September 1898] NEWS 213 



On August 1 the Yorkshire Naturalists 9 Onion made an excursion to Spurn, 



and succeeded in collecting many specimens of interest. 



The Geologists' Association of London held their Long Excursion in the Bir- 

 mingham district from July 28 to August 3, under the Directorship of Professors 

 Lapworth and Watts, Dr Stacey Wilson, and .Messrs Jerome Harrison and Wick- 

 ham King. Messrs Sollas, Blake, Shcrborn, and Miss Wood of Birmingham, were 

 among the fifty or sixty persons present Mr Frederick Meeson acted eiliciently 

 as Excursion Secretary. The main attraction of the Excursion was the compari- 

 son of the Archaean and Cambrian Rocks of the district with those seen on a 

 previous occasion in the Shrewsbury area under the same directors. The clear 

 and patient exposition of the "Old Boy," as Professor Lapworth calls the 

 Archaean rock, was warmly acknowledged by the visitors, many of whom had 

 followed for a second time this eminent leader in British geology. The basic 

 dyke in Abel's Quarry, near Nuneaton, penetrating the Archaean, but cut off by 

 the overlying Cambrian Quartzite, was an object of much interest, while the 

 Hyolithes beds of Cambrian age yielded sparingly Kutorgina, Hyolithes, and 

 other fossils. The remarkable bending of the edges of the Menevian beds under- 

 lying the Carboniferous conglomerate was examined in detail, and the theory of the 

 movement of soil-cap was held to be sufficient to account for it without calling in 

 any more violent means. The geologists were shown, by Professors Lapworth and 

 Watts, the imaginary restoration of the old Triassic sea, with its islands of Charn- 

 wood, Nuneaton, Lickey, Shrewsbury, &c. The head of a trilobite was found for the 

 first time in the Lower Stockingford Shales, thus helping forward the elucidation 

 of the life of the period. The last day an excursion was made to the Dudley and 

 Wren's Nest Silurian, and owing to the excellent arrangements made by Mr 

 Claughton the workings were explored in boats in a most complete manner. 

 Heavy bags were made, chiefly of rock-specimens, and a rumour was current a 

 few days later that the Oxford express had broken an axle. 



The German Emperor, whose sympathy with all forms of literature, art, 

 and science is notorious, must have had excellent reasons for prohibiting the 

 intended meeting at Posen of the Polish Association for the Promotion of 

 Medical and Natural Science, and for threatening with banishment any Prussian 

 subject who should take part in the proceedings. That he should wish "to 

 envenom the relations betwen the Polish and the German nationality," no sane 

 man can believe ; yet this is what is openly stated by sixty protestant professors 

 in a circular addressed to leading members of the medical profession in Great 

 Britain. 



At the Congress of Chemists in Vienna, Dr Leo Lilienfeld, a former pupil 

 of Du Bois Reymond, and now at Vienna, demonstrated a simple synthesis of 

 albumen, or rather pepton, said to be similar in composition and reactions to the 

 natural product as formed by the digestion of albuminous substances. The 

 ingredients are said to be phenol, glycocol, amydo-acctic acid, monochlorine 

 acetic acid, and phosphoric oxychloride. Whether the nutritive qualities of the 

 compound are the same as those of natural pepton has yet to be proved. There 

 is no immediate prospect of its replacing the roast beef of old England. 



From the Bolletino del Naturalista we learn that a committee has been formed 

 at Turin in order to establish there a freshwater aquarium for the advancement 

 of pisciculture in Italy and specially in Piedmont. 



On August 1 the Public Library at Norwich was destroyed by fire. It had been 

 founded over a century, and contained more than G0,000 volumes. The depart- 

 ment of local archaeology was specially valuable, and many of the books so un- 

 happily lost can never be replaced. 



