The Opening Meeting, £41 



parochial history, on geology, on natural history, and kindred 

 subjects. 



" Union is strength, active co-operation, all working together, 

 will give us the power, vigour, and means to accomplish yet the 

 vast work that still lies before the Society." 



The report having been adopted, Archdeacon Buchanan next 

 proposed the following resolution : — " The Members of the Wiltshire 

 Archaeological and Natural History Society, in General Meeting 

 assembled at Devizes, having heard with the greatest possible regret 

 the announcement of the resignation by the Rev. Alfred Charles 

 Smith of the post of Honorary Secretary and Editor of the Magazine, 

 desire to record their grateful thanks to him for his valuable services 

 to the Society from its commencement, but more especially as Hono- 

 rary Secretary since 1857, and Editor of the Magazine since 3 864. 

 They feel most deeply the loss the Society sustains by Mr. Smith's 

 resignation, and desire to express a hope that he may long be spared 

 to render the valuable help which he has been so good as to promise 

 if health permit/' He said Mr. Smith had always placed his 

 literary ability and great capacity for business alike at the service 

 of the Society, and he was endeared to its Members by the unfailing 

 kindness and courtesy which marked him in everything that he did. 

 He had from the very beginning been the life of the Society, and 

 had infused his own enthusiasm into their Meetings. He trusted 

 that Mr. Smith might live to watch over the interests of the Society 

 for very many years to come. 



The Rev. W. C. Plenderleath having seconded the resolution^ 

 The President said he should like to add a word or two to what 

 had been said. He deeply regretted that almost the first act of his 

 presidency should have been to receive Mr. Smith's resignation, 

 Mr. Smith had long been a hard-working archaeologist^ and his 

 great work on the British and Roman antiquities of North Wilts 

 was not only of great interest in itself, but was of the utmost im- 

 portance as a basis for future research. For if ever the antiquities 

 of North Wilts came to be properly explored and excavated whoever 

 undertook that work would find Mr. Smith's book an invaluable 

 foundation for it. 



