(i) Twenty volumes, forming a collection similar in every way to (g) and (h), but in darker paper covers, and slightly smaller size. The specimens are in notepaper envelopes.

6) Three fasciculi of HEPATICE BRITANNICE EXSICCATE, by Messrs. Carrington and Pearson; small quarto. The specimens loose, in notepaper envelopes, mounted on larger sheets. The species numbered 1 to 215. All in excellent order.

(k) One volume, quarto, tied in boards, of a GENERAL COLLECTION OF HEPATICE; the specimens partly mounted partly loose in mounted envelopes. All in excellent condition and order.

(2) One folio book. A small collection of mounted mosses from Canterbury, New Zealand; in good order.

(m) A small collection of general foreign mosses; all named by H. Boswell. In good order.

(n) A small collection of mosses, unmounted, in thin paper envelopes; nearly all from Herefordshire. This collection is of some value, and ought to be placed in a box.

(0) A small general collection of mosses, mounted in newspaper in a box.

III.-FLOWERING PLANTS AND FERNS.

(a) A Collection of Flowering Plants and Ferns in very large bound cases. The sheets are in imperfect order, some of them of considerable value, many worthless, and much of the collection injured by insects.

(b) A small collection on smaller quarto sheets, in brown paper wrappers, and contained in a single cover. This collection is of little consequence, and the sheets which are of value might well be combined with (a).

Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club.

APRIL 9TH, 1891.

THE Annual Meeting of the Club was held in the Woolhope Club Room, on Thursday, April 9th. The following members were present :-The President, Sir Herbert Croft, and Rev. Sir George H. Cornewall, President-elect for 1891; Mr. James Rankin, M.P.; Count Lubienski; the Revs. James Barker, J. O. Bevan, H. B. D. Marshall, M. G. Watkins, and H. T. Williamson; Messrs. F. Bainbridge, H. C. Beddoe, Cecil Butler, Joseph Carless (junr.), R. Clarke, James Davies, H. Easton, M. J. Ellwood, C. G. Martin, O. Shellard, H. Southall, Guy Trafford, H. Vevers, H. C. Moore (Honorary Secretary), and James B. Pilley (Assistant Secretary).

The accounts, duly audited, were passed. The Assistant Secretary is to be congratulated upon his success in recovering almost all the arrears due from subscribers, whilst the Treasurer retains a satisfactory balance in hand, which will enable the Editors to persevere in their efforts to print all the arrears of Transactions. In his report, Mr. Pilley informed us that the number of members on December 31st, 1890, was 185, a total which has only once been exceeded, namely, in 1884, when there were 191 members; the arrears due from subscribers then amounted to £41, in comparison with 10s. arrears due on December 31st, 1890. Three members have died during the past year, ten members have resigned, twenty-four new members have joined, thus making a net increase of eleven. At the Meeting two members were elected, as usual by ballot, and the names of three gentlemen were proposed to be balloted for at the next meeting.

The dates and places of the four Field Meetings of the year were appointed as follows:-May 28th, Thursday, Haugh Wood and the Woolhope district; June 30th, Tuesday, Aberedw Rocks; July 28th, Tuesday (Ladies' Day), Llanthony Abbey; August 25th, Tuesday, Moccas Park.

The Rev. M. G. Watkins, of Kentchurch, has sent us information of the following :

ANTIQUARIAN DISCOVERIES AT ABBEY DORE.

"Some curious finds were recently discovered when cleaning out two watercourses in the north of Abbey Dore, in Herefordshire. The dormitories and domestic offices of the Cistercians who built it were on this side of the Church, and doubtless many more singular relics would be discovered were a thorough investigation made. Nine old keys-probably of stables, granaries, and the like

were picked up, ranging from about two to six inches in length, and some of them cut into very remarkable wards. One resembled an intricate modern latchkey, and may have belonged to a padlock. A keen-edged pointed dinner knife was also found, and three coins; one, a silver groat of Elizabeth; the second, a fine specimen of a copper sixpence of James II., dated, 1689; and the third a copper halfpenny (?) bearing the legend NVMMORVM FAMVLVS, probably of William and Mary, but in very bad preservation on one side, although the double rose was plainly visible on the other. A quantity of hewn stones and fragments, which had formed part of the conventual buildings, were also dug out. These relics are carefully preserved by the owner of the land, Captain T. Freke Lewis, of Abbeydore."

The following is a list of books received during the year 1890:-Cotteswold Field Club Proceedings, 1889-1890, Vol. x., Part 1; Report of British Association for Advancement of Science for 1889; British Naturalists' Society Proceedings, 1889-90, Vol. vi., Part 2; Oldham Microscopical Society and Field Club Journal for 1890; Warwickshire Naturalists' and Archæologists' Field Club Proceedings for 1889; Holmesdale Natural History Club Proceedings for 1888 and 1889; Marlborough College Natural History Society Report; Geologists' Association Proceedings, Vol. xi., No. 6, Vol. xi., No. 7, Vol. xi., No. 8; United States Department of Agriculture-North American Fauna, No. 3, also No. 4 of 1890; Cardiff Naturalists' Society, Vol. xxi., Part 2; Essex Naturalist-Journal of Essex Field Club, Vol. iii., Nos. 10 to 12; Vol. iv., Nos. 1 to 3, Nos. 4 to 6, Nos. 7 to 9, Nos. 10 to 12. Bagnall's Flora of Warwickshire was purchased; two small treatises on the Fungi of Finland, and two plates of illustrations of Swedish Fungi, were presented by Mr. William J. Humfrys.

with

Some more official business having been transacted the meeting concluded

THE RETIRING ADDRESS OF THE

SIR

HERBERT CROFT, BArt.

