large one. A short visit to Stoke Edith Church, and then across the park, under the guidance of the Rector, the Rev. W. H. Lambert, brought us to the melancholy lake at Devereux Park. This park is very near to the parish of Putley, and Putley belonged in the 11th century to Devereux, and in 1316 to Comyn, who sold his lands, and Judge Cooke informs me that the tradition is that the place known as Devereux Park belonged to the Putley branch of that ancient family, and was enclosed in Stoke Edith Park in 1685 by a grant of King James II., which is preserved at Stoke Edith House. It was a most enjoyable saunter along the turf drives, from which we had extensive views of the Malverns and the Frome Valley, and I was glad to hear from the leading Mycologists that they had obtained some desirable specimens of fungi, notwithstanding their scarcity owing to the extreme dryness of the autumn. To Lady Emily Foley the Club is again indebted for a very pleasant visit to her demesne, and on the way back to Hereford it gave us very great pleasure to welcome the Mycologists and visitors at my own home, where the chatelaine was able to show a thriving Macartney rose on a southern wall. Conscious I am of many shortcomings in the discharge of my duty as President, yet I shall always remember my year of office with pleasure, and feel grateful to the members of the Woolhope Club for their kind indulgence to me and for their hearty support.

A vote of thanks to Sir Herbert Croft for his services as President, proposed by Rev. Sir George Cornewall, was seconded by Mr. Rankin, M.P., and carried with applause.

Woolhope Naturalists' Field

MAY 28TH, 1891.

Club.

ON Thursday, May 28th, the Club visited the Woolhope Valley, the district from which, in 1851, they assumed their name.

There was a good attendance of members and their friends, including the President, Sir George H. Cornewall; Vice-Presidents, Sir Herbert Croft and Dr. T. A. Chapman; the Rev. J. D. La Touche, the President of the Caradoc Club, with his son, Mr. Norman La Touche, of the Public Works Department, India, and friend, Mr. F. E. Staughton; Members: Captain de Winton, Revs. J. O. Bevan, J. Dunn, W. H. Lambert and H. North; Messrs. W. H. Banks, Samuel Carrington, H. Easton. W. C. Grant, C. G. Martin, H. Southall, James B. Pilley, the Assistant Secretary, and H. C. Moore, Hon. Secretary; with the following visitors: Rev. E. R. Firmstone, Dr. G. Bainbridge, Dr. E. J. Roberts, Messrs. Hugh Croft, J. T. Hereford, P. B. Marshall, C. Whatmore, and Mr. Henry T. Timmins, who is preparing pen and ink sketches for his forthcoming work, Nooks and Corners of Herefordshire.

Leaving Hereford in conveyances, the members alighted at the Moon Inn, Mordiford, 153 feet above the sea level, and commenced their walk along the road leading to Woolhope, by way of Haugh Wood and Broadmoor Common. Observing, en passant, the sections of Ludlow drifts on the left hand, a halt was made at the transition, so plainly marked on the right hand across the Pentaloe brook, between the Ludlow Rocks and the Old Red Sandstone, with an intermediate detritus of drift, and, proceeding a few hundred yards up the hill, the members divided into two parties, the Botanical section following Mr. C. G. Martin up the hill, whilst the Geological section, under the Rev. J. D. La Touche, branched off to the right for the examination of the quarry of Woolhope Limestone, situated between Scutter dine and Lower Littlehope, which said limestone forms a wall all round the upheaval of the lower geological stratum of Llandovery Sandstone, of which the central dome of Haugh Wood, an extensive wood of 876 acres, is constituted. The two parties reunited at the summit of Haugh Wood, 604.9 feet above the sea level. After enjoying the glorious panorama of the Welsh and Herefordshire hills, with the City of Hereford in the valley, the members, retracing their steps so far as the footpath on the right hand leading to Haugh Wood Pound, struck through the wood, picking specimens of the Aquilegia, which here has become naturalized, and passing occasionally small outcrops of the rock which forms the hill, whose characteristic fossils on examination proved it to be the Llandovery Sandstone. Pentaloe brook was reached again opposite the keeper's cottage, at Mangerdine. Pentaloe brook follows the course of a geological "fault"-the two extremities of the wall of Woolhope Limestone round

Haugh Wood may be observed, whilst on the opposite side of the brook the Wenlock shales and strata appear. Crossing the brook the members found themselves in Bear Wood. Whence this name? We have the Serpent's-lane leading from the Littlehope quarries into the Fownhope road, where the Green Dragon, of old tradition, would descend to quench its thirst in the river Wye! Have our botanists given the name to this wood from the too unpleasant frequency of the Allium ursinum, with its attractive efflorescence and repulsive odour of garlic, and of the bear's foot (Helleborus fætidus) with its showy green foliage, conspicuous at a considerable distance? Emerging from Bear Wood, the party, by permission of Mr. Morgan, proceeding through his farm yard at Warslaw, with but little time for the examination of the sections of Wenlock formation in the lane, through Timbridge wood leading to the main road from Old Sufton to Checkley Common, which was crossed, ascended Backbury hill, halting to observe the formation of the valley on the north side, between the spur of Hen Hope on the right or east side, and the spur of Fen Hope on the left or western side. Opinions vary as to whether this strange amphitheatre-like valley was formed by land-ice, or by ordinary denudation, since ordinary rainfall would have produced ravines rather than so extensive a scooping out between these two spurs. Upon this point the Rev. J. D. La Touche remarks :-"The similarity of this amphitheatre-like valley to the cirques of the Alps has led some geologists to refer its origin to glacial action, this having been generally supposed to be the cause of these latter formations. But, as Professor Bonney has shown (Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., Aug. 1871), it is most improbable that this theory is correct, and it is much more likely that they are due to the ordinary action of water. In this case the ridges of hard rock at the lower part of the gorge, broken through by fault, would present an obstruction, and the softer slabs above would be removed by denudation, carried on for a sufficient length of time."

