12 PRESIDENTIAL ADDKESS, 



The Eoman Camp at the Lawe was next visited, when we had 

 the satisfaction of seeing that these fine historical remains are 

 being carefully walled in by the authorities, and will it is hoped 

 be protected from further vandalism. The members then walked 

 through a pouring rain to Marsden, where, under the guidance 

 of Mr. J. Daglish, viewer to the "Whitburn Coal Company, they 

 inspected the bone deposits recently discovered in old, sea-formed 

 caves at the Lizards, and after tea in the Marine Grotto, a most 

 interesting paper, which forms part of the last volume of our 

 Transactions, was read by Mr. Howse on the Bone Caverns of 

 the Lizards. 



There have been no Evening Meetings this year, owing, I am 

 sorry to say, to the absence of papers to warrant them. And we 

 also as a Club have to express our thankfulness to the good Pro- 

 vidence, which, during a trying and severe season, enables your 

 President to announce that there is no obituary notice of a mem- 

 ber since our ranks have been unthinned by death. 



It will be seen from the outline of our excursions which I have 

 briefly given that the Club cannot claim to have added much 

 either to general or individual natural research by its excursions 

 in the past year. An exceptionally unpropitious season has 

 damped and checked the ardour of botanical or entomological in- 

 vestigation, and the attention of our members on their holidays 

 has been rather directed to archaeological and ecclesiological ob- 

 jects of interest than to the products of nature. Yet we must 

 allow that here if anywhere art and nature harmonize ; the 

 Lichen, the Moss, and the Spleenwort are in perfect keeping with 

 the N^orman peel-tower whose chinks they decorate; and we 

 naturalists do not despise archaeology. In fact as the ground of 

 the two counties becomes more and more trodden and familiar, 

 its botanical and zoological interest must be sDon completely ex- 

 hausted, so far as discovery is concerned ; not indeed as regards 

 its educational power for the young naturalist. While at the 

 same time on this border land we can scarce set down a foot on 

 a spot which is not redolent of history, nay, which is not a strati- 

 fied historical deposit, which has been two thousand years in 



