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NATURALISTS AT SADDLEWORTH. 



Here, at the Hare and Hounds, both parties met, and all the 

 straggling groups of independent investigators joined them. Tea — 

 a truly welcome and substantial Yorkshire tea — awaited the hungry 

 scientists, and over constantly-replenished plates of beef, ham and 

 tongue, and steaming cups of tea, notes were compared and captures 

 discussed. The room was a large upper chamber in which were several 

 quaint canopies of wood with various mottoes emblazoned thereon. 

 Under one of these sat a burly geologist with the solemn injunction 

 over his head * do justice,' a precept which he and his hungry 

 comrades, with mutual exhortation, faithfully carried out. Near them 

 were the botanists, who had to stoutly deny an assertion by the 

 hammer-men that they had got Malaxis paludosa^ a plant which, with 

 all their labour, the plant-men had been unable to find in its recorded 

 station. On this point appeal was made from the tea-table to the 

 sectional meetings, with the result that the mountain in labour 

 brought forth Orchis i7iaculata for Malaxis. 



The Sectional and General Meetings were held in the Lee Street 

 Schoolroom, which had been kindly lent by the Rev. Mr. Doig, vicar 

 of Uppermill. The chair at the general meeting was taken by an 

 old friend and ex-president of the Union, Prof. W. C. Williamson, 

 LL.D., F.R.S., of the Owens College, Manchester. The minutes of 

 the Leyburn meeting having been confirmed, the Hull Geological 

 Society was admitted into the Union by a unanimous vote, and Mr. 

 and Mrs. J. W. Bilbrough of Ben Rhydding were elected Members. 

 The roll-call showed that the forty or fifty members present repre- 

 sented ten societies. Mr. Thomas Hick, B.A., B.Sc, of the Owens 

 College, proposed a vote of thanks to Messrs. Lees and Abel Buckley 

 for granting permission to visit their estates, and to the Vicar for the 

 use of the schoolroom, to the leaders of the parties, and to all who 

 had co-operated with the secretaries in arranging the meeting. The 

 sectional reports were then taken. 



For the Vertebrate Section, Mr. Thomas Bunker, of Goole, 

 secretary of the section, reported that very few vertebrates were 

 noticed, and those in the Greenfield Valley only. These were the 

 Song Thrush, Blackbird, Ring Ouzel, Water Ouzel, Robin, Hedge 

 Accentor, Skylark, Yellow Bunting, Common Bunting, Starling, 

 Grouse, Magpie, Wheatear, Tree Pipit, and Cuckoo— fifteen in all. 



For the Conchological Section, in the absence of all its officers, 

 Mr. W. Denison Roebuck, F.L.S., reported that conchologically the 

 day was a blank, only two species having been seen by himself and 

 Messrs. E. Collier and J. Conacher, the highly unfavourable geological 

 character of the district being against molluscan life. The two 

 species were Avion bourguig?2aii^ found on the canal-side at Green- 

 Naturalist, 



