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Address to the Cotteswold Naturalises Field Club. 1863. By the President 

 W. V. Guise, F.L.S., F.G.S. 



Gentlemen, — 



The proceedings of the Club during the past year, and its position and 

 prospects at this, the commencement of the present season, are such as to 

 justify me in assuring you of our continued prosperity and success. 



Our finances have served for the publication of the handsomest and 

 most important fasciculus of papers which has been published by the 

 Club for many years, for which we are largely indebted to the stimulus 

 given by the appointment of a publishing committee two years ago. Mr. 

 Jones's paper on " Gryphoea incurva, and its varieties," is the first-fruits of 

 a resolution then adopted, of publishing figures and correct descriptions of 

 the different groups of Jurassic fossils — a department of Palaeontology, for 

 the illustration of which our county offers peculiar advantages. It will 

 readily be understood that plates finished with the needful precision and 

 care — without which they are indeed of little use — cannot be executed 

 without a considerable expenditure of money — that is, considerable with 

 reference to our limited means — though the sum be in itself sufiiciently 

 moderate. That we have not overstepped the limits of our income is due 

 in some respects to the fact that our expenditure in previous years was 

 within our income, and thus a margin has been left beyond what was 

 required for the expenses of the Club, which has sufficed for all our neces- 

 sities. It is, however, evident to me, and I think you will concur with 

 me in the opinion, that if we are to carry out our intention of publishing 

 well-illustrated works, we must defray the necessary expenditure out of 

 our annual income, without trenching upon the resources of the ftiture. 



I am unwilling, if it can be avoided, to ask for an increase of our annual 

 subscriptions ; but should there be risk that our work, and thus our useftil- 

 ness, should be contracted through lack of funds, it would hardly be acting 

 the part of either prudent or earnest men, to hesitate about increasing our 

 subscriptions. In the meantime I am prepared to recommend that an 

 entrance fee of one pound be for the fiiture required from all new members; 

 and I have the greater confidence in recommending the adoption of this 

 measure, with a view to its yielding a source of revenue, inasmuch as I am 

 of opinion that looking to the status of the Cotteswold Club, it may well be 

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