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the Committee, and I may be but echoing its words when I add that our next 
exhibition must be upon a larger scale; that, with due restrictions, the public 
should be added to it, and that the judges should do their best to establish a 
regular and scientific classification of the fruits exhibited. At present the nomen- 
clature is very confused, and the same fruit appears to bear half-a-dozen different 
names in as many different parishes, and—to make confusion worse confounded— 
old varieties are sometimes re-introduced under a new designation. 
And now to turn from ourselves to the larger world outside us. In the 
past year we have not been startled by any fresh hypotheses as to the origin of 
this globe or of those that inhabit it. Professor Tyndall, it appears, has been 
devoting himself rather to the service of Venus than to that of Minerva, and Sir 
John Lubbock has turned his attention from primeval man to the lives and 
conversations of ants and bees. It is too soon to speculate upon the advantages 
which are likely to accrue from the Arctic Expedition : all that we can at present 
say is that its despatch proved—if proof were necessary—that English naturalists 
are not behind English seamen in pluck and enterprise, and that it augurs well 
for the interest in science felt by the present Government. The Deep Sea 
exploration has added much to our knowledge about the conditions of animal and 
vegetable life at the bottom of the ocean, and has upset many theories on the 
subject which had been previously current ; the world-wide observations on the 
Transit of Venus cannot but have been of service to astronomy, though they seem to 
have involved no new discoveries, and from the Sub-Wealden exploration— 
undertaken for the purpose of disclosing what kind of paleozoic or primary rocks 
there lie beneath the secondary formations, the results obtained have been disap- 
pointing. The boring has now attained a depth of 1,900ft., and is still in the 
oolitic strata. It seems a pity that such an enterprise should be checked for want 
of adequate means to carry it out, and as an effort is now being made to raise an 
additional sum of £2,000 so as to extend the boring another 500ft., I venture to say 
that the Woolhope Club would do well to offer a donation from its corporate funds. 
The obituary of the past year is unhappily a long one. From our own ranks 
we miss two members—the Rev. E. Du Buisson and Rev. Samuel Clark—of more 
than average worth. The former was a skilful botanist ; the latter—known to the 
world at large as a deeply-read theologian—was known and valued by us as a 
zealous fellow-worker, and most agreeable companion, whose copious stores of 
knowledge were always open to every inquirer. But our losses, however much 
they may be felt by us as individuals, are but trifles as compared with those which 
science has sustained by the deaths of Charles Kingsley, whose skilful pen trans- 
formed the Book of Nature into a fairy tale; of Prof. Wheatstone, to whom we 
we our present system of telegraphy; of Dr. John Gray, whose services to 
zoology every visitor to the British Museum can appreciate ; of Prof. Willis and 
Sir Gardner Wilkinson, wbose names are severally identified with Architectural 
History and Egyptology ; and lastly, but chiefly, of Sir Charles Lyell, an hon. 
member of the Woolhope Club, and, without controversy, the ablest geologist 
whom the present generation has seen. The world moves onward, and the places 
