412 [Proc. B.N.F.C, 



Nor are our advantages limited to physical and natural objects of 

 interest. For, overhill and dale— cultivated field and wild waste moor- 

 land — are scattered the silent memorials of a long-forgotten ancestry, 

 whose crumbling monuments, rath and fort, cromlech and cairn, 

 remind u& of an age moved back by centuries behind the dawn of 

 the Christian era ; and of an ancient race, whose deeds of valour, 

 manly exploits, and tales of love and war, are only whispered in 

 the dying fables of a remote antiquity, or faintly chronicled in the 

 confused legends of mediaeval sages. With such a field of inte- 

 resting inquiry stretching around us in every direction, awaiting 

 our culture and promising a gathering of richest harvest, surely we 

 will not want for workers to assist in securing the promised advan- 

 tages. In order to explain how the Club should carry on its work, 

 Mr. Gray asked the meeting to accompany him on an imaginary 

 excursion, and said— The programme indicates that our destination 

 is a station on the coast. The secretaries have taken our tickets, 

 allotted us our places ; the whistle sounds, and we are off. We 

 have reached the coast. The sea — that grand old emblem of human 

 life — spreads out before us ; its surface fanned by a breeze just 

 sufficient to give it that expression of motion, without which it 

 loses half its beauty. A bold cliff, bare and rugged, looks sea- 

 ward, and on its craggy face exposes three well-marked zones, 

 the white Chalk above, and below the Red Sandstone, with an inter- 

 mediate band of blue and earthy Lias : three representations of 

 distinct and widely-separated ages of geological time. Landward, 

 the crumbling turret of some old Norman tower breaks up still 

 more the outline to the sky, and hardy plants that would perish in 

 the dusty inland hedgerows here delight in wind and spray, 

 and peep forth from nook and cranny to welcome our approach. 

 Just note the distribution of the party, and the different sources of 

 pleasure the same scene is capable of affording. The zoologist 

 has clambered over slimy rocks, and is already peering into the 

 bright pools fringed with purple and crimson algae, and tenanted 