At two o'clock, according to the programme of the day, the members had assembled at St. Ethelbert's Camp, on the top of Adams' Rocks, from which summit of 738.6 feet above the sea the physical geology of the Woolhope valley can be studied. Upon the present occasion the explanatory diagrams which Mr. Moore had distributed amongst the members for their study, enabled them all to grasp this very instructive epitome of the Upper Silurian system of geology-of which Sir R. Murchison (Siluria, page 118, 1854) has written-it is the "finest known example within the British Isles of a valley of clean denudation, as well as of elevation." It is also referred to in Humboldt's Cosmos (Vol. v., page 231, Bohn's edition). Mr. Moore also exhibited a plan, upon a large scale, of the camp, showing its double entrenchments upon the exposed sides.

As regards the Botany of this district, from the lane leading from the "Moon" Inn at Mordiford to the Scutterdine and Littlehope quarries, a specimen of Helleborus fætidus, conspicuous by its showy green foliage, was pointed out growing on a hedge bank in a field on the left at some distance from the lane. Chrysosplenium oppositifolium or Golden Saxifrage grows in wet places between the "Moon" Inn, and the lower part of the road leading to Haugh Wood. On the hill Ophioglossum vulgatum is found in a meadow on the right. Pyrus aria

scarcely budding into leaf, Pyrus torminalis, Viburnum opulus and lantana were all met with on the road in very close proximity, and not far off Rhamnus frangula. Cephalanthera ensifolia has been found in the wood, and more common are Habenaria viridis and Epipactis palustris. The lower parts of the hill near the Pentaloe brook are carpeted with Scilla nutans and Allium ursinum. Aquilegia, although probably originally an escape from the cottage gardens, has become naturalized in many parts of Haugh Wood. That troublesome weed, as Bentham says, but much cultivated for its medicinal purposes, Egopodium podagraria clings to the neighbourhood of cottages. On Backbury Hill may be found Geranium lucidum, Draba verna, Myosotis collina, Saxifraga granulata, and tridactylites; in the ditches surrounding St. Ethelbert's Camp are Paris quadrifolia, Listera ovata, Daphne laureola, and Lathræa squamaria (Toothwort) growing as a parasite on the roots of the hazel tree. Cotyledon umbilicus grows on the rocks just below the summit of Adam's Rocks. Carum Carui appears indigenous in the Woolhope valley, growing in meadows near Winslow Mill situated eastward of Woolhope village.

Whilst refreshments were being taken on the summit of St. Ethelbert's Camp, the members were, by aid of Mr. Moore's diagrams, gradually familiarising themselves with the physical geology of their surroundings.

The following paper was then read on

THE GEOLOGY

OF THE

WOOLHOPE DISTRICT.

By the Rev. J. D. LA TOUCHE.

Ir is not unusual to meet with people, who, though well educated and thoughtful in most subjects, yet listen with a kind of amiable incredulity to the statements of geologists when they speak of the forces to which the earth's crust has been subjected in past time. Could such persons visit the district in which we now are assembled, and study, even cursorily, the arrangement of the rocks that circle round this beautiful valley, and observe their inclination as they pass from north to south, or from east to west, they could hardly fail to meet with facts amply sufficient to convince them that not only a definite order is observable in the succession of these strata, but that, subsequent to their deposition, a mighty upheaval has altered their originally horizontal condition, and in doing so, has fractured and disconnected portions of them where they were once continuous. And if, travelling to the north-west into Shropshire, and to the south-west into Wales, he should meet with strata nearly identical with these as well in lithological character as in the fossil remains with which they are charged, and should find the very same sequence and succession of extinct forms wherever he goes, he must assuredly admit that so far, at least, the facts alleged are not visionary, but rest on as solid a foundation as any that are the result of observation in other sciences. Within the compass of this little valley, some five miles in its greatest length, we have an epitome of the whole of the Upper Silurian system, and, indeed, one of the most important clues to decipher it, by which what were at one time regarded as a heterogeneous mass of shales, sandstones, and limestones, grouped under the common name of grauwacké, have by the labours of Murchison and others been explained and reduced to order. The dome-like hill of the Haugh Wood, which occupies the centre of this valley, consists of rocks that underlie the Upper Silurian. Here may be seen an exposure of the Llandovery or May hill Sandstone which marks the boundary between the Silurian and (as it is now called) the Ordovician series. Above this, and dipping away on all sides, comes a somewhat local stratum called the Woolhope limestone in which have been found some fine fossil forms, including Homalonotus delphinocephalus and Bumastus Barriensis, as well as others common to the Wenlock series. Then in succesion may be traced the Wenlock shale, surmounted by its characteristic limestone, which forms so important a feature in its development in Shropshire and elsewhere, and lastly, the lower and upper members of the Ludlow rocks separated by the Aymestrey limestone. On all sides these successive beds are seen to dip away from the central dome and to sink beneath the vast tract of Old Red Sandstone which surrounds them and occupies so large a part of Herefordshire. Nor are those most interesting beds here absent which indicate a transition from the more primitive forms of the Silurian age to the higher types that became more prevalent, if they did not originate, in succeeding Devonian times. Mr. Brodie, in the Woolhope Transactions of 1870, p. 273, has given an important paper on these beds