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rooms — an upper and a lower. The hops are distributed over the floor of 

 the upper room, which is covered witli a horsehair mat, and is so constructed 

 that the hot air of the room below can pass up through the floor and the 

 horsehair mat, and so dry the hops arranged upon it. The hot air is driven 

 in to the lower room by a fan from an engine. The hops take about twelve 

 hours to dry, and are then ready for pressing into bags, to be sent to market. 



After lunch at the Talbot Hotel, Knightsford Bridge, the Members 

 ascended Ankerdine Hill. This hill is composed mainly of May Hill Sand- 

 stone, and is one of the most prominent eminences of the hills that, geologically 

 and geographically, are a continuation of the hills in the neighbourhood of 

 Malvern and Ledbury. Further north, the more prominent hills are the 

 Woodbury and Abberley Hills. At the foot of the eastern slope of the 

 Ankerdine Hill is a fault by which the Trias has been let down against the 

 Silurian. The Silurian rocks have been thrust up, and in places, from be- 

 neath there appear patches of Archaean rocks, as at Martley. To the west 

 are the Old Red Sandstone Beds, synclinally arranged, for from beneath them 

 on the west rise up Silurian rocks again. The diversified scenery where the 

 Lower Old Red beds occur is in a large measure due to the presence in them 

 of harder bands — " Cornstones." The valeland between the hill and Wor- 

 cester is richly wooded, and the red ground of the Trias on the east, and the 

 Old Red on the west, is to a large extent covered with well-kept hop gardens. 

 On the western side of the hill is the River Teme, pursuing a meandering 

 course, amid alluvial flats, before rushing through the Knightsford gap into 

 the Lower Severn Valley. 



The Members drove back to Worcester and left by the 6.24 p.tn. train. 



HALF-DAY EXCURSION to the 

 ROYAL AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, CIRENCESTER 



Saturday, July ist, 1911 

 Director : Prof. J. R. Ainsworth-Davis, M.A., F.C.P. 



The Members met at the College (Plate XXX.) at 4.15 p.m. 



The Principal, Prof. Ainsworth-Davis, and Miss Ainsworth-Davis gave 

 them a hearty welcome and kindly entertained them to tea. 



After tea, a tour of inspection was made of the College, beginning at 

 the Dining Hall, where the names of Diploma students from Henry Tanner, 

 the first on the list, in the year 1847, are inscribed on the walls. The chemical 

 laboratory, with its 15th century oak beams, the building having probably 

 originally been an old tithe barn, was the object of much interest. The 

 Principal's house, adapted from an old Tudor farmhouse that existed when 

 the College was built in 1845, and which contains a fine specimen of Jacobean 

 oak panelling in the dining-room was much admired. The visitors signed 

 their names in the Visitors' Book, which contains the signature of the late 

 King, when he visited the R.A.C. as Prince of Wales, on the occasion of the 

 jubilee of the College ; whilst on the same page are the signatures of two 

 former students, who figured in the Coronation honours, i.e., the Marquess 

 of Houghton and Sir John B. Bowen Jones, Bart. 



The party were shown the College Chapel, dedicated to St. George the 

 Martyr in 1909, and which contains the brasses to the memory of R. Jeffreys 

 Brown, Edward Holland, Langston of Sarsden, Sotheron Estcourt, the fourth 

 Earl Bathurst (first president), the fifth Earl Bathurst, the second Earl of 

 Ducie (first vice-president). Principal Haygarth (to whom the reredos is also 



