2So The Irish Naturalist. November, 



moiluscaii fauna acquired a distinctly southern character in the upper 

 blue clay. Then the seas became again colder, and the present local 

 molluscan fauna has a distinctly northern aspect. 



The Chairman (Dr. Henry Woodward) asked Mr. Praeger if he had 

 found any of the peculiar nuts with calcified kernels, such as the 

 specimens found in Belfast Lough and now in the British Museum, and 

 whether any collection of the shells which he had mentioned was to be 

 seen in Belfast. 



Mr. Lamplugh spoke in high praise of the work Mr. Praeger had 

 done, and said it was so thorough there remained no more to be done in 

 that special direction. 



Professor PERCY Ken dali,, of the Yorkshire College, Leeds, said he 

 hoped much from Mr Praeger's work when the full record of it was 

 published, and asked certain questions as to the level of the strata. 



Mr. Praeger, in reply, said he had in his possession some of the nuts 

 to which the Chairman referred. All the facts as to levels Professor 

 Kendall would find in the Proceedings of the Belfast Naturalists' Field 

 Club and of the Royal Irish Academy. A good collection of the shells 

 of the blue clay was to be seen in the Belfast Museum, College Square. 



SECTION D.—ZOOLOGY. 



SOME REMARKS ON THE ATLANTIS PROBLEM. 



BY R. F. SCHARFF, PH.D. 



Since the dawn of early history the question of the existence of a 

 continent beyond the " pillars of Hercules" has occupied the mind of 

 man. Our very earliest records of this mythical land were derived from 

 a narrative which has been handed down to us by Plato. 



The Atlantis problem, however, was only raised to scientific import- 

 ance when modern research revealed the fact that the living as well as 

 the extinct flora and fauna of Europe have quite a number of types in 

 common with North America. Unger was the first to put forward the 

 view, from a purely scientific reasoning, that the Atlantic Islands, that is 

 to sa}', the Azores, Madeira, and Canary Islands, formed part of the land- 

 connection which stretched right across the Atlantic and still preserved 

 some of the plants which invaded our continent from the New World. 

 Heer hailed this hypothesis with delight, while Andrew Murray adopted 

 it in a somewhat modified form Edward Forbes also occupied his fertile 

 mind with the problem, but could not convince himself that the vast 

 land which had evidently occupied a portion of the Atlantic had any 

 connection with America. Wollastou, too, who had a most intimate 

 knowledge of the Atlantic Islands, strongly supported theview that 

 their fauna reached them across dry land. 



Imbued, however, with the idea of the permanence of the great ocean 

 basins, Wallace vigorously attacked one and all of these theories, and 

 contended that there was not only no connection between Europe and 

 America across the Atlantic, but that the fauna of the Atlantic Islands 



