4 The Seventeenth General Meeting. 
—all men who have contributed largely to the history of our county. 
Let me not forget to mention a distinguished member of this 
brotherhood, who is now living, and who has done me the great 
honour to be present here to-day to support me at this my first 
appearance amongst you as your president. I mean Mr. Matcham, 
of New House. Nor will I omit to notice those following im their 
footsteps, and most usefully cementing their labours, who have taken 
great trouble in behalf of the Society, and who deserve our respect 
and gratitude. Of their work I may say— 
Si monumentum queris circumspice. 
Allow me here, at perhaps not an inopportune moment, to make the 
remark that I think it might be advisable, now that so much and varied 
information has been collected towards the formation of a county 
history, to put all the papers which treat of one subject together. 
At present the information appears to the general reader to be 
scattered through a number of volumes, and he has to seek for it by 
means of an index. As a suggestion, I would propose that the 
subject matter belonging to each hundred be collected under that 
hundred, the history of the different parishes falling into their 
places in that hundred. There will be a difficulty about this, I feel, 
as the parochial histories are not yet entirely written, although most 
excellent examples have been set us by Mr. Wilkinson and others ; 
and besides, it is not by any means certain that everything which 
can be said of each parish, has been said. Those excellent papers 
on “Ornithology,” and the “ Flora of Wiltshire,” would probably 
have to form a volume each by themselves, as they treat of the 
birds and the flowers of the county generally. So also such inter- 
esting papers as those on the “ Forest Trees of Wiltshire.” It has 
occurred to me, and I merely throw it out as a suggestion, which 
may perhaps be acted upon hereafter, that the Society might form, 
by means of photography, a very interesting and valuable collection 
of the “ Worthies of Wilts.” We cannot have the original portraits, 
but we (with the permission of the owners) may have copies on a 
reduced scale, which, though, from want of colour, will not quite 
satisfy the eye, yet would be sufficiently pleasing and accurate to 
