
advanced geology by those important discoveries. The Lower Old Red Sand- 
stone is rich in the remains of fish; the Upper Old Red is singularly deficient, 
but then we have few local geologists who search it. There is, I am sure, a rich 
storehouse yet remaining for the researches of future explorers, and if the love of 
the rocks only affords to anyone present one-half the happiness it has afforded to 
me, I shall rejoice that I have once more been enabled to advocate the wonders of 
geology by the beautiful rocks of Builth. When we are on the summit of 
Carneddau we see the summits of the Breconshire and Carmathen Vans rising 
above the hills of Epynt, and we learn how the Old Red Sandstone stretches 
away beneath the carboniferous rocks of the South Wales coal field, But there 
is more than this to a physical geologist who examines these old red rocks far and 
wide as I have done throughout all the Silurian region. When I remember the 
old red outliers away in Anglesea, and near Denbigh on the north, and again by 
Marloes Bay, in Pembrokeshire, on the south, I feel sure that the whole of the 
Silurian rocks of Wales and Shropshire were once covered by this great series of 
rock strata which are now separated, between Ireland and England, by the Irish 
Sea, The Silurian rocks are, in fact, set in a broken framework, of which here 
and there only patches are left ; and I think, moreover, that these patches are the 
representatives of a vast continuous sheet of old red sandstone which was once 
algo overlaid by carboniferous deposits since denuded also. This, however, 
hardly belongs to the local geology of Builth. Mr. Symonds concluded by saying 
that one great reason why he had always so much pleasure in attending the meet- 
ings of the Club was that their proceedings were recorded not only in the trans- 
actions of the Club, but previously in the annals of the Hereford Times. He was 
glad to see the editor present, and to say how much he felt indebted to him for 
the care and accuracy with which the proceedings of the Club had been reported, 
and for the services thus rendered not only to the Club but to the cause of 
science (applause). In the course of his investigations in the Doward bone-caves 
he had met with a proof of the interest that existed in the minds of the general 
public. One day he met two working men out of the Forest of Dean, who told 
him that they always looked out for the reports of the Club’s meetings in the 
