president's address. 103 



new member was elected on this occasion. Few plants appear 

 to have been gathered during the excursion; but Mr. Joseph 

 Cobb, of Sunderland, records his meeting with the rare Carex 

 pendula, one of the finest of this extensive genus. He observes 

 that it grows four or five feet high, with graceful pendulous fer- 

 tile spikes, and fine broad ribbon-like leaves. 



In the absence of more detailed information we may assume 

 that the members visited the quaint old fishing and ship building 

 town by the Esk side, as well as enjoyed the more modern com- 

 forts of the new town on the cliff. Perhaps I may conclude also 

 that they did not return without some of St. Hilda's petrified 

 serpents, or specimens for those at home of Whitby's jet orna- 

 ments. 



The position of the ruined Abbey of Whitby is a great con- 

 trast to those usually selected with such taste and care by the 

 enterprising monks seven or eight centuries ago. In their fore- 

 sight as colonists and civilizers, as well as men devoted to the 

 service of God, they usually chose for their habitation places 

 where running water, and if possible wood and shelter, could be 

 found, and the cultivation of a not unfriendly soil might go hand 

 in hand with the work of the church and the school. But per- 

 haps the very early foundation of this abbey in Saxon times, 

 when ruder and it may be hardier modes of life prevailed, may 

 have led to the choice of this spot, which when once occupied 

 was not afterwards abandoned. 



It is interesting to compare the existing ruins of the abbey 

 with those of another abbey erected about the same time, that 

 of Bievaulx, near Helmsley. "While the architectural mouldings 

 in the latter are in many parts perfectly sharp and fresh, at 

 Whitby, owing to long exposure to tempestuous weather, the 

 stone is often quite crumbled away. A fine collection of the 

 fossils of Whitby, and those of the Lias formation generally was, 

 if it is not still, carefully preserved at Lartington Hall on the 

 Tees, the fruit of the devotion to geology of the late Mr. Henry 

 Witham. 



On a future occasion this part of Yorkshire might be searched 

 for several interesting plants : for example, the Comas suecica, 



