2 
PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 
in the past year, so as to make it quite impossible for me to attend 
all the meetings. If this Society depended for its success upon 
the exertions of its President I should never have ventured to take 
the office ; but it is not so, and though the formal papers may not 
be quite so many as they have been in some other years, still I feel 
that there has been no meeting during the past year which has not 
been thoroughly interesting to those who attended it. 
In referring briefly to these meetings I have omitted the mention 
of those papers which are printed in extenso in the ‘ Transactions.’ 
At the first meeting it was decided that a letter be sent to the 
Members of Parliament for the City and County asking for their 
general support to the principle of the Wild Birds Protection Act, 
1899. I think I am right in saying that every one of those 
gentlemen replied most favourably. 
At the same meeting a section of an Oak, from Messrs. Wright 
and Turner, of Mountergate Street, was exhibited by myself. It 
shew a very peculiar growth of “ Sap ” such as Messrs. Wright and 
Turner, with their very large experience, say they have never met 
with before. The tree seems to have been injured in some way 
so that the sap and bark decayed almost, if not quite, round 
a considerable length of the trunk, then a new layer of healthy 
sap seems to have grown over the decayed part, at least it shows 
a great effort of nature to heal an injury. The section is now in 
the Castle-Museum. 
The next meeting was held on 30th May, when there was on 
the table a tooth of Elephas antiquus, which was very plainly 
marked with glacial scratchings, and was considered by the late 
Mr. John Gunn as one of his pet specimens, and which Mr. Peeve 
secured at the time of Mr. Gunn’s decease. Teeth, or, indeed, 
any organic remains showing glaciation, being extremely rare, the 
interest in this specimen is not only that it shows the effect of the 
ice action, but also proves the animal to have lived in glacial or 
pre-glacial times, it being generally recognised as a distinct species 
intermediate between Meridionalis and Primigenius, the former 
being the older form of the Elephant, and the latter being the 
Mammoth of the Siberian finds. I was cable to compare and 
