232 PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



premising that during the past year they have been limited to 

 five, instead of six. In this respect we have reverted to the ear- 

 lier practice of the Club, the final meeting at Marsden or St. 

 Mary's Island having been omitted. For information connected 

 with the meetings held at Ebchester and Holy Island, which 

 from unavoidable circumstances I was unable to attend, I am 

 chiefly indebted to our esteemed and obliging Secretary, Mr. 

 Thomas Thompson. 



The First Field Meeting of the Season was held on the 25th 

 of May, at South Shields. The weather was all that could be 

 desired, fine, warm, and genial; the day in its vernal beauty 

 resembling those of which our older poets have sung, when " win- 

 ter lingering chills" not "the lap of May." Thus favoured in 

 our inaugural excursion to an easily accessible centre, the mem- 

 bers assembled to the number of about an hundred, many ladies 

 also honouring us with their presence during the afternoon. On 

 our arrival at the High Shields Station the Rev. Dr. Hooppell 

 met and conducted us first to the. site of the underground fire, 

 Harrison's Court, between West Holborn and the Commercial 

 Road. Standing here in the midst of smoking ruins and dis- 

 mantled houses, the scene resembled part of some beleagured 

 town in the late Franco -German war after a recent bombardment, 

 rather than the heart of a peaceful English sea-port. Thin jets 

 of malodorous vapour were issuing from fissures in the cindery 

 banks up which we laboriously climbed to the place where the 

 destructive subterranean fire is said to have originated. The 

 first indication seems to have shown itself in February, 1872, at 

 a spot pointed out near a foundry. If not arising from sponta- 

 neous combustion in the very inflammable materials of these 

 rubbish heaps, a dormant fire smouldering in the refuse from the 

 ancient salt-pans for which South Shields has been famous from, 

 at least, the year 1489, down to the beginning of this century, 

 it may have originated in "a strong fire applied externally to 

 the heap." As we passed through a narrow lane from Carpen- 

 ter's Hill we saw a practical proof of its alarming character. 

 Besides the twenty houses already destroyed others were in 



