Presidential Address by Dr. J. Beddoe, LL.D., F.E.S. 203 



beyond history into the dusk of time that we rank highest. My 

 old friend Sir Daniel Wilson, Principal of the University of 

 Toronto, wrote an excellent book on the Pre-historic Annals of 

 Scotland. Well ! words change their significance woundily with 

 lapse of time and change of conditions. A journal should mean 

 a daily thing, but some journals that I know are published twice 

 a year. However, annals relate to known years ; and I thought 

 my friend's book should have been called the Pre-annalic History 

 of Scotland. And it is in pre-annalic history that we especially 

 shine, the kind of history in which, if a man attempts to date an 

 object within 200 years, we begin to distrust him as too precise. 

 Possibly a comparison of Wiltshire with another single county 

 may be more interesting and instructive ; and I will take Somerset 

 : — our western neighbour — undoubtedly one of the foremost of 

 English counties in several respects. 



Somerset, with its long stretch of sea and estuary coast, its wide 

 marsh land, its cliffs, mountains, and caves, and its greater 

 varieties of climate, is, certainly, a better field for zoologists, 

 botanists, and geologists. It has some remarkably fine mediaeval 

 and Tudor houses, such as Sutton Court, Montacute,andBarrington ; 

 but against these we have Littlecote and Stockton, as well as two 

 fine and almost unique specimens in their several ways, which 

 we propose to show you : one in fact, our Bradford Hall, you 

 have already seen, the other, Wraxall, you will see to-morrow. 

 ; Longleat, the finest of all, is common to both counties. In 

 Churches we must yield the palm : Salisbury and Wells can hardly 

 be compared; but few, I think would not rate Salisbury as high as 

 the second class, that which immediately follows York and Lincoln 

 Minsters. It is by the number and beauty of its country Churches, 

 and especially of their towers, that Somerset deserves the palm ; 

 for the fine Churches of Wiltshire seem to be almost confined to 

 the towns, and their towers are not a great feature. Of the few 

 noticeable ones that I can recollect, three, those of Colerne, West- 

 wood and Stourton, are actually on the Somerset border. The 

 small group of saddleback towers within the ancient parish of 

 Bradford is of some interest. Part of our Western border is 



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