318 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
4th Part of our Transactions by Mr. Loftus,* shew that a rich field 
is still open for research even in the common deposits of stones 
and mud, with which the surface of these counties is everywhere 
covered. 
It remains now to give a brief account of the meetings held 
during the year ; in drawing up which I have occasionally availed 
myself of the assistance afforded by the notes of our secretary 
Mr. Storey. 
The first field meeting took place on the 18th of May on the banks 
of the Wansbeck above Morpeth. The weather at the time of 
starting, and indeed during the day, being somewhat unfavourable 
but few of the members attended. They assembled at Morpeth 
station and strolled by the side of the Wansbeck as far as Mitford, 
and after a pleasant ramble of several hours, in which a few 
plants were collected, including Arabis hirsuta, Myrrhis odorata, 
Arabis thaliana, and several ferns, they returned towards Mor- 
peth. Two of the members, Mr. Storey and Mr. Burnet, in- 
tending to search for Lguwisetum umbrosum, had proceeded by an 
early train several miles to the northward of Morpeth. The 
Equisetum referred to appears to have been first noticed in Nor- 
thumberland, (only the second recorded English locality,) by Mr. 
Joseph Sidebotham, who announced this interesting discovery in 
the Phytologist for 1848. After walking three or four miles, they 
had the good fortune to collect several specimens of this rare plant 
on the banks of the Coquet near Felton ; but as the season was 
somewhat advanced only two fertile stems were procured. By the 
* Tt may be as well to notice here a small mistake in Mr. Loftus’s paper, 
where he states that a block of porphyry observed by myself on the Lanchester 
road near Sunnyside was similar to what is now found in the Cumberland 
mountains. The boulder which I observed, nearly twenty years ago, was of 
Cheviot porphyry, and consequently leads to a difterent inference as to the 
direction of the current that brought it there. 
I mentioned to Mr. Loftus my having observed at the same time among the 
water-worn stones taken from the neighbouring fields and broken up to mend 
the roads, more than one example of the Cumberland rocks, especially of the 
epidotic porphyry of which the celebrated boulder stone of Borrowdale is 
composed. This may have led to the mistake. 
