The Annual Dinner. 



77 



keeps in other parts of England, it seems from its position — near the 

 river, and within the hounds of the Castle — to he far more likely 

 to he one of these well-known military mounds than anything of 

 still earlier date. At present it fulfils the unromantic hut useful 

 purpose of a water-tower for the College. At 5 o'clock the party 

 assembled for tea in the Master's garden, where they were most 

 hospitably entertained hy The Master and Mrs. Bell ; and after- 

 wards, under the guidance of Mr. Meyrick, President of the College 

 Natural History Society, proceeded to inspect the very admirahle 

 MUSEUM. The excellent arrangement and lahelling of the specimens 

 is a pattern to similar institutions, and Marlborough may well feel 

 proud of the fact not only that she led the way among the great 

 schools of England in the formation of a Natural History Society 

 among her scholars, but that that society has continued ever since 

 its foundation to do such excellent work under the successive leader- 

 ship of many able naturalists amongst the masters. The collections 

 themselves are of much value and interest, not the least remarkable 

 objects being the really marvellous models of sea anemones and 

 medusae in glass, made by a glass worker in Dresden, who has 

 since been appropriated by the naturalists of the United States. 



At 7 o'clock thirty-nine Members attended the ANNUAL DINNER 

 at the Ailesbuiy Arms Hotel, and then adjourned to the Town 

 Hall for the Evening Conversazione, at which some seventy-four 

 were present. The proceedings began by a very interesting address 

 by Mr. E. Doran Webb, F.S.A., on the " History of the Hundred 

 and Church of Eamsbury " ; which, after the interval devoted to 

 music, under the direction of The Mayor, was followed by Mr. 

 J. W. Brooke's paper on " Early Man in Marlborough." Mr. 

 Brooke had, at the cost of great personal labour, arranged round 

 the Town Hall the most notable objects from his collections of 

 antiquities — thus forming a museum certainly more extensive and 

 interesting than any got together for very many years past at any 

 Meeting of the Society, if indeed there has been any collection ex- 

 hibited like it since the Society's foundation. The chief features of 

 the collection were the flint implements and the coins, the former 

 collected — with the exception of a fine case of Palaeolithic specimens 



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