264 
paper, with a general request that having now for three years 
given the members an account of his observations of the effects 
of the weather on the fauna and flora of the neighbourhood, he 
would next year repeat the subject. 
At a meeting of the Field Club on January 15th, 1896, presi- 
ded over by Canon Ellacombe, some notes were read on the 
collection of fossil fishes from the Upper Lias of Ilminster, which 
had been communicated by Mr, Arthur Smith Woodward, F.G.S., 
of the British Museum. The Rev. H. H. Winwood, who read the 
notes, prefaced them with a few introductory remarks, in which 
he said the collection was not sufficiently known. It was one of 
the greatest treasures they had in the museum upstairs. His 
friend, the late Charles Moore, collected these fishes very early in 
his life ; in fact, he began in his early boyhood. Moore related 
that as a boy he was engaged Jike other boys in collecting those 
“curly whirly ” stones called ammonites. One day as he was 
playing with other boys, and workmen were pulling down the old 
school-house, some of the nodules like those on the table were taken 
from the walls. The boys were rolling them down the hill, when one 
of the nodules split open, revealing a fish. This first of all created 
Moore’s interest in these fishes, and he was very careful about 
collecting them. He tock very great care that nobody else should 
know where they were. He took him (the Rev. H. H. Winwood) 
down to see them many years ago, and he would point out the 
locality as well as he could on the map of the district. The bed 
was now covered up, and no more of these fishes would be dis- 
covered unless it was re-opened. The ground had been opened 
up to obtain a kind of stone used for the roads, called marl-stone, 
and in digging down, a remarkable bed about six inches thick was 
revealed consisting of these nodules. Ever since Moore had dis- 
covered them they had remained upstairs waiting for someone to 
describe them. He had asked people repeatedly, and ultimately 
Mr. Arthur Smith Woodward, on being applied to, had kindly 
furnished the notes which he proceeded to read. In these notes 
et it 
