630 president’s address. 
the Bass Rock, taken in 1690. Mr. A. W. Preston’s 
Meteorological Notes for 1908, and Mr. T. J. Wigg’s Notes on 
the Herring Fishery for 1908, were brought forward, and 
taken as read, and the members then adjourned to the Keep 
to inspect the magnificent new case of Lions. 
On looking through the long and honoured list of our 
former Presidents, I find that forty year's have elapsed 
since the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society was 
founded under the Chairmanship of the Rev. J. Crompton, 
and not once since his retirement from that office has 
a member of my profession had the high honour of occupying 
this chair ! But one has only to glance through the Volumes 
of our Transactions, to see how greatly the Society has 
prospered, without such benefit of clergy ! 
Allow me to take this opportunity for thanking most 
heartily those members to whom I am in any wise indebted 
for the exalted position which I occupy to-night, an honour 
as fully appreciated as it was entirely uninvited and 
unsought, and one which I was only persuaded to accept 
in consequence of the retirement at the eleventh hour of 
a more accomplished previous candidate, together with the 
assurance that, in consequence of my living at a distance 
from Norwich, I should be let off (unfined) for missing the 
Monthly Meetings ! 
May I also, therefore, avail myself of this opportunity to 
thank you all for your clemency, and especially those 
gentlemen who have, in my absence, presided over your 
deliberations far more ably than I possibly could have done ! 
Now, as to my address this evening, I am no scientific 
naturalist, merely a dabbler in country pursuits, born as it 
were, with a gun in my hand rather than with a microscope 
or science primer before me ! Two Golden Crested Wren’s 
eggs, still in my possession, and taken at Kelling Hall in 
1864, bear witness, however, to the fact that I started taking 
some sort of interest in oology soon after I was seven years 
