197 



one of her sons, and not least by the members of this Club. By sad and curious 

 coincidence Mr. Symonds's old friend and fellow worker, Sir William Guise, 

 followed him to the grave within the space of a very fpw days. Sir William 

 Guise was elected an honorary member of our Club in the year 1854. Our 

 transactions do not indeed bear much written testimony to his widely spread 

 scientific attainments. But he was not an infrequent, and at all times a most 

 useful and very welcome, attendant at our meetings. I do not know for what 

 exact number of years he was the President of our sister Club, the Cotteswold ; 

 but it exceeded twenty ; and I should like to take this opportunity of offering 

 that body, in your name, our condolence on the loss which they have sustained by 

 his removal from their head. Very distinguished too both with the pen and in 

 the field was that eminent naturalist, the late Mr. Edwin Lees, of Worcester. 

 He was admitted to our honorary membership in 1861, and there are many among 

 us who recall with pleasure his society, and the instruction which he was so well 

 qualified to give, especially in that branch of science of whicli he had made 

 himself a thorough master. Gentlemen, these were all men of mark. They were 

 ornaments of any society of intellectual men in which they found themselves. 

 Their connection with our Club reflects honour on the Club itself, and the 

 memory of what they did in patient investigation of what nature had to tell them 

 should be a valued legacy to us who survive them. If I might venture to point 

 the moral of their lives for the benefit of the members of a Natural History 

 Society it would be in the lines which, save for one word's alteration, ran above 

 the honour boards on the walls of my old class room in Shrewsbury School, 



" Vos exemplaria tanta 

 Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna. " 



Continued ill-liealth unhappily deprived the Club at the commencement of last 

 year of those services as Secretary which Mr. Lane had so punctually and so 

 efficiently rendered for nine previous years. However inadequate to express its 

 full appreciation of those services, yet it was as some slight and grateful 

 recognition of them that the Club enrolled him among her honorary members. 

 His place as Secretary has been supplied by Mr. James Pilley, and the office of 

 Honorary Secretary, for some while suspended, has been revived in favour of Mr. 

 Moore. I may, perhaps, be permitted to say, speaking as I do from the peculiar 

 knowledge which my position has allowed me to have, that the Club is to be 

 heartily congratulated on the willingness of these gentlemen to assume oflBce. I 

 do not know how any Field Club could be more admirably served by its officials 

 than the Woolhope is by them ; and what I am pleased to think has been the 

 success of the first season's voyage of a new crew has been entirely due to their 

 assiduity and zeal. Mr. Moore's first year of office has been signalized by the 

 compilation and publication of some of the arrears of our records which had 

 begun to make itself what is called "a felt want." One volume, as you know, 

 was issued in 1^S87, and another, bringing the transactions down to the year 1882, 

 is now in your hands. It is not too much to hope that, before the close of 

 another year, we may have the series continued down to nearly the present date. 

 The trouble and pains, and the discriminating judgment, which have marked 



