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MEETING OF NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETIES. 
MIDLAND UNION OF NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETIES. 
PETERBOROUGH MEETING, JUNE 25th and 26th, 1884. 
The Seventh Annual Meeting of the Union was held at Peter¬ 
borough during the last week of June. Favoured by glorious weather 
and a good attendance of members and their friends, the gathering 
proved a great success. 
The Council Meeting was held in the Town Hall on Wednesday, 
June 25th, at 12-45 p.m., and was attended by seventeen delegates. 
Reports from the Hon. Secretaries and the Management Committee 
were read, and the draft of the General Report was read and discussed. 
Mr. A. W. Wills ably brought forward the subject of the extermination 
of rare plants, and it was resolved that the Management Committee 
(on which twenty-four members were elected to serve) should at once 
consider the question. 
The Annual General Meeting was held in the Fitzwilliam Hall, 
at 8 p.m., on the same day. Previous to the meeting, the members 
partook of lunch in an adjoining room. About one hundred members 
and friends attended the meeting, among whom were Sir Herewald 
Wake and Mr. B. Thompson, F.G.S., Northampton; Messrs. W. P. 
Marshall, M.I.C.E., C. J. Watson, H. Miller, W. B. Grove, BA., 
Thos. Bolton, and J. Rabone, Birmingham ; E. de Hamel, Tamworth ; 
H. Pearce, F.L.S., Stourbridge; W. Madeley, George Perry, and — 
Williams, Dudley; Revs. O. M. Feilden and G. G. Monck, Oswestry ; 
Messrs. T. W. Cave, M.R.C.Y.S., and J. T. Jepson, Nottingham ; Dr. 
F. W. Crick, Bedford; Messrs. F. T. Mott, F.R.G.S., Leicester; 
G. C. Druce, Oxford, &c., a large number of the members of the 
Peterborough Natural History and Scientific Society, and the Hon. 
Secretaries to the Union (Messrs. J. W. Bodger, Peterborough; and 
W. J. Harrison, F.G.S., Birmingham). 
The President of the Union—the Very Rev. Dean Perowne—being 
unavoidably absent, the chair was occupied by Dr. T. J. Walker, who 
read the President’s Address, which dealt in a most interesting and 
thorough manner with the Cathedral of Peterborough, and the 
discoveries which have been made during the extensive alterations in 
that grand edifice which are now in progress. 
The thanks of the meeting having been tendered to the President 
for his very able address (which will be printed ih the September 
Number of the “Midland Naturalist”), Mr. W. J. Harrison read the 
Annual Report [see July No., p. 201], which was received and adopted. 
PRESENTATION OF THE DARWIN MEDAL. 
Dr. Walker then presented the Darwin Medal to Mr. W. B. 
Grove, B.A., announcing that it was awarded for the original 
researches of Mr. Grove among the Fungi. 
In acknowledging the receipt of the medal, Mr. Grove said that 
Charles Darwin had done much to raise the so-called “inexact” 
natural history sciences to the rank of “exact” sciences. He 
considered the Fungi to merit close and long-continued study, for 
they were intimately connected with many matters closely affecting 
the well-being of mankind. 
