48 



and almost literally recited 'the Fiend's part' by saying to me 

 "I told you, Sir, how it would be if you put 'Annual Address' 

 on the Title page ! " The incident was instructive. 



Nevertheless, owing either to a dearth of disengaged presi- 

 dential material, or a too easy acquiescence in "the ills they 

 had" in the Club, I still had, for many succeeding years, to 

 encounter the annual experiment of reviewing our pleasant field 

 excursions of the past summer ; but always under a somewhat 

 stinging remembrance of the fate that impends over an "Annual 

 Address," and a taste on entering upon the task, of that after 

 instinct which makes a horse shy extempore on approaching 

 the spot whore an accident has happened to him ; and which you 

 may have often seen exemplified in a certain leading article of 

 the Times which appears about quarterday, in which after en- 

 ticing the eye through half a column of agreeable preface, the 

 writer lands you high and dry in the statistics of the Registrar 

 General's Quarterly Report of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. 



I cannot, however, enter upon the duty of endeavouring to 

 recall the proceedings of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club 

 during the 'past year, without indulging a reflection, which oc- 

 curs to me very strongly, upon the great extension of interest 

 which has taken place in those pursuits which form the outo'door 

 study and objects of Societies like our own, and have led to their 

 increased establishment in the surrounding counties and districts. 

 Nothing, perhaps, in the year has been more remarkable than the 

 evidence of this which it embraces, in the growth of these kin- 

 dred associations around us, and the joint meetings, and aug- 

 mented interests to which they have from time to time given rise 



Besides the Malvern, the Cotteswold, and the Warwickshire 

 Clubs, which we formerly recognised in the adjoining or neigh- 

 bouring counties, we have now to welcome the restoration of the 

 Dudley and Midland Geological and Scientific Society, the Severn 

 Valley Field Club, the Oswestry, the Bridgnorth, and the still 

 more recently established Caradoc Club, occupying areas that 

 well deserved the scrutiny of separate Societies, while their es- 



