The excursions of the year have been very fairlj attended, and 

 been productive of much social pleasure and improvement to those 

 who had the privilege of taking part in them. Eastnor, Leintwar- 

 dine and Kington were selected, as affording points of great 

 interest in their respective neighbourhoods, which have been visited 

 by several distinguished naturalists, who, since the year 1831, have 

 contributed so much to the illustration of the natural history of our 

 district, and given it an importance, not merely local, but cosmical. 



The Eastnor meeting afforded us the gratification of the firs* 

 joint meeting with the Members of the Cotteswold and Malvern 

 Clubs, and together with the enjoyment of the most exquisite scenery, 

 upon a most charming day, the opportunity of associating and 

 forming friendships with many already engaged in the same exhila- 

 rating and ennobling pursuit — the promotion of science and truth. 

 You will, with peculiar and melancholy pleasure, recollect, that on 

 that occasion, you had the high privilege, under the direction of our 

 lamented friend Mr. Strickland, to examine the structure of the 

 south-western portion of the Malvern Hills and Eastnor Park, and 

 were deeply interested and instructed by the lecture with which he 

 then favored us ; in which he communicated those views of the 

 changes of surface, which modern science all but demonstrate must 

 have taken place, since the deposition of the sedimentary strata, 

 which flank that range on the western side; announcements 

 which must have been regarded not less astounding than novel, 

 especially by those amongst up, whose mint's had not been pre-engaged 

 by objects of geological research, and disciplined and inured by the 

 spirit of inductive philosophy. The centre of the Malvern chain 

 was described as igneous; the successive sedimentary deposits, 

 commmencing with the equivalents of the lower Silurian rocks of 

 Sir Roderick Murchison, and continued to the old red sandstone, 

 were enumerated. The effects of uphearal and denudation on the 

 harder and softer strata, producing the domes, ridges and valleys 

 which make up the more remarkable features of the nearer landscape 

 from Malvern to Ledbury, "Woolhope, Cradley and Abberley 

 pointed out ; the conditions assigned,under which the sedimentary 

 rocks, in many places mineralogically unaltered, were deposited, 

 upon beds of igneous matter already cooled down, in the bottom 



