2 TWELPTII ANNUAL MEETING. 



difFerent reports — the obtaining mateiials f'or a County 

 Histoiy worthy of Somersetsliire. He trusted tliat as 

 Hutchinson 's " Dorsetshire " was being brought out in 

 an improved and valuable form, so CoUinson's " Somerset- 

 sliire " would be brought out in a greatly improved and 

 much more valuable form. In order to assist in obtaining 

 a history, it was most important that accounts of old 

 families in the county witli heraldic devices should be sent 

 to the Museum at Taunton, for nothing was more inter- 

 esting than the history of the people who lived in those 

 venerable houses of which Mr. Parker would give a 

 description. Mr. Parker could teil nearly everything 

 about the designs, conceits, and wishes of the archi- 

 tects and builders of those ancient houses ; but when 

 he carae to the successive occupiers of them, there he 

 stopped. Very little was known about the old families of 

 the county ; and it had often Struck him that Somerset was 

 a sort of Standing evidence of the vanity of those who 

 " think that their houses shall continue for ever : that their 

 dwelling-places shall endure from generation to generation : 

 and who call the lands after their own names." Where were 

 Eodneys, of Eodney Stoke ? "Where were the Lytes, of 

 Lyte's Gary? Where were the Fitzpaines, of Gary Fitzpaine? 

 And where, he must also ask, were the Ealphs of Brompton 

 Ealph, and the Nevilles, of Fifehead Ncville ? But though 

 so many families were swept from the face of the earth, 

 there Avere a few men of the county who could give a good 

 account, not only of themselvcs, but of their ancestors. 

 The AVarres of Hestercombe must have been men of valour 

 and renown, and their descendant had earned for himself 

 no little distinctiou. He was the Garibaldi of their 

 excursions, and as he trusted, would take the present 

 excursionists safely into the heart of the country, and. 



