118 



regular excursions (four in number) fixed at the Anniversary. 

 It is to these latter alone that, so far as I am aware, 

 other Clubs restrict their operations as a body ; and very 

 good work, no doubt, many of them do, while the 

 Members receive a stimulus therefrom in furtherance of 

 the pursuits they carry on at other times each in his 

 individual capacity. Still, if there is any advantage to be 

 derived from a body of labourers working collectively in this 

 way — and what those advantages are I pointed out in the first 

 Address I read to the Club in 1864 — the same advantages 

 must attend upon any other occasions of their meeting to- 

 gether for scientific purposes, and with increased good results 

 the oftener such meetings take place. But there is another 

 circumstance which gives a great importance to these weekly 

 walks. In proportion as the field nearer home has been 

 repeatedly gone over on the regular excursion days, more and 

 more distant spots will be chosen for the Club's visits, until 

 the immediate object for which the Club was formed, viz., the 

 working out the Natural History and Antiquities of the Bath 

 District, may come to be quite lost sight of I do not com- 

 plain of this arrangement, though some limit, I think, should 

 be put to the distance to which the Club travels, if it were 

 only in consideration of the expense to which it puts some of 

 our Members, and the sacrifice of the time of two days, which 

 is inconvenient to many. In principle I think the arrange- 

 ment good, as offering more novelty and attraction than any 

 other ; but then it is only so long as the weekly walks are 

 kept up, to which, under such circumstances, we must mainly 

 look for the extending of our knowledge of the productions 

 of our own neighbourhood, and accumulating those facts in 

 Natural History, as well as details in matters of topographical 

 and antiquarian interest, which shall afford material for our 

 winter evening meetings at home. 



And these home gatherings for papers and discussion on 



