222 Geological Society, 



ni's experiments, we do not happen to be acquainted, nor do we 

 know by whom they have been repeated in this country, except 

 Mrs. Somerville. But we think the precision with which that lady 

 has described her own researches, evinces, — even if it does not al- 

 together preclude the idea that the needles &c. employed by her 

 were previously devoid of magnetism, — that the more refrangible rays 

 have a power of increasing, if not of imparting, magnetism ; and that 

 white light does not possess, this power *. The fact of the increase 

 of magnetism in steel by exposure to certain varieties of coloured 

 light, is nearly as important with respect to the solar influence in 

 the production or regulation of terrestrial magnetism, as that of 

 its being induced by the same means would be, if certainly proved. 



[B.] 



XL. Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



May 16.— ~T)ECIMUS BURTON, Esq. of Spring Gardens j and 

 U Major T. Perronet Thompson, of the 65th Regiment, 

 were elected Fellows of this Society. 



The reading was begun of a Paper entitled, " On the Old Conglo- 

 merates, and other secondary deposits on the north coasts of Scot- 

 land j" by the Rev. Adam Sedgwick, Woodwardian Professor, Cam- 

 bridge, V.P.G.S., &c. and R. I. Murchison, Esq. For. Sec. G.S. and 

 F.R.S. 



June 6. — M. H. Ducrotay de Blainville. Member of the Institute 

 of France, and of many other learned and scientific Societies, was 

 elected a Foreign Member of this Society ; and Richard Taylor, Esq. 

 Sec. L.S. of Middleton Square ; Charles Larkin Francis, Esq. of Nine 

 Elms, Surrey ; and Jeffry Wyattville, Esq. R.A., of Lower Brook 

 Street, — were elected Fellows of this Society. 



The reading of the Paper of Professor Sedgwick, and R. I. Murchi- 

 son, Esq., begun at the last Meeting, was concluded. 



§ 1. Introduction. — The authors here give a brief sketch of the ge- 

 neral structure of Scotland, to the north of the Forth and the Clyde. 

 They consider the country to be composed of two entirely distinct 

 classes of deposits — primary and secondary ; but with the primary de- 

 posits are associated many mountain-masses of crystalline rock, which 

 appear to have been protruded since the deposition of the newest of the 

 secondary series ; and hence arises great, and sometimes insuperable, 

 difficulty, in passing from one class of deposits to the other. The low- 

 est of the secondary strata are chiefly composed of red-sandstone 

 and red-conglomerate : and from a general review of this part of the 

 subject, the authors conclude, that the conglomerate system on the 

 N.E. coast of the Highlands is identical with that on the N.W. coast ; 

 and that both the systems are of the same epoch with the great masses 

 of conglomerate which commence at Stonehaven, and range along 

 the southern flank of the Grampian chain % 



* See Phil. Trans, for 1826: or Phil. Mag. vol. Ixviii. p. 168. 



§ 2. Range 



