238
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
a ballot was taken, Mr. Colney Campbell and Mrs. Whitwell being ap-
pointed by the President to act as scrutineers. The result was announced
at a later stage, when, on the scrutineers' signed certificate, the President
announced that Miss A. Hibbert-Ware, Mr. C. Nicholson, Mrs. A. M.
Thompson, Sir Robert Armstrong-Jones, and Mr. James Keeves had been
duly elected members of Council.
The following persons having been duly nominated at the meeting on
February 27th, and there being no other nominations, were declared by
the President to be elected to the several offices of the Club, viz. :—
As Hon Treasurer, Mr. John Avery, F.C.A.,; as Hon. Librarian, Mr.
S. J. Barns; as Hon. Secretary and Hon. Editor, Mr. Percy Thompson,
F.L.S.; as Hon. Assistant Curator at Queen Elizabeth's Lodge, Miss V.
Oxley.
Mr. Nicholson and Mrs. Whitwell were re-elected as Auditors for
1926-27.
The members of the Forest Museum Committee, viz., Miss G. Lister,
Miss A. Hibbert-Ware, Mr. Avery and Mr. Thompson were re-elected for
another year.
This concluded the business of the annual meeting.
The 609th Ordinary Meeting was then held.
Mr. C. H. Rice, B.Sc., of 20, Dyson Road, Leytonstone. E.11, was
elected a member of the Club.
Miss I. Lister exhibited, and presented to the Club's Stratford Museum,
six examples of "Dock Forgeries," well-known spurious antiques made
about 1858 by "Billy and Charley," of Rosemary Lane, Tower Hill.
Mr. C. Bestow exhibited and presented a similar "Dock Forgery," and
the Curator exhibited two other examples already possessed by the Museum.
Miss G. Lister exhibited and presented a cone of Scots Pine from
Haslemere, Surrey, which had been opened by crossbills to extract the
seeds. Miss Hibbert-Ware exhibited a pair of Smew, in illustration of
the unusual abundance of this duck on the Walthamstow Reservoirs
during the past winter, a procession of ten birds in single file having
been observed on one occasion. Mr. Glegg commented that there had been
a general increase in recent years of the Smew on waters around London.
Mr. Avery exhibited twenty topographical sketches by Major Bamford,
relating to the Chelmsford district.
The Curator exhibited a collection of 105 specimens of British plants
(all of them except eleven being phanerogams) which had just been pre-
sented to the Stratford Museum by our member, Mr. George Morris. The
specimens, which are unfortunately badly destroyed by mites, have been
kindly remounted by Miss Prince on new herbarium sheets; their interest,
is, however, rather antiquarian than botanical. The plants were col-
lected between the years 1790 and 1827 in the neighbourhood of Epping
Forest by Benjamin Meggot Forster, of Walthamstow, and they appear
to have been sent by W. Pamplin, presumably after B. M. Forster's death
in 1829, to G. S. Gibson, of Saffron Walden, for use by him in preparing
his Flora of Essex, 1862. Sixteen of the specimens are the actual ones
referred to in B. M. Forster's MS. annotations in his copy of Warner's
Plantis Woodfordienses which is now in the Club's Library, and other
specimens are probably also referred to; this is proved by direct references