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agreeable society should aid the charm of rural scenery in producing a pleasant 

 day's outing, not without some such intellectual gratification as may be gained 

 from the acquisition of a little knowledge, the observation of certain natural 

 phenomena, the sight of this or that memorial of antiquity, or the partial 

 verification of some student's labours in this or that br.mch of natural science, ye*^ 

 the Woolhope Club will be untrue to the traditions of an illustrious past, if, as a 

 Ijody, it does not keep alive within it the generous aspiration towards something 

 more severe than this. We number in our ranks gentlemen conspicuous as 

 workers in Nature's field : conspicuous by their knowledge, by their carefully 

 trained powers of observation, by the results they have displayed of years of 

 patient study. It should be for every member of our Society each in his way, 

 albeit the way may be a small one, to emulate them ; at least to hand on to the 

 future the trust they have won for us, in constituting the Club no mean educaticmal 

 agency, unimpaired. Membership of the Woolhope Club should connote, as it has 

 always done, not a mere aesthetic admiration alone of the beauties of Nature, but 

 some honest endeavour to employ the faculties of thought and observation with 

 which everyone is gifted in the fascinating task of reading her secrets. In connec- 

 tion with this thought I hiipe I may be pardoned for remarking that it seems a 

 matter both for surprise and regret that the study of Geology fails so much at this 

 moment to attract the attention of many of our members. Recollecting how large 

 a space it occupied in the field of intellectual vision of the original members of 

 the Club — a fact, indeed, to which the very title of the Club bears witness— and 

 recalling the names of Lewis, Lightbody, Symonds, Scobie, Banks, McCullough, 

 and that of our accomplished ex-president, Mr. Piper, I would enct)urage the hope 

 that it may yet find a place among those cognate subjects of study which are so 

 worthily represented among us. The equipment necessary is not an elaborate one; 

 I forget who it is that has said "a hammer and a little common-sense " comprise it ; 

 to which, perhaps, I might add patience, and attention to minutiae. Handbooks 

 of elementary Instruction are plentiful enough at this time of day. Those of Page, 

 Lyell, and Geikie, at once suggest themselves. It is true tliat the Formation which 

 occupies a great part of the area over which the Woolhope Club travels (the Old 

 Red Sandstone) is not eminently prolific in those fossils, search for which interests 

 and leads on the student. But not to say, as I have observed on another occasion, 

 that, even in this particular, research may at any time be unexpectedly and 

 agreeably rewarded, it should be borne in mind that fossil collecting does not 

 exhaust the wonders of the pursuit. There remain wide questions of physical 

 geology to be solved ; correlation of beds, the assignment to them of their proper 

 place in the system ; investigation of the causes that have conspired to produce 

 the present condition of the earth's surface, and the like : and here particularly 

 the. study of the more recent beds that overlie the ancient rocks offers very great 

 scope. Much work has yet to be done, and not least in this county of Hereford, 

 in regard to glacial and other drifts, work which may not only help in determining 

 the forces that resulted in the existing configuration of hUl and valley and their 

 direction, but which may possibly throw light on that most interesting subject, 

 the antiquity of man. And it is the aggregate of individual observations that 



