414 Bibliographical Notices. 
of purely local interest, of some paper containing important results 
in connexion with the subject of his special studies. 
This difficulty would be certainly not altogether got over, but to 
a considerable extent diminished, if the members of all our smaller 
local societies and field-clubs would adopt the same plan as the 
Cumberland Association, which owes its origin, we believe, to the 
efforts of the late Rev. J. Clifton Ward. This Association consti- 
tutes a central body to which all the local associations in Cumber- 
land are affiliated ; it holds one meeting annually, and its meetings 
are movable feasts, after the fashion of those of the British Associ- 
ation, or, more accurately, the annual meetings of the Tyneside and 
Berwickshire Field-Clubs ; but the Cumberland Association prints 
in its ‘Transactions’ not only the papers read at the annual 
meeting, but also a selection of the more valuable communications 
made during the year to its affiliated local societies. It is this 
plan, if it can be carried out without producing heartburnings, that 
gives a special value to the publications of the Association ; the 
ambition which prompts the secretaries of small local societies to 
seat themselves in the editorial chair is crushed back by the weight 
of the Association, and thus the chaff is to a great extent winnowed 
from the wheat. 
Thus in the present number, which contains 215 pages besides 
the preliminary official matter, we have only twelve articles, two of 
which, namely the Address of the President, Mr. Robert Ferguson, 
M.P., and a paper by the Rev. T. Ellwood, relate to the ethnology 
of the district, treated from a linguistic point of view, while a third, 
by the Rev. H. D. Rawnsley, deals with the formation of a Lake- 
District Permanent Defence Society, which we hope may meet with 
full success in its endeavours ; and a fourth, by Mr. Fisher Cros- 
thwaite, gives some curious particulars with regard to an immigration 
of German miners to Keswick in the sixteenth century. All the 
rest are of more or less interest. to naturalists. For the botanist we 
have a “Contribution towards a list of Cumberland Mosses,” by the 
Rev. R. Wood, recording the occurrence of 183 species, chiefly in a 
limited locality, embracing the parishes of Westward and Caldbeck ; 
additions by the same author to the list of Flowering-plants growing 
in Cumberland ; and a note on the Botany of the Calder valley, by Mr. 
William Hodgson ; andthe entomologist will find a catalogue of the 
Lepidoptera of West Cumberland, by Mr. G. Mawson; all of interest 
in connexion with the geographical distribution of species. An 
important paleontological article is contributed by Mr. J. Postle- 
thwaite, on the Graptolites of the Skiddaw Slates, in which the 
author notices all the forms of those curious organisms which have oc- 
curred in the formation, and supplements it witha note of the localities 
where Graptolites have been found in the Skiddaw Slates, and a list of 
published works relating to the subject. Mr. T. V. Holmes has a short 
paper on the Geology of the Carlisle basin in connexion with water- 
supply ; and the editor, Mr. J. G. Goodchild, furnishes a contribution 
towards a list of minerals occurring in Cumberland and Westmore- 
land, besides a long and exceedingly interesting memoir of the late 
