18 General Account of Inaugural Meeting. 
of the municipality. Every one who has travelled much through 
that country must have been made sensible of the great advantages 
offered by these local collections of antiquities, discovered in the 
surrounding districts, as well as of its minerals and fossils, its 
botanical and zoological productions, arranged by the side of a 
library of works of local interest. And if these collections are full 
of attraction to a stranger, how much more valuable must they be 
to an inhabitant? In this country, steps have recently been taken 
by the legislature to enable the municipalities of the corporate towns 
to establish similar museums and libraries at the cost of local funds. 
But the genius of our people tends rather to the attainment of such 
objects by voluntary associations than by executive authorities; and 
we hope consequently, to some extent, to secure this most desirable 
benefit for our county by means of the Society we are now 
organising. » 
I have hitherto confined my remarks almost entirely to our local 
desiderata in reference to Archeology. But the department of 
Natural History affords an opening of, at least, equal utility to our 
aim. Without pretending to assert for this county any preéminent 
claims as a field for the researches of the naturalist, I am yet 
justified in saying, that it offers advantages in this respect not 
inferior to any other. The Geology of Wiltshire is indeed not 
very elaborate, extending only from the London clay to the old red 
sandstone, but the paleontology of this limited range is peculiarly 
rich. The fossils of our green sand beds have an European reputa- 
tion, chiefly owing to two remarkable collections—one formed by a 
lady of this neighbourhood, Miss Benett; the other by our respected 
honorary secretary, Mr. Cunnington. The coral rag is nowhere 
more abundant in zoophytes, and nowhere assumes more strikingly 
its true character of an ancient coral reef, than in the hill range 
running northwards from this town through Bowood and Bremhill. 
Our Oxford clays are peculiarly rich in cephalopoda. The Kelloways 
rock is known to all geologists for its rare molluscs. Our corn-brash 
and forest marble beds, are little else than masses of organic remains. 
The laminated tilestones of this formation, in their ripple-marked 
surfaces strewed over with fragments of coral and water-worn shells, 
and impressed with the footprints of crustacea, really present the 
exact appearance of a sandy shore just left by the retiring tide; 
though we know that countless ages must have elapsed since the 
waves of the ocean broke upon them. The oolitic limestone of 
Bradford has given its name to a rare and curious variety of encri- 
nite. The great oolite of our Cotswolds, is a storehouse of organic 
matter, including reptiles and fishes. And the lower oolites abound 
in molluscs. In fact few counties offer a more fertile field for 
study to the paleontologist. And a closer examination would very 
probably discover many new or rare species of extinct animals, still 
further to enrich the Fauna of our Wiltshire strata. 
