naturalists' societies. 159
Maynard family, the ancestors of Lady Warwick. A full description, with
plates of the more notable monuments, will be found in Mr. Chancellor's
great work The Antient Sepulchral Monuments of Essex. At Easton the party
was met by Mr. John F. Rogers, Agent to the Easton Estate, and the drive
through this beautiful park was much enjoyed. Herds of fallow deer were
seen, and some remarkable trees were pointed out. Two in particular, an
oak and a hornbeam, were measured by Mr. Rogers, and the dimensions are
worth recording:—
Prof. Meldola had been staying at Easton Park Cottage and had photo-
graphed both these trees, and we are thus enabled to give illustrations of
them. It is much to be desired that members photographically inclined
would follow the President's example, and thus insure the preservation of
pictures of interesting trees which may be noticed in various parts of the
County.
The drive was continued to the ancient village of Dunmow, where
luncheon awaited the party at the "Saracen's Head" hotel.
The Conference was quite arcadian, taking place in the pretty little
garden of the hotel. Prof. Meldola took the chair. Unfortunately, but few
members of "East Anglian" Societies other than the Essex Field Club were
present. Mr. Southwell, F.Z.S., and Mr. H. Scherren, F.Z.S., well repre-
sented the Norfolk and Norwich Society, but no official member of the
Ipswich Scientific Society attended.
Mr. W. Cole re-called what had passed at the first Conference held at
Witham on July 23rd, 1898,1 and advocated the initiation of some scheme of
"Systematic Biological and Pre-historic Archaeological work in East Anglia."
He alluded to the close connection of the three counties of Norfolk, Suffolk
and Essex, from the point of view of their Natural History and Geology, and
the similarity of the coast-line. The Essex and the Norfolk Societies had
done a great deal of faunistic work, of value to the student of geographical
distribution, but there was still ample opportunity for further investigations,
pursued year by year. This was especially the case with respect to the
marine zoology of those regions of the North Sea bordering the counties,
where of late years there had been considerable changes in the fauna. These
should be carefully recorded, as also should be the variations in the coast-line.
He was not alluding to the higher and more difficult work of biological
investigation into the life-histories of the marine organisms of the North Sea.
1 A full report was printed in the Essex Naturalist, vol. x., pp. 360—368.