Proceedings. liii 



can tend more to extend an appreciation of the Club and its 

 work, and I trust that from time to time the practice will be 

 continued. 



Botanical. — Time runs on or I should have liked to have added 

 to this review of our doings in a corporate capacity some notice 

 of the scientific work in which our members have been engaged. 

 Following, however, the advice to the cobbler to stick to his last, 

 I can only refer to some of the botanical work which has been 

 accomplished. To English botanists the issue of the eighth 

 edition of the ' London Catalogue of British Plants,' so long 

 desired, marks with a red letter the year 1886. My friend Mr. 

 Frederick J. Hanbury has been the responsible and capable 

 editor of this work, which involves an amount of labour, care, 

 and responsibility as to nomenclature which can only be appre- 

 ciated by botanists. In this work his most valued coadjutor has 

 been Mr. Arthur Bennett, to whose knowledge and aid, as Mr. 

 Hanbui-y says in his preface, every page bears witness. Another 

 of our members, Mr. Beeby, has also given most valuable 

 assistance. The general arrangement and typography of the 

 work leave nothing to be desired. That so many and such 

 great changes in nomenclature have been found necessary is a 

 matter of perhaps vain regret to conservative minds like my own. 

 Mr. Beeby has also continued his labours upon the Surrey Flora, 

 labours which we may hope are about approaching their suc- 

 cessful termination, and I trust that the current year will see the 

 pubhcation of the work. 



Geological. — A paper very important and interesting to local 

 geologists, and closely connected with the work of our Club, has 

 appeared in the ' Transactions of the Zoological Society of 

 London' (vol. xii.. Part 5, 1886), "On the Eemains of a Gigantic 

 Species of Bu-d [Gastornis Elaasseni, n. sp.) from the Lower 

 Eocene Beds at Croydon," by Mr. E. T. Newton, F.G.S. This 

 paper describes some of the bones found by our former member, Mr. 

 H. M. Klaassen, in the lignite bed exposed during the construction 

 of the railway at Park Hill. It will be remembered that bones of 

 a large extinct mammal [Conjphodon Croydonensis) from precisely 

 the same locality have already been described by Mr. Klaassen, and 

 figured in our Transactions. The discovery of the remains of this 

 gigantic ostrich is of even greater interest. The six bones found 

 appear to have belonged to at least four individuals, and Mr. New- 

 ton hence argues that the birds must have been very numerous in 

 our locality in Eocene times. The Croydon bird seems to come 

 near to the Gastornis Parisiensis, the remains of which have been 

 found at Meudon. Mr. Newton in his paper treats in great 

 detail of the relations of the genus Gastornis and of its Croydon 



