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those of a later period put a Norman corbel table into a Perpendicular 

 wall. The churches at Dauntsey and Iron Acton contain likewise 

 copies of older work, and this is very conspicuous in the buildings of 

 Oxford. Hence the conclusion he wished to impress upon the members 

 was that the date of a building could not be always determined by the 

 style of its architecture. He ventured to think that the interest in the 

 Somerset and Devonshire churches was much lessened by this fact of 

 many of them being simply an imitation and reproduction of each 

 other. Then there was another point worthy of observation, the stone 

 which was found in the old buildings ; beneath the variety in the 

 stone often lurked a great history, e.g., in one church granite was found 

 mixed up with the stones peculiar to the neighbourhood. This led to 

 the discovery that the original founder had property in Cornwall, 

 whence, doubtless, this foreign material was derived. The mention of 

 this led him on to the second subject, i.e. (2) Geology. Here every 

 variety in the strata should be noted. Were the strata always 

 uniform, one bed following another in regular succession, how little 

 should we know about the study ; but the variation in their succession 

 caused by the disturbances and topsy-tvuvy movements of some of the 

 beds added so very much to the interest of the study ; the greater the 

 variations the greater the intei'est, e.g., the disturbances in our 

 own Mendips, as at Vobster. Though not professing to be a 

 geologist himself, yet when in the north of Ireland, between Port Rush 

 and the Giant's Causeway, he could not fail to be struck with the 

 varieties in the colour of the rocks — white rocks stained by red 

 streaks and capped by black. Then there were the varied movements 

 of a river ; take, for instance, the Avon, which ought naturally to flow 

 in a straight line, but witness its many windings, study the causes of 

 these windings, follow the turns ; consider why the water retires here 

 and encroaches there, and you will have a good key to the geology of 

 the district between Bath and Bristol. Then again the gorge of the 

 Avon, which drained off the ancient lake which must have existed 

 there once ; viewed from the Hogsback it looked a mere crack in 

 the rocks, yet consider how this came about, and the vast alteration 

 in the surrounding country were this gorge to be dammed up, as 

 it might easily be by some Brunell of the period. Finally, the third 

 subject he wished to notice was his favourite one (3) Botany. Of this 



