MENDIP BONE (JAVERNS. 27 



tesselated pavernent, the blunted spear, and the rüde celt, 

 carry us down along the stream of tinie, from the present 

 to the long-forgotten past. And even when all human 

 rernains or tokens of human agency fail, the stream of 

 historic knowledge still flows on — our fossils and rocky 

 memorials of the past carrying us on further and further 

 into the abyss of time, tili the mind is lost in amazement 

 at the vast and infinite resources of creative Wisdom, and 

 in gratitude for the beneficence which has laid open this 

 record to our gaze. This imperfect expression of senti- 

 ments I have long and deeply feit, and which have secured 

 for this Society what Services I have been able to render, 

 will explain why I have generally selected, as the subjects 

 of the papers to which you kindly listen, some one or 

 other of the departments of our valuable Museum. I fully 

 share with my colleagues and associates in the desire to 

 make our Museum not merely a pleasant lounge, füll of 

 rare and curious things, but an incentive and help to study 

 — a means of making our members, and especially our 

 young friends, good naturalists and zealous antiquaries. 



Among the fossils and rocks in the Museum illustrat- 

 ing the geological formations of this county, we have a 

 large and valuable collection of bones, which throw much 

 light on the more recent deposits, and help us to picture 

 to ourselves the leading features of the animal and vege- 

 table world in this district during the time when our beds 

 of gravel and diluvial earth were deposited. To this 

 subject I purpose now more especially to direct your atten- 

 tion ; and for this we have ample materials at band. The 

 trunk of fossil oak dug up from beneath what are now 

 the foundations of Taunton Gaol ; the beautiful and won- 

 derfully-perfect head of the ßhinoceros, rcccntly found 

 in the same locality ; the tooth of an elephant, from Quan- 



