The Thirly-Fifth General Meeting. 137 
was followed by Mr. Pontine, F.S.A., Diocesan Surveyor and 
Architect, who entered into some architectural details. This fine 
old Chureh was much admired by the visitors, who, on leaving it, 
reassembled at the Town Hall, where Tun Ricgur Reverenp THE 
PresipEnt, who had by this time arrived, took the chair. 
Tux Bisuop stated that he much regretted that he was unable 
to be present with them at the beginning of their Session. It 
was now, he believed, his happy duty to declare that their 
Meeting had commenced, and, as Bishop of the Diocese and 
President of the Archzxological and Natural History Society, 
to welcome them all to Calne, and to indulge a hope that they might 
all be able to enjoy the excellent programme put before them by the 
Committee. They would forgive him, he hoped, if he did not make- 
any regular address to them that day. It had been quite impossible— 
owing to the great strain of the last month of the Lambeth Conference, 
and the arrears of business which had been kept waiting till that was 
_ over—to prepare anything like an address fit for such a Society as 
theirs. It was, however, a great pleasure to him to think that they 
were meeting this year at Calne. He believed that this was the 
first time during the thirty-five years of its existence that the 
Society had met at Calne. It had met twice, at least, at Chippen- 
ham, once very near the beginning of its existence, and once about 
the year 1870; and also once or twice at Devizes and Marlborough. 
Although this was the first time they had met at Calne he was sure 
they would all find plenty to interest them in the excursions which 
had been planned. There was much in that neighbourhood which 
would interest them from many points of view. They met, he be- 
lieved, just in the district where different geological strata joined 
one another, and where, no doubt, there was a good deal, both of 
botany and natural history, owing to that natural formation, about 
Z which those who could speak on that subject could discourse to them 
as they drove here and there. There were, of course, the many 
‘pre-historic monuments, of which Avebury was the great example, 
standing above all others in that district. And then there were all 
__ the historical associations, both pre-historic and what we now under- 
_ stood to take the place of pre-historic—he meant the history of the 
—— 
t 
7 
