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



Club has succeeded in accomplishing its natural survey work in 

 cataloguing and comparing the Fauna and Flora and rocks of 

 its district. 



The Club guide of 1874 gives an excellent summary of what 

 had been done in each subject up to that year. 



In Geology the field had been fairly well covered. The 

 glacial question is receiving careful attention and it is hoped by 

 working out the whole subject anew, in localities such as our 

 own, and recording on a uniform plan the observations made, 

 we shall arrive some time at a clearer knowledge of the history 

 of the glacial period, and be able, for instance, to describe with- 

 out gainsay how Co. Down was so formed as to receive its 

 name of '' County Up and Down." I think there is room for a 

 Geology of N. E. Ireland — a handbook from which we might 

 learn the chief facts about our own rocks with complete lists of 

 the local fossils which had been found in each, or if this were 

 too ambitious, what I have already suggested, papers in our 

 Proceedings on some special rock or circumscribed natural area 

 or district. 



The Government survey may be very good but it is incon- 

 venient and difficult of access. Why should there not be more 

 convenient and popular sketches ? A farmer in my parish 

 asked me lately to tell him where such could be got and 

 especially a good geological map of Co. Down and I could only 

 refer him to the sheets of the government survey maps, which 

 are beyond his reach and prohibitive in price. 



In Botany, the flowering plants and ferns have been worked 

 out and published with a fair approach to completeness, but 

 some of the critical groups remain incomplete, and there is 

 plenty of work, and hard work, still to be done at the Brambles 

 and Roses, Willow herbs, Chenopods, Docks, Willows, Pond- 

 weeds, and Grasses. The mosses have been fairly well worked 

 out but not so the Hepaticse. There is a list of fungi in our 

 Proceedings but the group is so immense that it might be 

 greatly enlarged, but there is none of Algae, marine or fresh 

 water, or of lichens, which is not creditable to our Club. 



