XX 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 
2. “ Eeport on tlie Eainfall in Hertfordshire in 1885.” By the 
Eev. C. W. Harvey. ( Transactions , Yol. IY, p. 73.) 
3. On a Hiagram for a Model of the Solar System to Scale.” 
Ey Arthur Cottam, F.E.A.S. ( Transactions , Yol. IY, p. 97.) 
Mr. Campbell called attention to the alleged breeding of the 
woodcock in Hertfordshire, and showed the eggs from a nest found 
on Cow Heath. 
Field Meeting, 8th May, 1886. 
ST. PETER’S, ST. ALBANS. 
From St. Peter’s Church, the place of meeting, the members 
proceeded to Bernard’s Heath, where various sections of the Wool¬ 
wich and Heading Beds exposed in the brickfields were inspected, 
and some account of them was given by Dr. John Morison, F.Gr.S. 
No fossils, he said, were found in these beds here, but they were 
fossiliferous in some places, and their fossils being partly fresh¬ 
water and partly marine proved them to have been deposited at the 
estuary of a great river. The Chalk upon which these beds rest, 
and of which an exposure was seen at one point in the brickfields, 
was, Dr. Morison stated, an essentially deep-sea formation, and was 
principally composed of the shells of minute animals called Foranii- 
nifera. 
The ancient earth-work known as Beech Bottom was then visited, 
and in this narrow glade the somewhat rare golden saxifrage 
(Chrysosplenium oppositifolium) was found growing, with the more 
abundant wood-anemone, blue-bell, and other wild flowers. 
Here Mr. A. E. Gibbs, F.L.S., made a few remarks on the origin 
of Beech Bottom. Of its history, he said, nothing definite was 
known, but it was obviously an ancient earth-work of considerable 
extent, and it bore a great resemblance to the ditch known as the 
Devil’s Dyke which divides the parishes of Wheathampstead and 
Sandridge a few miles to the north-east. “Beach” was most 
probably its more correct name, being derived, not from the beech 
tree, but from the Danish Bakke , a hill or margin, for the word 
“beach” was formerly applied not only to the sea-shore, but to 
any gravelly bank. Beech Bottom was in some places twenty to 
thirty feet deep, having banks covered with undergrowth, and it 
presented much the same appearance for about a mile in a north¬ 
easterly direction, forming a portion of an earth-work which must 
have enclosed a considerable tract of country. In the ‘ Archaeo¬ 
logical Journal ’ for 1865 Mr. S. Sharpe stated his conclusion that 
“the fortified area was about two miles and a quarter long and 
three-quarters broad, enclosing the town of St. Albans . . . From 
the west end of Beech Bottom ” he says, the fosse met the Eiver 
Yer “ opposite St. Michael’s Church; this being its north-west 
limit. The south-eastern side begins at Sopwell Mills on the same 
river, passing by Camp House. It then turns to the north, crosses 
Hatfield Eoad, and joins the north-west end of Beech Bottom at 
