95 
which he possessed a very ample store of materials; in con- 
nexion with which subject none could supply fuller information 
than the brothers Puayne, whose firm has been honorably 
known in association with this important industry at least from 
the time of Queen ExizaseTH, whose Ministers made it one 
of the conditions on which the Charter was granted to the Hast 
India Company, that that corporation should export annually a 
large quantity of woollen cloth of a particular quality. A great 
deal of this cloth was made by the family of Prayye: some- 
times in such quantity, in a single order, that the cloth would 
have run all the way from the manufactory near Stroud, to the 
East India House, in Leadenhall Street; and it is at once a 
proof of the honorable manner in which the brothers PuayNne 
carried on their manufacture, and an interesting item in’ the 
history of British trade, that down till 1854, when the Charter 
of the East India Company lapsed, by the Government taking 
over its powers, the bolts of cloth made at Dunkirk Mills 
were received as a standard of sterling value, with their leaden 
seals attached, as a guarantee that no one had opened them 
since they left the mills; and this all over the north of China 
and the north-east of Tartary. In days like these, when Great 
Britain is beginning to lose the name she once had for the 
genuineness of her wares, it is well to know that there are 
bright and honorable exceptions to this state of things. 
After this somewhat lengthy, but not, as I venture to think, 
uninteresting digression, I will proceed to give a summary of 
the work done at our various Field Meetings during the past 
season. 
ANNUAL MEETING. 
The Annual Meeting of the Club was held at the Bell Hotel, 
Gloucester, on Tuesday, 2nd of April, 1878, when the officials 
for the year were appointed. Sir Wi1iam Guise was again 
chosen President, with Dr. Wricut and Mr. Lucy as Vice 
Presidents, and Dr. Parne as Secretary. The President, in 
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