140 ANNUAL MEETING—PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
Naturalists, in whose hands he placed a powerful help when he taught 
us that there was scarcely one of the so-called inferior natures too wild 
and refractory to be conciliated by kindness. 
As a practical step, it is thought that a model of the district, as 
worked by each society, would help each section or field-club, and should 
be constructed on the scale of the largest Ordnance map, (six inches to 
mile,) so that the contour of the district and every special spot can be 
clearly marked. 
For Geological members, Leicestershire, inits Charnwood Rocks, offers 
special attractions. Professor Judd lately told us he had rarely visited a 
district that comprised, in so small a space, so many illustrations or so 
much material for study. The points for observation and inquiry set 
down in the notes for the excursion will furnish topics for com- 
parison with similar formations in other parts of the district. In 
following the course of the Rhetic beds from the Severn to the Humber, 
Mr. Harrison has described them as forming part of the strata disclosed 
in some clay pits on the east side of the town. Striking illustrations of 
the glacial drift, and of the erratic boulders of the Midlands, are also to 
‘be seen near Leicester. 
In the name of my fellow townsmen, I beg to give you a hearty 
welcome to Leicester. In the town you will find that, having built on 
the earliest foundations of our national life, the ground beneath usis a 
series of strata, which have been laid successively by ancient Britons, 
Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans. Our Museum has vestiges of 
each and all of them, and by slow degrees each layer and each race 
received and shows ‘‘its form and pressure.” The various convulsions of 
the social fabric are seen here and there in a rock of one condition or 
formation of life, protruding through and marking the general crust of 
the other. So the past in our old town ties itself in with the new. 
This cannot be altered any more than in the face of nature; 
and we do not regret it, because it contributes an element of 
individuality and variety to the scenery of our social life. 
' Perhaps we are not so rapidly overrun with modern ideas as other and 
newer districts, but we may not part so readily with what is good in older 
notions. So much for our people. In the town we shall show you, if 
not the very habits in which our ancestors lived before and during and 
after the Roman rule, yet the ornaments they wore, the pavements they 
trod, parts of the fanes in which they worshipped, and the urns to 
which their ashes were consigned. Mr. Kelly, our eminent local 
archaeologist, will, with Mr. Reeve and Mr. Nevinson, describe them. 
In the county we shall show you Charnwood Forest, with its microcosm 
of Geology, and under the guidance of your able secretary you will 
enjoy a clinical demonstration which the previous researches and 
speculations of Whewell and Sedgwick, of Jukes, Ansted and Judd 
have invested with special interest. 
Mr. Mott will take such as prefer the Flora of our county through its 
selected haunts, and tell you all that is as yet ascertained upon a subject 
he has made his own. 
