IRature IRotes : 
XEbc Selbovnc Society’s aDagasine. 
No. 138, JUNE, 1901. VoL. XII. 
ANNUAL MEETING AND CONVERSAZIONE. 
f^HE Society’s Annual Meeting and Conversazione was 
held on Thursday evening, May 16, at 20 , Hanover 
Square, W., Lord Avebury, the President, in the 
chair. 
Letters of regret at their inability to be present had been 
received from Lord Farrer, Earl Percy, Sir Edward Grey and 
the Right Hon. James Bryce. 
The following Report of the Council was then taken as read. 
The Council are aware of the fact that in presenting their Fifteenth Annual 
Report there can be little that is new to members who are conversant with the 
work of the Society as recorded in its Magazine. 
Nature Notes, under the able editorship of Prof. Boulger, F. L.S., F.G.S., 
continues its useful career of instruction in matters Selborniao, and has rendered 
good service by detecting and exposing attempts to destroy or injure places of 
natural beauty or interest. 
In the hope of extending the Society’s sphere of usefulness, the Council 
invited certain Natural History Societies in the country, chiefly in places where 
the Society had no branch, to nominate one of their members as Honorary Local 
Corresponding Secretary to the Selborne Society, and to the Council’s overture 
there has been a fair response. 
The threatened construction of a Laboratory in the Old Deer Park, Richmond, 
has been abandoned in favour of another site. 
The beautiful hill near Croydon, known as Croham Hurst, with an area of 
eighty acres of woodland and heath, has, it is hoped, been saved from destruction 
through the energies of a Committee under the secretaryship of Mr. Ed. A. 
Martin, F.G.S., initiated by the Croydon Branch of the Society. After two years’ 
agitation the Croydon County Council decided to purchase the remainder of the 
Hurst for ;^i5,ooo, and it now only remains for the Charity Commissioners to 
sanction the sale. 
The Ancient Whitgift Hospital Buildings at Croydon, being threatened with 
demolition, the same local branch has been instrumental in forming, with Mr. VV. 
Whitaker, B.A., F.R.S., as Chairman, and Dr. J. M. Hobson, B.Sc., as Hon. 
Secretary and Treasurer, a Croydon Antiquities Protection Committee, and it is 
