18 FIRST ANNUAL MEETING. 
But the vents that have discharged igneous rocks in the 
hills of Somerset are few ; one at Hestercombe, in the south 
flank of Quantock, was described by Mr. Horner, more than 
30 years ago ; a second was noticed by myself in 1817, on 
the N. W. shoulder of Broadfield-down, near the upper ter- 
minus of Brockley Combe : of this I have published no 
account, and I am not aware that it has been recognized by 
any subsequent observer: a third has been laid open by a 
railway cutting at the west end of the Mendip chain, 
near Uphill. 
A rich iron is to be found near Minehead. He might 
mention (though somewhat reluctantly, because it appeared 
egotistical,) that after Sir H. De la Beche, with his staff of 
geological offlicers, had gone over the ground, they could 
not find a single error in his map of Mendip, whilst per 
contra, he had detected a military error in the ordnance 
map—a camp on the Mendip hills, which had been put in 
the wrong place; the Mendip and Dartmoor and Quantock 
hills, and nearly all the hills in the world, had been raised, 
from the bottom of the sea, in which they were formed, to 
become the more or less perfect abodes of the human race. 
The rev. gentleman then turned to consider the various 
kinds of stone observable in the geological formation of the 
county. There was the lias which extended largely over 
England, France, and Germany. That lias was not only 
of use to the architect, for making Roman cement and 
pavements, but useful also to the Paleeontologist. It wasa 
formation of which it might be truly said, as Virgil said of 
some lands prolific of the farmer’s pests, 
« Quzx plurima terre 
Monstra ferunt.”” 
The monsters of the lias were, indeed, most awful monsters, 
they were ereatures which, had the present company been 