PRESIDENT,

By the rules of the Woolhope Club the retiring President is required to recount the doings of the Club in the past year, but unluckily I had to leave England on 7th April, 1890, for Australia, on important business, and so I was unable to attend the Joint Meeting of the Caradoc and Woolhope Field Clubs at Stokesay on Friday, May 30th, and for the same reason I was also absent from the second Field Meeting, of Tuesday, June 24th, when Kingsland, Eardisland, Burton Court, Stretford, and Monkland were visited, and I have ventured to insert in this address a short account of what I saw in Australia during those months, instead of a hearsay description of those meetings of the Woolhope Club. I am very grateful to Mr. Henry Southall, the President for 1889 and Vice-President for 1890, for having acted as President at those two meetings, and I also have to thank the members of the Club for the great compliment of my election, when away. But I am glad to say that as my plan of campaign was carried out without let or hindrance, I did arrive in England again on the 27th July, and so had the great pleasure of acting as President on the Ladies' Day and at the succeeding meetings of the Woolhope Club, all of which were very successful.

I landed at Port Adelaide on the 14th of last May, which month there corresponds to our November. The weather was luckily fine, and we went by rail to Adelaide, passing through suburbs in which the houses were of slight build, as if they had been hastily run up, and for a temporary sojourn. I spent the afternoon in the Botanical Garden, which is kept in beautiful order, and I saw there a great variety of plants, and also a good many parrots and other birds. The tropical plants in the palm house were novelties to me, and I also saw in another house the Victoria Regia lily, and the gardener boasted that it had had more than a dozen blossoms in the past summer. After a long voyage this garden was a great treat to me, but unluckily I had to leave Adelaide the same night for Melbourne and Sydney. Altogether I travelled by rail in Pulman cars in four colonies, South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland, and in each there is a different gauge. Next morning I awoke early, and was surprised to see for miles dead trees innumerable! My pleasant companion in the Pulman car informed me that these trees had been ring-barked to kill them, and when I got to the New England stations I found that ring-barking was the rule, and it is done by removing a ring of bark from the tree not far from the root. On the stations on which I stayed, the trees so killed were for the most part white gums, which are of no use whatever, and indeed it is difficult even to burn them, and so they are left to stand or fall after death, as may chance. As soon as the tree is dead the grass beneath it improves wonderfully, and becomes a good bite for sheep or cattle. One of my friends can remember ring-barking of trees forty years ago, but it has been in general use for certainly nearly twenty years, and I must say I was much struck by the excellence of the pasture on the stations I visited. Where

trees have been ring-barked the paddock is enclosed by a substantial fence, partly of wood and chiefly of wire, and in these paddocks the sheep stand the wet well, and did so in 1890. Formerly three acres were required for a sheep; now on good land each acre will carry a sheep, and in 1890 more than that on an average. The paddocks of course vary in size, but the system is an economical one, for shepherds are no longer required, as one boundary rider can look after 10,000 sheep in paddocks. On my way to Melbourne I saw for miles land without rivers, creeks, brooks, or even ditches, but generally in Australia there is not this dearth of water, and underground rivers have been recently discovered, but the droughts are very serious. So it was in 1888, when an enormous number of sheep died of indigestion, because the grass had been frost-bitten in March, and afterwards became so dried up that it contained nɔ nourishment and was like wood shaving. Some men set a light to the grass on a station, and it was burnt, and thereby the sheep were saved, because new grass sprung up at the roots of the burnt grass; so that unintentionally the burners did that squatter a kindness. But last winter, i.e., April to Michaelmas, 1890, there was no lack of water. In New South Wales the rainfall from 1st of May, 1889, to 31st May, 1890, was stated in the papers to have amounted to 1024 inches. And all June was wet and also July, and yet the sheep in the paddocks did well-but towards the end of 1890 there was a good deal of foot-rot among the sheep owing to the great amount of rain. The floods in May and June, 1890, at Bourke and on the Darling river, were terrible, and the losses enormous. That flood was forty miles in width and lasted three months. It reached Wilcannia six weeks after Bourke. 300,000 sheep are reported to have perished. My companion had 150,000 sheep there, and by the good management of his agent in moving his flocks to the higher ground, he had only lost 2,500. My friend was also interested in the Broken Hill Silver Mine, the west of New South Wales, and reported wonderfully well of it, and stated that it had paid £80,000 a month in dividends, and the dividend for the month of April, 1891, amounts to £96,000! at the rate of 2s. per share. I afterwards saw the Government report of this mine for the past five years, and it bore out this extraordinary profit. I obtained in New England a sample of silver ore. I afterwards travelled with a mining engineer, and I learnt from him that there is a wonderful silver mine in Tasmania, and also tin mines. He had also seen most of the mineral districts in Australia, and in his opinion there is an immense deal of undeveloped mineral wealth there, and especially in Queensland. The great gold mine of Mount Morgan is in that colony, and only twenty-eight miles west of Rockhampton. Some say that it is played out, but my informant predicted for it, with good management, a great future. While I was in Queensland I saw some shallow pits, which had been dug out by tin miners and abandoned. There is a great deal of tin there, on the border of New South Wales, no doubt, although the boom is for the present over, and the Chinese are the only miners now there. However, for the month (May) before my visit the Chinese had got over eight tons of tin, and it was valued to me at about £450, but I was informed that a royalty of over £200 had to be paid thereon. While I was in New England a gold nugget was found at Herbert Park, which was probably worth over £50. I visited also the