114 president's addeess. 



hid Bamburgh from view being surmounted, unrivalled scenes 

 broke on the eye; forwards was queenly Bamburgh, seawards 

 Holy Island and the Fames, landwards Kyloe Hills and distant 

 Cheviot. Bamburgh reached, the party broke into two sections. 

 Birds, rocks, and plants afforded gratification to some, whilst 

 castle, church, and priory garden proved more attractive to 

 others. The latter revelled in the company of Ida and Oswald, 

 Aidan and Cuthbert, in myth and legend of the Laidley Worm 

 and Bamburgh Toad ; recalled the adventures of the Forsters, 

 especially Dorothy ; saw with regret the tomb of Grace Darling 

 shattered by last I^ovember's great wind-storm ; watched with 

 interest the excavations Lord Armstrong is making under the 

 watchful supervision of Professor Hughes of Cambridge, and 

 heard with delight that a coin was just found. This small coin 

 proved to be a Saxon styca of the reign of Eanred. Other things 

 found were a spindle-whorl ; a sinker of garnetiferous gneiss ; 

 bones of deer and domestic animals ; oyster, mussel, limpet, and 

 winkle shells in the lowest midden layers, with coal and cockles 

 also in the upper. Outside excavations in the Bowl Hole (Burial 

 Hole), a traditional Danish cemetery, proves this to have been 

 earlier a British burial place. The circular enclosure by large 

 boulders, the depth of the graves, the position of the interred 

 bodies doubled up and resting on the left side, besides the 

 brachycephalic skulls, point to no other conclusion. 



After dinner, at the Yictoria Hotel, the President showed a 

 fine orange-and-black-banded Carrion Beetle, Necrophorus rus- 

 pator. and its nest with six young grubs (not a rolled ball with 

 a single grub). The nest was a sphere of about one and a half 

 inches diameter, made of fibres of horse-dung matted into a felt, 

 and lying in a round hole formerly occupied by a mouse nest. 

 It was found August 1st in the Eectory Garth. The mother 

 kept guard outside the nest and near its aperture, which was 

 small and uppermost. Three very large mushrooms reminded 

 Mr. Thompson of Mr. Cobb's queer mushroom bed, found last 

 month, under the glass foot-light to a cellar, close to Sunderland 

 Central Station. The first crop yielded twelve, a second ten ; 

 several were three inches across, all full of moisture and equal 



