A Day with the Field-Clubs. 395 



A DAT WITH THE FIELD CLUBS. 



BY THOMAS WEIGHT, M.A., F.S.A. 



Peehaps many of our readers will hardly know what a Field- 

 Club is, although, during the last few years, this sort of society 

 has become very fashionable in some parts of our island. 

 Natural History Societies have existed long in almost every 

 country town, and they have established museums, and, from 

 time to time, listened to lectures ; but the field-club presents a 

 different and a pleasanter method of studying science. Gen- 

 tlemen, and ladies too, form themselves into a society for the 

 purpose, not of sitting on benches in a close room to listen to 

 a lecture, but of meeting at a pre-appointed locality, and of 

 strolling together during a long summer day over the country 

 around to explore its geology, its botany, its natural history, 

 or its antiquities. Particular districts must, of course, be more 

 congenial than others to associations of this description; and 

 among these favoured districts stand foremost the beautiful 

 counties on the borders of Wales, in which apparently the 

 idea of field- clubs originated, and where they are still more 

 numerous than in other parts of the island. The first of which 

 I have any knowledge was the Woolhope Club, which was 

 established partly by the exertions of the late Pev. T. T. Lewis, 

 and of which his friend Sir Roderick (then Mr.) Murchison 

 was one of the earliest members. Woolhope is a parish in a 

 very picturesque part of Herefordshire, the country around 

 which possesses great interest for the geologist, and hardly 

 less for the botanist; but the original object of this club was 

 to explore the geology of this particular district. Gradually 

 the Woolhope club abandoned geology to a considerable degree 

 and devoted itself to botany, and at one time went so far as 

 to offer prizes to its members for the discovery of plants of 

 unusual rarity. The idea of these clubs next passed the border 

 of this county into that of Worcester ; but the Worcester Field- 

 Club assumed more the character of a Natural History Society. 

 At a subsequent period a field-club was established at Malvern, 

 which has met with considerable success, and set the good 

 example of forming a museum for its collections. The 

 taste for these clubs extended from Worcester in two direc- 

 tions — southward into Gloucestershire, where the Cotswold 

 Field-Club rose into existence, a small and rather aristocratic 

 body, and northward to the mineral districts on the Stafford- 

 shire border, where quite recently a field-club was formed at 

 Dudley, which is the most numerous society of this class yet 



