THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
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proposed amalgamated society. They must always remember, however, that
their Club was the Essex Field Club; it was not an ''Epping Forest Club"
solely, and its operations extended over the whole county. It seemed to him
that if a good local museum were established in what was really the central part
of Essex—viz., Chelmsford—they might hope to become firmly consolidated as a
County Club, and so acquire additional funds and power for doing really useful
work. He made these observations in order to allay any alarm and misappre-
hension which might exist in the minds of some of the members.
Mr, Fitch then delivered the Annual Presidential Address, which was devoted
to the subject of the "Migration of Birds" (ante pp. 1—16).
A vote of thanks to the President for his address was proposed by Mr.
Walter Crouch and seconded by Mr. G. Day, and carried by acclamation.
A discussion on the subject of the migration of birds was carried on by Mr.
F. C. Gould, Mr. Crouch, Mr. Day, the President, and the Rev. W. S. Lach-
Szyrma (President of the Penzance Natural History Society), who was present
as a visitor at the meeting.
At the above meeting the Secretary placed on the table the Statement of the
"Tea Fund" for 1889. The amount received by subscriptions was £3 18s.,
and that spent was £4 0s. 1d.
Ordinary Meeting, Saturday, March 1st, 1890.
The 112th Ordinary Meeting was held in the Loughton Public Hall on Saturday,
March 1st, 1890, Mr. Walter Crouch, Vice-President, in the chair.
Mr. W. Macandrew, J.P., was elected a member of the Club.
Mr. Crouch said that by inadvertence no vote of thanks to the officers for
their work during the past year had been proposed at the last meeting. He
now begged to rectify the omission by proposing that the best thanks of the
Club be given to the officers for their exertions in the interests of the Club
during 1889. This was seconded by Mr. F. H. Varley, and carried unanimously.
Mr. Crouch exhibited a head, &c., of a mummy Egyptian Cat (Felis mani-
culata) from Beni-Hassan (the ancient Speos Artemidos), on the east bank of
the Nile, about 150 miles south of Cairo, and also the skull of an English
domestic cat for comparison. A short time ago an underground catacomb or
burial-place was accidentally discovered containing about 180,000 of these
mummy cats. They were sent to Alexandria in a more or less broken state,
having probably been searched for ornaments, &c.—sold as bone-manure, and
forwarded to Liverpool, where they have been ground up for that purpose.
Some of the fairly perfect ones were given to the Liverpool Museum, and a
number of the heads sold as curiosities.
Animal worship in Egypt appears to have been begun in the II. Dynasty,
and not only cats, but dogs, apes, jackals, bulls, the white cow, ibis, crocodiles,
snakes, &c., became objects of veneration or worship, and were kept in the
temples (one of these was near the site of Beni-Hassan), and when they died
their mummies were all carefully preserved in specially prepared sepulchres. Early
Egyptian chronology is somewhat vague, but Mr. Crouch thought it safe to say
that the cats exhibited were about 4,000 years old. The later mummies, some
of which may be seen in the British Museum, are more carefully preserved,
and the bandages artistically swathed. On the death of a cat, the mourners
shaved their eyebrows, and the mummy was buried with great ceremony,
generally in catacombs dug in the calcareous rocks. A Royal Asylum for
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