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Address read to the Cotteswold Naturalists’? Club at thew 
Annual Meeting, April 27, 1858. 
By T. Barwick Luoyp Baker, Esa. of Hardwicke Court, 
President. 
Aaarn, my friends, have we met for our Annual Meeting, to 
review the pleasant gatherings which many of us at least have 
enjoyed during the last summer, and to plan the excursions which 
we hope to enjoy in the present year. 
Much do J, for my own part, regret that I have been able to 
attend so few of those of the past season, for slight as may be my 
knowledge of the sciences so ably followed by many members of 
our Club, I can safely say that few days in the year afford me so 
wholesome or enjoyable a relaxation from the work which more 
and more engrosses me, as the gatherings of the Cotteswold Club. 
My own lack of knowledge, however, I must supply from the 
accounts given by others of the meetings, I would fain have 
described as an eyewitness. 
On Jan. 27th, a party of Ladies and Gentlemen met at what 
we may term our most hospitable head-quarters, the Royal Agri- 
cultural College of Cirencester, where, as always, we were most 
kindly received, took a walk to the Corinium Museum, Water- 
moor Church, and the City Walls, and returned for business to 
the College. 
The said business consisted of the re-election of the President 
and Secretary, till such time as fitter men could be persuaded to 
take the offices; and the election of Edward Holland, M. P., of 
Dumbleton, and David Nash, Esq. the eminent scholar of Syro- 
Egyptian literature. 
At the dinner (happily we had many good things to counter- 
balance it) was exhibited a jar of the Anacharis alsinastrum, that 
most to be dreaded of water weeds, which threatens, if all we hear 
be true (fortunately for us, little more than half we hear is so) to 
choke every stream, navigable or not, and every canal in the 
kingdom, in a very short space of time. This fearfully rapid weed. 
had been found only the day before in the Canal, near Cirencester, 
and now at the end of fifteen months (which brings us to the pre- 
sent time) we anxiously ask our friends from the neighbourhood 
of Cirencester, Is the Canal yet passable? Happily, for us, many 
evils which appear dreadful at first sight, are more bearable when 
we come to closer terms; and I trust we may find this the case 
with the Anacharis alsinastrum. 
The Rev. P. B. Brodie also read a paper which we trust to see 
recorded in our transactions, and the party separated with much 
gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Haygarth. 
