Unfortunately Mike Dorling, who was to give the evening's talk about the Sedgewick Museum, had to cancel at the last minute because of family commitments. Hopefully, this talk will be rescheduled for a later date.

Of the options open to the Society, our chairman took the decision to give a short talk on Scottish agates. In his brief talk he covered; the major collecting sights in Scotland, some of the theories covering the formation of agates, the work of Heddle some 100 years ago (perhaps the definitive work on Scottish Agates. (M.F. Heddle [1901] The mineralogy of Scotland). All this was backed by slides of various cut and polished agate sections. There was one astonishing picture of an agate enclosing an euhedral calcite crystal. It just seemed to be sitting in the middle with agate draped around!

By a stroke of good fortune there is a new section on our website for Lapidary. Within this section are topics on agates. Scottish Agates, (a personal view), augments Graham's talk . The agates shown are mine but there is a link to a page for the Scottish Agates Graham had on display at the Havering Show. Hope you enjoy them. .

Graham also brought along a display of his Scottish Agates for members to look at. David Turner had on show his latest find from the Society's recent field trip to Thrislington (1 & 2 Sept.).

As an aftermath to August's meeting, Bob Blackburn rapped my knuckles for not attributing his fossils from Maylandsea to him. Similarly, John Lacy said his fish from the Naze was a lot darker than in the picture. I believe he was being polite to me. Reading between the lines, I think he is content that it is London Clay fauna.

(Doubting Thomas would ask: Did you find in situ? It doesn't look water worn as if eroded from the clay of the foreshore! Fractured end, does it look recent? Did you look up the section to see if any other bits were about, perhaps even in situ? Was it plastered in clay when you picked it up? Are there any other fish from the Naze to compare? (OK so you know of one other). I think this is an important find because it is rare for this locality. Hope you do some research and come up with a species. You could even write a page on it for the website (please). Hopefully, there is a few more nautical miles to swim with this Pisces!)

I'm afraid the day's events subdued our usual enthusiasm for the meeting. My thoughts were certainly else where.

Don't forget to pick up your free copy of Down to Earth when you come to meetings. Take a couple or three and give to anyone interested in Geology. After all we are out to promote Geology.

(RC 12/09/2001)                                                                                         

Previous reports on meetings: August, July, June, May,