76 
delineated or reproduced for our transaction pages—when I think what a gain it 
has been to us last year, for example, to have such a friend at court to win us the 
permission of the proprietors and editor of the Gardener’s Chronicle to make use of 
their blocks of remarkable Herefordshire trees for the purpose of lithographing in 
the volume just put forth; and then recall the singular modesty which, in his case 
as in all genuine cases, is the unfailing concomitant of real talent, I cannot but 
rejoice that in a year when I had the honour to be President, the Woolhope Club 
deviated from its general rule, and paid Mr. Worthington Smith the exceptional 
compliment of a handsome testimonial. It is when such marks of respect are thus 
reserved for rare merit, and are not as every day occurrences, as the nigger’s idea of © 
a ‘‘ collection,” that they carry weight, and are the stamp of bond fide appreciation. 
I am sure I speak Dr. Bull’s sentiments as well as my own when I further say that 
rarely, if ever, were subscriptions promised or paid so freely and spontaneously as 
in this instance, . 
To the other event of our just closed Woolhope year I will advert very 
briefly. We realized its accomplished fact in our meeting to-day in the Free 
Library’s Upper Chamber, the Woolhope Club Room, the munificent gift of one of 
our past presidents, who truly recognises the right stewardship of ample means by 
promoting with them the good and the advancement and enlightenment of others. 
It is not for me, however, to utter an eulogium on him, but rather, now, to urge 
my brother Woolhopians to lay-to their hands to assist the formation of a museum, 
and their heads to the entertainment and cultivation of the readers in the Free 
Library by lectures, such as Mr. Rankin has set the example of. I would say to 
them Spartam quam nactus es orna, ‘‘make the most of a great means of 
instruction.” 
At our Fungus Feast we did abounden anda good deed in admitting to 
honorary membership several distinguished friends and guests, to whom we owed 
a debt of gratitude ; but before I touch upon this topic, let me not forget that we 
have lost in last year several distinguished honorary members—some of them more 
and some less closely connected with our Club. Professor Phillips, Sir William 
Jardine, and {Sir Charles Lyell, are names not to be passed over in our obituary 
list of 1874-5. The first was called suddenly from his work at Oxford by an 
accident nearly a year ago ; and Oxford lost in him a living pillar of its museum, 
one whose memorial will, I doubt not, be as enduring there as those diverse- 
coloured marbles which support its galleries; one too, whose reputation was 
European, and who had been the main originator of the British Association. In 
this border city I doubt not there are a few of us who hold it an additional point 
for commemoration, that he was a Welshman! It is not a little curious that the 
next in order of our losses—that of Sir William Jardine, the enthusiastic naturalist, 
illustrates like that of Professor Phillips the general healthfulness of scientific 
pursuits, Both had passed man’s normal span, both were of the age of the century. 
What Sir William Jardine was to his friends and intimates it is for others to tell. 
To me he represents as he must to many here, the author-editor of that delightful 
series, the Naturalists’ Library, which, appearing first in days when the world was 
not flooded with books (bad, indifferent, and here and there good), fed our youthful 
curiosity, and made us take a livelier interest in the animated nature around us, 
