SHORT HISTORY OF ESSEX FIELD CLUB. 3
enjoyable excursions—was held at Ongar on Easter Monday,
March 29th, of that year (1880).
The "Tea Fund," now so familiar to our members, was
initiated at the very beginning of the Club's existence, and
soon gave cause for anxiety ; by December 1881 it was seriously
debated whether it should not be abolished, as it was not being
adequately supported.
In those early days, and indeed for several decades, it was
the custom, on the occasion of field-meetings, to indulge in a
very substantial lunch and tea, or else in what was styled a
"high tea" ; this involved a considerable cost to those taking
part in the meeting and was regarded by some with disfavour ;
at the first field meeting the charge was estimated at 5s. for these
two meals, and it is interesting to learn that the Council minutes
record a protest by Mr. W. G. Smith against the charge.
This custom was abandoned some twenty years since and
nowadays, as our members are aware, a frugal lunch is brought
and enjoyed al fresco on the all-day excursions, in place of the
substantial sit-down meal in a local hotel of earlier days. But
the tea is still a highly popular item, although it is not nowadays
a "high" tea, and the organiser of a field-meeting who failed
to include it in his itinerary would be a rash man indeed!
The idea of gathering together a collection of scientific speci-
mens, with a view to the ultimate establishment of a County
Museum, as had been suggested in the "Inaugural Address"
of the President, was nurtured by the Club from its inception,
and a "Museum Fund" to this desirable end was ordered by the
Council to be started ; meanwhile, various gifts in kind formed a
nucleus collection. As early as March, 1880, Miller Christy, as
a member of Council, urged that the old Chelmsford Museum,
which had been established since 1835, should be managed by
the Club ; not until ten years later, however, as we shall see in
the sequel, did his proposal take definite shape.
On October 30 1880, the Council met to consider a letter
from the equerry to His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught,
which announced that the Duke consented to become Patron
of the Club ; the Council duly returned its grateful thanks for
this signal honour.
A series of public lectures on scientific subjects, by eminent
men, was planned and a few of them carried out; but the response