PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
97 
concluded with a description of the various~proeesses employed in dressing and 
preparing the different ores for smelting, and finally for the public market. 
The attendance upon these lectures has not been throughout so numerous as 
we could have wished; for though the subject was not, possibly, the most popu¬ 
lar that could have been selected, the information which was conveyed was of 
that kind which could not fail of interesting a large class of the population of a 
country so rich in mineral productions as Great Britain.- Cheltenham 
hooker-on. 
GLOUCESTERSHIRE ZOOLOGICAL, BOTANICAL, AND HORTICUL¬ 
TURAL SOCIETY. 
The first annual meeting of this society took place Jan. 1, 1838, at the Ro¬ 
tunda. H. N. Trye, Esq., the High Sheriff of the County, having been called 
to the chair, the Secretary proceeded to read the report of the Sub-Committee of 
Management, which took a review of the principal objects which during the past 
year had engaged the attention of the Managers, and gave a highly satisfactory 
account of the progress that had been made in the various works, and the present 
state of the Gardens. The Committee having limited their operations to a por¬ 
tion of the design, speak with great confidence of their hope that this portion 
will be in a sufficiently advanced state by Spring to justify the opening of the 
Gardens on the 24th of May, the anniversary of their commencement and the 
birth-day of the Queen. A circumstance was adverted to in connection with the 
quality of the soils composing the Gardens, the report of which is of so much 
importance to those who are interested in the success and prosperity of the un¬ 
dertaking that we think it cannot be too generally known; we therefore feel it 
incumbent to give the passage alluding to the subject as near as may be in the 
precise words of the official document:— 
“ The Sub-Committee deem it right to inform the Shareholders in this under¬ 
taking, that while engaged in excavating and cutting through the ground for the 
insertion of these various drains and watercourses, they had an opportunity 
afforded them of verifying the report of the scientific gentlemen who at the for¬ 
mation of this Society examined the ground, for the purpose of ascertaining its 
adaptability to the purposes for which it was designed; the only important 
variation from that estimate which they observed being in the extent of the 
underlying sand beds throughout the ground, which, they have great pleasure in 
stating, were found upon examination to contain a much larger proportion to the 
other soils than was at first expected. In these sand beds a number of springs 
were discovered, the streams from which have been carefully collected and con¬ 
ducted into the lake, thus securing to that important feature an abundant supply 
of fresh water, and thereby rendering the Gardens in some measure independent 
