Annual Address to the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Club, 
January 27, 1857. 
By Professor James Buckman, F.LS., F.G.S., F.S.A., &e. 
In order to account for my presence before you at this period, 
jt will be sufficient for our members to be told that, the President 
had requested me to prepare the annual address for this meeting. 
Weall know how his slightest wish is Jaw, and how attention to his 
laws has usually resulted in benefit to our community ; if _there- 
fore the present instance of obedience to, and respect for, his high 
commands should end in disappointment, pray cut me up as much 
as you please—but, for our President, I only hope he may con- 
sider me a sufficiently juvenile offender to warrant him in extend- 
ing towards me his philanthropic support and protection, when, 
in all probability, I shall by next year be so far reclaimed as not 
to venture upon the like offence again. 
Before reviewing the proceedings of our past session, I would 
call upon you to pay a tribute of respect to our departed associate 
the Rev. H. J. Bolland. I need not speak to you of his goodness 
of heart, of his kind and gentle manners, of his keen perception 
of natural beauties, qualities for which he was endeared to every 
one who had the good fortune to know him; yet I may say that, 
though no professed natural historian—no classifier of genera or 
species—yet was he a naturalist in the best sense of that term, 
as he was a lover of nature, who could draw from her contempla- 
tion abundant proof of God’s Wisdom and Power, and the book 
of Creation was, in his hands, not a hindrance but a graceful help 
to the lessons drawn from the one he was ordained to teach. 
The few secessions of the past session have been filled up by 
the election of Mr. Pierson, of Cheltenham, who will long be 
remembered for the active part he took (in conjunction with our 
talented associate Dr. Wright) in supplying and arranging the 
beautiful Geological Museum to which the British Association 
was weleomed at the Cheltenham meeting. An addition has also 
been made to our ranks by the election of Mr. G. F. Newmarch, 
solicitor, of whom it may be said that although his profession obliges 
him to pore over other deeds, even drier than the species list of 
the geologist or botanist, yet he chooses the study of nature as his 
relaxation, and to this end we hope he will frequently join the 
ranks of our field ramblers. 
In reviewing the field proceedings of the past session, I shall 
have to refer you to our places of meeting, premising that in no 
former year have we experienced a more regular attendance of 
members; and if, on review, it be found that our papers have not 
been so numerous as on former occasions, it could only arise from 
the always too brief interval between dinner and the departure of 
the train being amply and profitably filled up either in comparing 
notes of the ramble of the day, or in the discussion connected with 
some matter or object introduced by the members. 
