152 



with one decayed tooth only in the jaws, the sockets of the jaws 

 filled up, indicating age from the smallness of the bones, and the 

 thinness of the skull ; it may be inferred that they belonged to an 

 elderly female, perhaps a Romano-British Matron of some impor- 

 tance. The cofl&n measured 5 feet 7 inches inside, about 6 feet 

 outside, with a roughly hewn cover. It is now in the possession of 

 a farmer, and used as a trough. 



H. H. WINWOOD, Hon. Sec. 



Address of the President, after the Anniversary Dinner, 

 Feb. \m, 1870. 



Gentlemen, 



In a book, well-known I dare say to most of you, Gilbert White's 

 " Natural Histoi^ and Antiquities of Selborne," we find mentioned 

 by its amiable and accomplished author, towards the close of a life 

 that had been devoted to the exploration of the productions of his 

 own neighbourhood, — that " for more than forty years he had paid 

 attention to the ornithology of the district, without being able to 

 exhaust the subject ; new occun-ences, he says, " still arise as long 

 as any inquiries are kept alive." In another passage in the same 

 work he writes — " It is, I find, in zoology, as it is in botany ; all 

 nature is so full that t!hat district produces the greatest variety 

 which is the most examined." These were the remarks of one who, 

 on giving up a college life, early fixed his residence in an obscure 

 village, the village in which he was bom, and the same in which he 

 died at a mature age, it being his desire, as he states in the preface 

 to his book, " to lay before the public his idea of parochial history, 

 which he thought ought to consist of natural productions and 

 occurrences, as weU as antiquities." 



White was no systematist, nor did he trouble himself about 

 theories; he was content to be one of those patient out-door 

 observers who find their happiness in watching nature and marking 

 down all that offers itself to their notice, and which appears worthy 

 of record. There were few such observers in his day, and to his 

 example we owe, in great measui'e, that numerous class of field 

 naturalists which has since arisen, often of late years associating 

 in bodies for the express purpose of scientific reseai'ch. Such a body 



