12 FIRST ANNUAL MEETING. 
coal fields of Staffordshire, Yorkshire, and Newcastle would 
be exhausied. Then our posterity would see the manufac- 
turers of Birmingham transported to the coal fields of Mon- 
mouthshire. 
Having apologised for this digression, Dr. Buckland 
proceeded to say that the history of the county of Somerset 
might be considered a type of the physical history of 
England. Its description might be mäde to form a small 
monograph—its subterranean antiquities forming one side, 
and its present natural history the other. He trusted that 
this society would givea stimulus to some properly qualified 
person to undertake such amonograph. Among the many 
advantages ofa society pursuing the study of ante-deluvian, 
and post-deluvian, and medisval times, ihe first was that 
it afforded the only occasion he knew for eultivating those 
feelings of brotherly love and friendship which he rejoiced 
to see existing among all classes, however differing one 
from another in politics or ıeligion ; it afforded newiral 
ground, on which persons of all parties in religion and 
politics, might meet : and he rejoiced to say that amongst 
the wise provisions of this institution there was one which 
forbad all discussions on subjeets of a religious or political 
character. Here they met as brethren, as subjects of one 
common government, and children of one common God ; 
and it was their business, to investigate the works of the 
Almighty in creation, and the works of Man in the ages 
long gone by, to collect evidence and documents concerning 
past political events, which affeeted us little now, except 
as they were beacons to admonish us to avoid those poli- 
tical errors into which our forefathers often fell and perished. 
Antiquity, he need not tellthem, was of two kinds—natural 
and artificial—the earliest comprehending the works of 
God, and the later kind the works of man. The natural 
