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our peaceful forays on her side of the border leave a pleasanter and more civilising 
mark behind them than those raids of old across rock, river, and dyke, which 
kept up everlasting feud between the Celt and the Saxon. Our first point 
to make was Llechryd Station, where our brother Woolhopian, the Rev. W. 
John Thomas, a native of the district, and a brother of the Squire of Wellfield, 
which was to form part of the day’s excursion, kindly undertook our guidance. 
Hard by the junction of the Mid Wales and the Central Wales—which, strange 
but true, are not convertible terms in railway parlance—are divers traces of 
Llewellyn, the last Prince of Wales, but we left these unvisited, to inspect the 
earthworks of Cwrt Llechryd, the etymology of which was matter of some 
discussion, though we are pretty safe if we take Mr. Thomas’s interpretation that 
Liechryd means the ‘‘Flat place of the Ford.” The earthworks were to all 
appearance British, though it is probable that within the area they enclose was a 
Roman encampment, which may have served for a station long, long ago between 
Bannium and the nearest station on the north. I confess I did not quite realise 
the track of the war-chariots, so convincing to several of our body; but I think 
none will doubt the existence here of a camp within a camp, such as may be seen 
frequently in the British entrenchments in the valley of the Axe in Devonshire, 
occupied at a subsequent date by the Romans, though the construction of a 
nineteenth century station and junction has rendered harder to trace the stations, 
in this locality, of our rude forefathers and their subjugators. 
From Lilechryd we pushed on to a great geological trysting place—-Hooper’s 
Quarry—and being met here by Mr. Thomas of Wellfield, were escorted by him to 
his hospitable mansion and his curiously timbered grounds, a study in themselves 
by reason of the finely-grown conifers, to a familiarity with which in past years, 
and a volunteer discipleship to their planter, your retiring President owes one of 
the greatest pleasures and interests of his vale of life. I ought to say, however, 
that the interest of the day consisted in a lecture on the geology of the district 
delivered here, as was well observed, amid groves, hills, and valleys, once the 
haunts of Buckland, Conybere, Murchison, and Sedgwick, by one who may be 
said to have earned a title to their descending mantles—our friend and fellow 
Woolhopian, William Symonds. I wish I could have said the ‘‘ Oxford Geological 
Professor ” ; but, in this case, we may honestly solace our wounded amour propre 
at the preference of another geologist, by the trite Addison, in an adage 
Tis not in mortals to command success. 
But we'll do more, Semprorious: we'll deserve it. 
I should hold it an impertinence to make extracts from his address, which 
will be printed in extenso in our next volume of transactions, but I will repeat 
what I have said again and again, as a looker-on and as a president, that there is 
no savant or professor, of whom I am cognizant, so gifted with the power of 
arresting and carrying along with him an audience with whom enthusiasm is 
infectious, as Mr. Symonds of Pendock. Passing over the wind-up of the Builth 
Meeting, the march to Penkerrig with its oaks and its lake, and the scenery 
of the district—the Carneddau which we have no time to ascend and the Wye 
scenery of the charming homeward after-dinner route—it needs but the leap of 
