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Mr. Hayes in his address this year to the Severn Valley Field 

 Club, "and we should deem it a duty as well a privilege to con- 

 tribute to the instruction of others, fiiUy hoping to receive 

 instruction in turn. The object should be not to exhibit learn- 

 ing but to gather it and impart it, reciprocaUy. Each branch of 

 enquiry should have a fair if not an equal consideration; and 

 the addresses given should be rather those of feUow-students 

 assisting each other, than set lectures ex cathedra. Much wiU of 

 course depend on the points of interest existing in the place we 

 visit ; but those who plan the day's ramble should remember 

 that all the Members have not the same pursuit or object, and 

 that the wants of each branch should be provided for." 



I entirely agree with these plain and obvious remarks of 

 my brother President, and can confirm the value of his sug- 

 gestions from the spontaneous remembrance that occurs to me of 

 the pecuHar pleasure of Field Club days and wanderings as arising 

 from the variety, and if I may so say, the flexibility of scientific 

 topics brought together ; a pleasure of extreme rarity at scien- 

 tific meetings in Town and Country ; where speciality of subject 

 and treatment is so apt to drift into a monotony and convention- 

 alism of language, and laborious classification, and worse than 

 these, a referential and esoteric style understood only by a 

 small knot of devotees to particular branches of art or study. I 

 merely allude to this subject in passing, because I have in fre- 

 quent instances found that those who would become valued mem- 

 bers of our Society have been deterred by the fear that they 

 were not sufficiently learned in particular Sciences to join us. 



Certainly our rambles of the past year would not have left 

 upon the minds, even of the most sensitive in that respect, any 

 such impression. Our First Meeting which took place on the 

 9th of June, at the Mitcheldean Eoad Station, near Eoss, and 

 led us into the Forest of Dean, formed a most cheerful and 

 agreeable opening of the season. The day was fresh and fine, 

 exactly suited for a long walk, and that we had, passing through 

 some "■ood sections of the carboniferous Limestone, which were 



