104 
THIRD FIELD MEETING. 
The third Field Meeting was held on Tuesday, 28rd 
July. The programme was attractive, the day was fine, and 
a large number of members of the Club assembled at the 
Stroud Station on the Great Western Railway, where two 
brakes with four horses each, and other carriages were in 
waiting. ; 
The route, as described in the programme, traversed a very 
beautiful Cotteswold district, by way of Bisley to Miserden 
Park, where the proprietor, Mr. H. A. Learuam, the distinguished 
representative of Huddersfield, had offered to entertain the 
Club at dinner. Such a drive was well qualified to display to 
the eyes of valesmen and strangers the diversified beauties of 
Cotteswold scenery, which, for combined richness and variety, 
can scarcely be equalled by any other district of like extent, 
either in England or elsewhere. 
Regarding the Cotteswold range as a grand old coast-line, 
its contour is indented by longitudinal valleys, which, like 
that of Stroud, cut deeply into its mass; and these again are 
intersected by transverse valleys and deep coombes, with rivulets 
trickling through them, whose sides are richly clothed with 
timber, shadowing green meadows, diversified with farms and 
villages and gentlemen’s seats: The Cotteswolds, moreover, 
are interesting as being the seat of an ancient civilization, 
which dates from a time prior to the Norman conquest; for 
the Normans found this district so populous that traces of their 
architecture are to be found in almost every village Church, 
even in the most remote hamlets of the Cotteswold hills and 
valleys. The reason of this is not far to seek: these open hills 
afforded pasturage when the heavy clays of the vale presented 
a scene of woods and swamps. Later on, in the time of our 
Epwarps and Henrys, the Cotteswolds became a great centre 
of the wool trade, which then constituted a principal source of 
wealth in these kingdoms. The proofs of this are everywhere 
visible in the superior quality of the buildings—not only in 
towns such as Bisley, where this feature is especially notice- 
able—but even in the rural villages, in which may be remarked 
