134 MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 



though in a wild and savage region on the Quantock Hills, and he 

 should be proud to repeat his experiments in their presence. Mr. 

 Cross sat down amidst long-continued cheering. 



Professor Sedgwick said he had discovered in Mr. Cross a friend 

 who, some years ago, kindly conducted him over the Quantock Hills 

 on the way to Taunton. The residence of that gentleman was not, 

 as he had described it, in a wild and savage region, but seated 

 amidst the sublime and beautiful in nature. At that time he was 

 engaged in carrying on the most gigantic experiments, attaching 

 voltaic lines to the trees of the forest, and conducting through them 

 streams of lightning as large as the mast of a seventy-four gun ship, 

 and even turning them through his house with the dexterity of an 

 able charioteer. Sincerely did he congratulate the section on what 

 they had heard and witnessed that morning. The operations of 

 electrical phenomena, instances of which had been detailed to them, 

 proved that the whole world, even darkness itself, was steeped in 

 everlasting light, the first-born of heaven. However Mr. Cross 

 may have hitherto concealed himself, from this time forth he must 

 stand before the world as public property. Professor Phillips said 

 the wonderful discoveries of Mr. Cross and Mr. Fox would open a 

 field of science in which ages might be employed in exploring and 

 imitating the phenomena of nature. 



The chairman then called on Mr. Conybeare to read his paper on 

 the Coal-fields of Wales, but that gentleman said that the subject 

 would now be so uninteresting after the splendid discoveries that 

 had been detailed to them, that he should only point to the 

 map, and request them to imagine that he had read his paper, and 

 that they had been asleep all the while. 



Mr. Murchison read a paper on the Geological Relations of certain 

 Calcareous Rocks near Manchester, after which the section adjourn- 

 ed to the evening. 



Evening Sitting. — Mr. Murchison made a communication respect- 

 ing the ancient Hydrography of the River Severn, and entered into 

 statements respecting the drifts, in the course of which he expressed 

 an opinion that the River Severn had been thrown into a southern 

 direction by a convulsion of nature. A long discussion bearing on 

 this question then took place, in which Professors Griffith, Hare, 

 Sedgwick, and Phillips, and Messrs. De la Beche, Murchison, 

 Hopkins, and Fox, took part. 



Friday. — Lord Nugent read a communication respecting some 

 sea rivulets in the island of Cephalonia. The water, he said, en- 

 tered the earth through fissures on the sea-shore, and it was not dis- 

 covered where they emerged, but were, however, said to flow into 

 the sea on the side of the island nearest Ithaca. 



Mr. Charlesworth read an elaborate paper on some fallacies in- 

 volved in the results obtained respecting the relative age of ter- 

 tiary deposits, from the application of the test recently intro- 

 duced by Mr. Lyell and M. Deshayes. During the author's inves- 

 tigation of the fossiliferous beds above the London clay in Suffolk 



