HARD WICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



251 



cene and pre-historic times, were represented by 

 their remains discovered in the estuarine and lacus- 

 trine and fluviatile gravels of that locality. The 

 tusk of a river-horse, found in a loamy deposit about 

 sixty feet above the level, and half a mile from the 

 present channel of the Avon, in close proximity to 

 a reindeer's skull, showed that the Avon, once 

 running with a greater volume, and affording a 

 watery retreat for the hippopotami, bore down in its 

 course carcases of reindeer drowned in crossing the 

 stream during their migrations to and from a more 

 northern latitude." 



I have examined the drift at Himbleton and Per- 

 shore, from whence I have obtained lias fossils, 

 cardinia, rhynchonella, belemnites, etc., all more or 

 less waterworn. From the drift at King's End, 

 Powick, I have found the cast of a rugose coral of 

 the silurian age. 



The evidences of ice action in this neighbourhood 

 are somewhat meagre. But some six years ago a 

 man named Wood, when mowing at Corn Meadows, 

 Claines, struck his scythe against a boulder, which 

 was partly embedded in the earth. Thinking that 

 this stone at some future time might break a scythe, 

 ■he determined to remove it, and subsequently tried 

 to dig it out, but, to use his own words, " the deeper 

 he dug the bigger it got," and two men and two 

 horses were necessary to remove it. Mr. Wood 

 thought the stone was granite, and offered it to the 

 architect who was then restoring Claines Church, 

 but the architect, with the off-hand remark, " Non- 

 sense, man, there's no granite in this neighbourhood," 

 declined it. Mr. Wood, however, undaunted, still 

 believed the stone to be valuable, and steadily 

 refused, as his friends advised, to bury it out of the 

 way. A member of our club, Mr. Westly, in passing 

 that way a few years afterwards, recognised in Mr. 

 Wood's block of granite an erratic boulder of the 

 glacial period. Dr. Crossky identified the boulder 

 as Criffel granite. Further north these boulders are 

 more plentiful, but there is no record, so far as I can 

 learn, of one having been found previously so far 

 south. This specimen weighs probably half a ton. 

 It measures 3 ft. by I ft. 9 in. by 1 ft. 8 inches, and is of 

 grey granite, rounded and sub-angular ; and although 

 it is not scratched, it has doubtless been transported 

 by ice agency from Kirkcudbrightshire. Mr. Wood 

 subsequently sanctioned the removal of the boulder 

 to this museum, and it may be seen in the vestibule 

 below. I have dwelt upon this matter thus in detail 

 because I cannot but admire the enthusiasm of Mr. 

 Wood ; and, moreover, having had the honour to 

 assist in the removal of the boulder, I feel some 

 amount of interest in it. On the borders of Cannock 

 Chase I have seen many boulders of granite precisely 

 similar to the Claines boulder. In the Malvern 

 district the late Mr. Symonds discovered a section 

 exposed during some excavations made for some new 

 buildings at the Wind's Point, at the residence of 



Mons. and the late Madame Lind-Goldschmidt. 

 There he saw a mass of undoubted boulder clay full 

 of the angular fragments of silurian rocks from the 

 other side of the pass. "This," he says, "was 

 undoubtedly the track and moraine of an ancient 

 glacier, the ice of which probably filled the great 

 combs between Little Malvern Church and the Camp 

 Hill ; and which sent down its moraine matter over 

 the;common below ; moraine matter which " he adds, 

 "has broken many a plough, and puzzled many a 

 cranium as to how the 'darned' stones got there." 

 Mr. Edward Hull, of the Geological Survey, says 

 that he is not aware of the existence of genuine ice- 

 drifted boulders south of Bredon Hill on the Vale 

 of the Severn. This great outlier of the Cotteswolds 

 stretching right across the vale, must, to a great 

 extent, have acted as a barrier to rafts or bergs of ice 

 on their voyage southwards. 



FORMATION OF CHLOROPHYLL IN 

 PLANTS. 



IT has long been held by competent authorities 

 that light, however little, is essential to the 

 formation of chlorophyll in plants ; but the other 

 day I came across an instance which seemingly shows 

 this theory in a different aspect, and that chlorophyll, 

 or the green colouring matter of plants, can be 

 developed without light of any kind. When cutting 

 open one of those large yellowish melons, which are 

 to be had so abundantly in fruit shops at the 

 present time, I was very much surprised to find 

 that one — and only one — of the many seeds which it 

 contained had germinated, and that both of its 

 cotyledons were quite green. There was not the 

 slightest opening or fracture of any kind whereby 

 either light or air could enter, and the melon was 

 perfectly fresh and well tasted, showing that no air 

 had been getting into it. 



I enclose a full-size dra~wing of the young plant 

 made after it was pressed and dried, from which it 

 will be observed that the plant had attained to the 

 size of fully three and a half inches in length over all. 

 It will also be noticed that one of the cotyledons is 

 fully half an inch long and a quarter of an inch broad, 

 while the other is slightly less in size. The radicle is 

 also nearly three-quarters of an inch long, and a 

 rootlet about a quarter of an inch in length. 



Can any of your readers explain how this one seed, 

 out of so many, should have germinated inside the 

 melon, without air and light, both of which are said 

 to be necessary for the germination of seed, and at 

 the same time have both the cotyledons as green as if 

 it were grown in soil with a full exposure to the sun ? 



I am aware that the cotyledons of the sycamore, 

 great maple or plane tree {Acer Pseudoplatanus, L.), 

 and the prickly saltwort {Salsola Kali, L.), have green 

 cotyledons inside their seed coverings, but they are 



