1 42 Geological Society. 



heat is evolved, as well as a dark colour imparted to the blood. The 

 author ascribes, however, the bright red colour of arterial blood, not 

 to the action of oxygen, which is of itself completely inert as a co- 

 louring agent, but to that of the saline ingredients naturally contained 

 in healthy blood. On arriving at the lungs, the first change induced 

 on the blood is effected by the oxygen of the atmospheric air, and 

 consists in the removal of the carbonic acid, which had been the 

 source of the dark colour of the venous blood j and the second con- 

 sists in the attraction by the blood of a portion of oxygen, which it 

 absorbs from the air, and which takes the place of the carbonic acid. 

 The peculiar texture of the lungs, and the elevation of temperature 

 in warm-blooded animals, concur in promoting the rapid production 

 of these changes. 



May 28. — A paper was in part read, entitled, ff On the Influence 

 of the Tricuspid Valve of the Heart on the Circulation of the 

 Blood." By Thomas Wilkinson King, Esq., M.R.C.S. Communi- 

 cated by Thomas Bell, Esq., F.R.S. 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



{Address of the President, G. B. Greenough, Esq., F.R.S., at the Annual 



Meeting, 20th February, — continued.) 



Gentlemen, we had many of us an opportunity of witnessing at 

 the late Meeting of the British Association the increasing interest 

 and success with which geology is pursued in Scotland, and we 

 felt more especially grateful on that occasion to Lord Greenock 

 and the Highland Society, for the exertions which they have re- 

 cently made to unravel the structure of their native land, and more 

 especially the nature of its coal-fields. It is not my intention to 

 detail to you all the proceedings of that Society, but I must not 

 refrain from attributing mainly, if not solely, to their exertions the 

 provision which the Government have lately made for the immediate 

 publication of Dr. MacCulloch's geological map of Scotland. What- 

 ever may be the intrinsic excellence of that work, it must be emi- 

 nently useful, if considered only as a nucleus, round which will im- 

 mediately congregate those ample stores of geological knowledge 

 which at present lie latent in the minds and cabinets of our northern 

 brethren. Nor will Ireland be backward in furnishing her contingent. 

 The coloured copy of Arrowsmith's map of that portion of the United 

 Kingdom which Mr. Griffith has undertaken to lay before the 

 British Association in August next, will bring within our reach an 

 abundant supply of geological information, which though it has 

 been in his possession for many years past, a natural repugnance to 

 combining geological correctness with geographical inaccuracy has 

 hitherto induce'd him to withhold. 



The exertions of the Geological Society of Dublin have been 

 continued, and cannot fail to diffuse over the whole of Ireland a taste 

 for those studies which at a very early period reflected so much lustre 

 on the name of Kirwan. 



It will be in your recollection that Mr. Weaver presented to us 

 some time since a valuable Memoir on the Geology of the south- 

 western part of that country. In one part of the Memoir the coal- 



