229 
Norman, Messrs. Allon Tucker and Wilson, one visitor and three 
ladies, the treasurer and secretary, 7.¢., eight out of 83 members ! 
The subject of Mr. GREEN’S communication was “The 
Abolition of the Penal Laws and Test, and the Declaration of 
Liberty of Conscience : a Somerset Episode of 1688.” Prepared 
with his usual care and accuracy, the paper was the result of his 
researches among hitherto unpublished MSS., and owing to the 
extent to which the matter had grown during his investigation 
the reading was necessarily much epitomised, the parts relating 
to Bath only being noticed (vide page 195). 
The CHAIRMAN, whilst thanking Mr. Green for one of his 
valuable local sketches, contributing so much to the making of 
the general history of a country, pleasantly excused the small- 
ness of the audience, partly from the severity of the afternoon’s 
storm ; and then called attention to the source whence the 
writer had drawn his materials, remarking how such apparently 
dry subjects as the legal Test Acts, &c., could be made inter- 
esting, and brought home to us by such local papers as these. 
The actors in the scenes of the present, little realised how they 
were each in their several ways contributing towards the history 
of their own times. 
Mr. SCARTH then read a paper on “ Ancient Ring Dials and 
Methods of Measuring Time.” This subject, he said, had 
occurred to him as likely to interest the members from the fact 
of a brass ring dial, which he had the pleasure of showing 
them, having been placed in his hands by a neighbour for explana- 
tion (vide page 202.) 
_ Inthe discussion which ensued the CHAIRMAN alluded to the 
wide range of the ruder methods of measuring time described in 
the paper—a range extending beyond that of the civilised Greeks 
and Romans into the regions of barbarism, when high trees served 
as indicators of the time of day. Several passages from Shakespeare 
and Charles Lamb were quoted, in which allusions to ancient 
forms of dials were made. | These pocket dials were familiar also 
