HA RD IVICKE'S S CIENCE- G OSSIF. 



red and white chalk spoil of the Bain-Steeping 

 trough, and its deposition in the Cotteswold gravel 

 up to the high level, coming from the Avon system 

 over the Gloucestershire water-parting into the valley 

 of the Evenlode, a part of the Thames System. 



All river-gravels north of the point where the line 

 of gravel over the clay sinks below Ordnance datum, 

 he regards as concealed below the alluvium, and at 

 depths proportional to the fall of that line. Examining 

 in detail the grounds for the contrary opinion hereto- 

 fore held by himself and by geologists in general, 

 that the great submergence succeeded the principal 

 glaciation of England, he rejected that opinion ; and 

 no longer regarding the basement clay of Holderness 

 (with its ancient moUuscan facies) as identical with 

 the Chalky Clay, but as moraine synchronous with 

 the Till of Cromer, he considered the gravels with 

 shells at extreme elevations in Lancashire to have 

 preceded all glacial clays but these, and to have 

 escaped destruction by the advance of the ice during 

 the rise only at the south end of the western slope of 

 the Pennine chain, those on the eastern having been 

 wholly swept away ; but that gravels were deposited 

 on the east side of the Pennine after the dissolution of 

 the Chalky-clay ice up to the reduced height of the 

 sea-level at that time, and so far as the ice of the 

 purple clay allowed the sea to come. He then relin- 

 quished the opinion formerly held by him that the 

 passage of the Shap blocks was due to floating ice, 

 and referred this to the land-ice crossing the Pennine 

 chain consequent upon greater snow interception 

 from the progress of the rise ; and to the same cause 

 he referred the drift which rises high on the eastern 

 slope of the Pennine ridge north of the Aire, To this 

 crossing of the ice having diverted first a part and 

 then the whole of the ice supply of the Chalky-clay 

 glacier, he attributed first the shrinking of that glacier 

 into the valleys in East Anglia, and afterwards its 

 dissolution by the agencies always rife in the Green- 

 land ice (but which are there balanced by continual 

 reinforcement), when by this diversion its reinforce- 

 ment by ice from the Pennine chain ceased. The 

 purple clay of Holderness, being thus in its lowest 

 part of Holderness coeval with the valley-formed 

 portion of the Chalky Clay of Norfolk and Suffolk 

 (or " third Boulder-clay" of Harmer), was the 

 moraine of this invading ice, which, after crossing at 

 Stainmoor, divided against the eastern moorlands of 

 Yorkshire ; and one branch going north of these 

 moorlands though the valley of the Tees, sent off an 

 arm down their eastern flank, the moraine from 

 which is the narrow belt of purple clay which skirts 

 the Yorkshire coast north of Holderness, and spreads 

 out wider in Holderness. This arm from the Chalky- 

 clay ice not having, in consequence of the westerly 

 increment of depression, descended the eastern slope 

 of the Wolds, found sea there covering the basement 

 clay of Holderness, in which sea it stopped between 

 the Humber and the Wash, by means of which the 



lower part of the purple clay up to the level of about 

 150 feet, contains intercalated in it beds of sand and 

 gravel, and contains shells and shell-fragments, as 

 does the Lancashire clay similarly extruded beneath 

 the sea. The other branch came south along the 

 western flank of the east moorlands and through the 

 Vale of York, where it ended, and became stationary 

 in the sea as this entered the Trent system on the 

 final dissolution of the chalky-clay glacier. 



Mr. Wood discovers no trace of anything like the 

 intercalation of warm periods up to the stage with 

 which he concludes this part of his memoir : he 

 leaves the description of the later beds, as well as an 

 examination how far arboreal vegetation and the 

 coexistence of Pachyderms and Proboscideans can be 

 reconciled with the contiguity of extensive land-ice, 

 for tl;e concluding part of it. 



NOTES ON SOME OF OUR SMALLER 

 FUNGL 



By George Massee. 



IN a work on the order of fungi called Myxogas- 

 tres, or more recently Myxomycetes, published 

 by Professor De Bary, during the year 1865, that 

 celebrated mycologist announced as the result of his 

 investigations that these organisms were not plants, 

 but animals, belonging to the Protozoa ; since that 

 time the professor has changed his opinion, and at 

 present acknowledges them as members of the vege- 

 table kingdom. In the presidential speech delivered 

 before the British Association for 1879, Professor 

 Allman evidently considers the Myxomycetas as 

 being more closely allied to animals than plants ; he 

 says, " They have generally been associated by 

 botanists with the fungi, but though their affinities 

 with these are perhaps closer than with any other 

 plants, they differ from them in so many points, 

 especially in their development, as to render this 

 association untenable." The structure which has 

 given origin to the idea of animal affmity, is, accoid- 

 ing to the Professor's account, somewhat as follows. 

 When the spores are placed under favourable condi- 

 tions the cell wall is ruptured, and the naked proto- 

 plasm passes out. This speck of protoplasm has a 

 nucleus, with a nucleolus, a vacuole, and possesses 

 the power of locomotion, effected by the protrusion of 

 pseudopodia ; it is indeed a veritable amoeba, feeding 

 on solid organic particles taken into its substance. 

 Eventually several of these bodies coalesce and form 

 a mass of naked protoplasm, known as a " Plasmo- 

 dium," which still possesses thepower of locomotion, 

 envelopes solid particles of food, and after a time, 

 breaks up into a number of sacs, or sporangia, con- 

 taining spores, usually mixed with threads which 

 constitute the capillitium. It is much to be regretted 

 that the Professor did not mention the species pre- 



