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PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS by DR. J. BEDDOE, LL.D., F.E.S. 

 AT THE BRADFORD-ON-AVON MEETING, JUNE 29th, 1909. 



It is my first duty to return hearty thanks to the Society for 

 my election to be their President, all the more as I do not belong- 

 to the county by birth or descent. 



It is indeed no mean connty over which, in the archaeological 

 point of view, I am called on to preside. The Society has another 

 very important side, that of Natural History, which in some 

 counties, for example among our neighbours of Gloucestershire 

 and Bristol, claims the allegiance of flourishing Societies devotee 

 to it alone. In this county, however, Geology and Zoology may 

 perhaps be said to take a subordinate position, not that they have 

 little importance, but that Archaeology has more. "Wiltshire, 

 indeed, falls into the south eastern and eastern division of England 

 the division which lies east of a line drawn from Scarborough 

 through Nottingham and Warwick to Bridport, a division which 

 includes no rocks older than the new red or blue lias, no igneous 

 rocks with the exception of Charnwood Forest, nothing that we can 

 call a mountain or a waterfall, and no hill that rises over 1000ft 

 with the solitary exception of Inkpen Beacon, which is eccentrii 

 only to the extent of lift., a division which, roughly speaking, i 

 Saxon, agricultural, coalless, the home of the nightingale, and t 

 cradle of the Anglo-Saxon race and power. These characterise 

 together with remoteness from the sea, somewhat lessen the scop' 

 of Wiltshire Natural History. 



But in archaeological material we distinctly shine. We may no 

 compare with Yorkshire in the matter of ruined abbeys, nor wit! 

 Norfolk and Somerset in that of churches ; nor can Wiltshire o 

 any other county be mentioned with Northumberland when Romai 

 antiquities are in question : nothing can compete with thaj 

 wonderful wall. And in number of interesting historical sites w^ 

 cannot claim any very high position, though we are not deficien 

 in that respect, as I will note presently. But it is when we travel 



