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Anmcal Address read to the Cotteswold Naturalists'' Field Club, on 

 the i6th March, 1875, hy Sir W. V. Guise, Bart., F.L.S., 

 F.G.S., President. 



Gentlemen, — 



In compliance with our established custom, it becomes my 

 duty to lay before you a statement of the present position and 

 prospects of the Club, and to pass in review the work accomp- 

 lished at our different meetings during the past season. 



Before proceeding further, however, I must pause awhile to 

 pay a passing tribute to the memory of the great geologist who 

 has just been removed from us by death. I allude, of course, to 

 Sir Charles Lyell. Few men can have passed away who were 

 mourned by a larger circle of friends than he ; and of all that 

 band of philosophical Englishmen who have within the last 

 60 years raised geology to the rank aud importance which it 

 now holds amongst the physical sciences, there have been none 

 who by their writings have contributed more largely to that 

 result than Sir Charles Lyell. For us of the Field Clubs he 

 always felt a fatherly interest, regarding us as helpful workers 

 in that field in which he had won fame ; in which, in his earlier 

 years, he had worked as an amateur — as a lover of Nature, for 

 herself and for the truths she taught; which truths and their 

 logical deductions he fearlessly maintained at a time when hard 

 words and cold looks were the social rewaids of those who held 

 what were then deemed dangerous doctrines. Happily he lived 

 to see those days pass away. The light of facts and of honest 

 conviction brushed away the feeble cobwebs of bigotry and 



