228
THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
The Rev. J. W. Kenworthy also exhibited some stone implements from Brain-
tree and elsewhere, and made remarks on the same.
Mr. W. Cole, Prof. Meldola, and others also spoke on this subject.
Mr. G. E. Pritchett, F.S.A., exhibited the matrix and impressions of a very
interesting oval seal (31/4 inches long, 21/2 inches broad), of the Ecclesiastical Official
class, of the time of Edward VI., found, he understood, at Ipswich, by Dr.
Taylor. It bears an inscription as follows :—" Sigillum Regis Majestatis ad causas
Ecclesiasticas." It notifies the jurisdiction it was struck for, by another inscription
below the Royal Arms, viz. :—Pro : Commissario : cons : Storteforde : Lond :
Dioc. For Bishop's Stortford, where the Commissary of Essex and Herts and the
Consistory Court of London had concurrent jurisdiction. These seals are scarce
from the fact that when Queen Mary came to the throne and the Papal authority
revived, most of the seals were destroyed on account of King Edward's
statute enacting that all ecclesiastical jurisdiction must be exercised in the name
of the King. About thirteen only of these seals are known to exist.
Mr. Pritchett has since published a paper on this seal, which is now in the
British Museum, with a very beautiful photo-engraving of it, in the Trans. Essex
Archaeological Society, vol. iv. (N.S.), pp. 21—25.
Mr. Pritchett also exhibited photographs of the unusually large masses of
conglomerate from Farnham, Essex, referred to by him in his note in Essex
Naturalist (ante p. 89).
Also specimens of the urns found in the gravel-pit at South House Farm, visited
earlier in the day, and photographs of the group of same as in situ. And an
amphora found at Harps Farm, near Hallingbury, and rubbings of brasses in Saw-
bridgeworth Church, &c., &c.
Prof. Boulger, F.L.S., F.G.S., then delivered an address of which the following
is an abstract:
Botany in Relation to Agriculture.
By G. S. Boulger, F.L.S., F.G.S.
[Abstract.]
Premising that agriculture is the chief source of continued national prosperity,
and that scientific agriculture must rest upon a combined study of chemistry and
botany, the lecturer pointed out that the practice of agriculture consists in opera-
tions which have mainly grown out of the observation and imitation of natural
processes, so that there could be no such antagonism as is sometimes imagined
between sound practice and sound theory. No detail in the life-history of a plant
is unimportant to the cultivator, though if our scientific studies are to be thorough
it is not desirable that we should demonstrate how each bit of knowledge will help
directly to pay the rent. Vegetable anatomy is only less obviously useful than
physiology. Not only are the general facts of tree-structure important in pruning
or grafting, and those of fruit and seed-structure in harvesting; but systematic
descriptive botany of the most minutely careful degree may afford results as to
field-crops, weeds, timber-trees, or diseases of the most serious financial importance
to the cultivator. The discrimination of closely related forms of wheat, oat,
mangel, rape, grasses, oaks, elms, poplars, or willows are examples, and the half-
century of agricultural research carried out by Sir J. B. Lawes has depended upon
careful statistical investigation into the proportions in crops borne by different
species to one another, as well as upon chemical analyses. Our Essex naturalist,
Christopher Parsons, as a practical farmer, carefully studied the habits and pro-