70 
The meetings of the Club for the present year were fixed as follows :—20th 
May, Caerleon ; 15th June, Symonds’ Yat and Monmouth (to meet the Cotswold 
Club) ; 18th July (ladies’ day), Skenfrith, Grosmont, and Garway ; 9th August, 
Brecon. 
An exhibition of apples and pears (named) will be held in the autumn on the 
day of the Fungus Foray in the Club Room, and members are invited to send 
specimens of rare and fine sorts. 
An interesting paper upon British spiders, their habits, economical use, &c., 
was read by Mr. Theophilus Lane. 
After the meeting had concluded, the Club dined at the Green Dragon 
Hotel, where they were joined by Evan Pateshall, Esq., M.P., J. F. Symonds, 
Esq., the Rev. G. M. Metcalfe, &c. The cloth having been raised, the Rev. J. 
Davies, M.A., read his Retiring Address, which was as follows :— 
Gentlemen,—The time has arrived when I must really make my bow, and 
positively for the last time. When, a year ago, I went through the form of a 
retiring address, it was in the full consciousness that mine was only a partial 
eclipse, and that I was to shine out again, a full blown president, at the first 
field meeting of the year 1874. Very pleasant, to me at least, has been the whole 
tenour of my second year of office, and marked indeed by two events, which I 
rejoice fell within the term of my presidency; but I do not think it wise or 
desirable that this institution should follow, in the case of its chief officer, a 
precedent set it by the Municipality of Hereford ; and, however much I may have 
got used to your kind words, and kind faces, and warm shakes of Mr. President’s 
hand, when on duty or off duty, I feel that, in view of sub-division of labour and 
circulation of honours, it is high time that I should hand over the reins to my 
successor. Before doing so, however, I must comply with the custom of giving 
some account of my stewardship ; and in déing this, it will be most convenient, I 
think, to review, as shortly as may be, the field meetings of the year, and then to 
touch, as they suggest themselves, on the points of progress, the collateral events, 
and the various casualties of the year 1874, in which the Woolhope Club has had 
more or lesss interest. 
You will forgive me, I am sure, if, amid a press of matter, I omit aught that 
should be commemorated ; and, of your kindness, hear me patiently through an 
address which I promise to confine to moderate limits, Our first meeting a-field, I 
would remind you, was at Church Stretton on the 15th of May, and a rendezvous 
which proved very satisfactory when, in the year of Mr. Key’s presidency, we 
explored the Longmynd, proved still attractive to those Woolhopians who re- 
visited it on a scarcely seasonable morning—for winter lingering still chilled the 
lap of May—en route for the Caradoc. We were fortunate, in the absence of any 
leader among our own members, in the friendly and experienced guidance of the 
Revs. Donald Carr and William Elliott, the late and the present honorary 
secretaries of the Caradoc Field Club, and thus lost no time in ascending the grand 
‘© Caer Caradoc” by the path through the pass betwixt it and the Lawley Hill. 
Despite the backwardness of the spring, our botanists found some small clients 
