2 PKESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 



desire, withoiit further preface, to recall in chronological succes- 

 sion the memories of the pleasant and we trust not useless out- 

 ings of the past year. 



One remark applies to nearly all the meetings of the past year, 

 that the weather was for the most part unpropitious, and staunch 

 supporter as was your president of Lord Beaconsfield, no excep- 

 tional meteorological favour was shewn to the Club in the record 

 of the excursions among which very few Queen's days were to 

 be found. 



The FiEST Meeting was partially an exception, and on the 

 1 6th of May one hundred and ten members and friends mustered 

 at Eavensworth, the grounds and rooms of which were, by the 

 kindness of the Earl, thrown open to the inspection of the party. 



After seeing the fine pictures in the galleries, the members 

 proceeded through the grounds under the kind guidance of Mr. 

 Wallace and Mr. Mould, and saw the damage caused by the un- 

 precedentedly severe winter to the conifers and rarer evergreens. 

 None but our hardiest natives and the Ehododendrons appeared 

 to have escaped. After a pleasant ramble beyond the grounds 

 fifty of the party returned to the Eavensworth Arms, Lamesley, 

 to dinner. Here a paper was read by the Eev. A. "Watts, 

 of Durham, ''On a Limestone Boulder found near Hawthorn, 

 ground and scratched by glacial ice action." Mr. T. Thompson 

 exhibited a nest with the unusual number of ten eggs of the 

 Sparrow-hawk, taken in April, 1878, near Gilsland, in which 

 nest this year a pair of Long-eared Owls had reared their young. 

 The President spoke of the importance of the members of the 

 Club interesting themselves in the preservation of the Eoman 

 remains recently discovered in the excavated camp at South 

 Shields Lawe. A large portion of this has been generously 

 handed over for preservation to the Corporation of South Shields 

 by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and has since been carefully 

 walled in and protected, it is to be hoped, from danger of further 

 depredation. 



It cannot be said that this meeting added much either to natu- 

 ral or archaeological knowledge. It was perhaps too much of 



