THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
105
Lodge, at Chingford, would be available for this purpose (Proc.
IV., lxvi.) Eleven years elapsed before another effort was made
and the meeting held at Chingford, on Feb. 24th, 1894 (Essex
Naturalist VIII., 44), may be said to have inaugurated the
present state of affairs as regards the Chingford Museum which
was formally opened on Nov. 2nd, 1895, by Mr. Deputy Halse,
Chairman of the Epping Forest Committee of the Corporation of
London (Ibid. IX., 101). The later restoration of the Lodge
and the re-arrangement of the museum bring us down to recent
history, and I need only add that the Club is greatly indebted to
Mr. Cole on the one hand for all the labour and trouble which
he has taken, and on the other hand to the Epping Forest Com-
mittee, and especially to Mr. E. N. Buxton for the sympathetic
response with which our efforts to establish this museum have
been met by the Corporation of London.
The vicissitudes of the central (County) museum are also
too well known to require more than a passing reference. The
first announcement of Mr. Passmore Edwards' munificent offer
to build the museum, which now houses our collections and
library was made by the Secretary at the meeting on Nov. 27th,
1897 (Essex Naturalist X., 231), and the foundation-stone was
laid by Mr. Passmore Edwards on Oct. 6th, 1898 (Ibid., 340).
The subsequent history is traced and the agreement with the
West Ham Corporation given in the same volume (p. 337) and
further details concerning the history of the Museum and its
collections are printed in our series of Museum Handbooks (No. 3 ;
Oct., 1900). After a nomadic existence of nearly twenty years
the Club has at length found its present home, and the future
stability of the museum is assured by its association with the
Municipal Technical Institute in which we are now assembled.
The advantages arising from that association and the part
played by the Museum in the work of the Club were forcibly
dwelt upon by the Countess of Warwick in her address delivered
at the opening ceremony on Oct. 18th, 1900 (Essex Naturalist
XL, 323).
One result of the establishments of our two museums has
been the issue of another set of publications, the series of Museum
Handbooks, one of which has been referred to above. It will be
admitted that these pamphlets are most useful as popular guides
to the various groups of objects contained in our collections, and