256 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1906 
detect and eliminate erroneous or impossible fancies 
which, where so little has been known, may easily have 
crept into common acceptation. 
Only by carefully working back from the well-known 
present to the more and more distant past, making due 
allowance for the accumulating effects of natural changes 
and for the improvements effected by the action or agency 
of man, can this knowledge of the former state of local 
natural conditions be gained. It will of course be wise to 
consider as well the more purely human aspect of the 
story, since in many ways the natural conditions prevailing 
at any time will be reflected in its history. But it will be 
necessary to distinguish carefully between developments 
growing directly out of the natural conditions, and many 
others of a secondary character, which have arisen out of 
the mere convenience presented by such population and 
organization as had from time to time become already 
established here. 
The present-day manufacturing prosperity of Gloucester 
is an instance of such an incidental or secondary develop- 
ment. But in the remarkable inland seaport element in 
the history and character of Gloucester we come upon a 
_ primary product of local natural conditions. Located not ° 
only on a navigable portion of the Severn, with its pheno- 
menal tides, Gloucester occurs just where the uniformly 
single broad channel of the river was notably interrupted 
by a group of alluvial islands, the largest of which, the 
Isle of Alney, still remains as such. 
It is contended that by following up this clue, noting 
the smaller and smaller resources of early navigators, and 
the variations in their needs and purposes, at the same 
time working back step by step to an adequate realization 
of the natural condition of the river, its islands, its adjacent 
shores and their inland neighbourhood, as they existed 
two or three thousand years ago—that thus and thus only 
