l893 . NEWS OF UNIVERSITIES, ETC. 47 i 



dates are inserted with painstaking accuracy. Of course, this inserted date must be 

 that of issue, not that of writing the MS., for the latter is an imposition which 

 cannot be too strongly condemned. 



The Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club have recently published the first part 

 of vol. xi. of their Proceedings. An address by the retiring President, Mr. W. C. 

 Lucy, contains some notes on a large boulder found imbedded in quart zose sand on 

 the top of Cleeve Cloud ; the force that transported the boulder and sand have also 

 considerably disturbed the Oolitic rocks of the hill. This number also contains 

 an important paper by Mr. R. Etheridge, F.R.S , on the rivers of the Cotteswold 

 Hills within the watershed of the Thames, which discusses their importance as 

 a supply to the main river and to the metropolis. Accompanying the paper is a 

 Hydro-geological map of the Thames Basin above Wallingford and Oxford. The 

 author discusses the practicability of forming reservoirs at various places in the 

 upper basin of the Thames. The number concludes with an account by Professor 

 J. Allen Harker of the experiments that have led to the conclusion that leguminous 

 plants can obtain a supply of nitrogen from the atmosphere by the aid of the 

 symbiotic organisms that form the tubercules on their roots. 



A Society known throughout the country by the results of practical inves- 

 tigations in which it has been so long engaged, the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union, 

 with a total numerical strength of almost 3,000, may be said to occupy a premier 

 position among county scientific institutions. Probably there has never been a 

 gathering more thoroughly representative of the scientific activity of Yorkshire 

 than that which took place in the Town Hall, Skipton, on the 14th ult., the occasion 

 of the Union's thirty-second annual meeting. 



The usual sectional meetings were held during the day at the Grammar School, 

 and at these reports of the year's work were received, and officers elected for the 

 ensuing twelve months. Each branch of Natural Science has a president and 

 secretaries, whose duties are to control and direct the work of their own department, 

 and prepare the results for publication in the Transactions, which are issued to 

 members and contain a permanent record of all observations. 



The business affairs of the Union are in the hands of a permanent General 

 Committee, which met in the afternoon under the presidency of Dr. H. Clifton 

 Sorby, LL.D., F.R.S. Seven committees of research, in connection with the 

 British Association, were again appointed, and amid applause, Mr. W. Denison 

 Roebuck, F.L.S., who has served the Union faithfully for many years, and to whom 

 in main it owes its success, was, for the eighteenth time, elected hon. secretary. 



In the evening an exhibition and conversazione, arranged by the Craven 

 Naturalists' Society in honour of the visit of the Union, was held in the Town Hall, 

 and at 7 p.m., when Mr. Henry Seebohm came forward to deliver his presidential 

 address, an audience had assembled which quite overfilled the spacious building. 

 In his opening remarks Mr. Seebohm, who is practically a native of Skipton, said 

 how deeply he felt the honour which his position as President for 1893 gave him. 

 To use his own words — " Little did I think, when a lad catching butterflies and 

 tramping o'er hill and dale for what information I could get of the natural history 

 of the neighbourhood of Skipton, that I should one day occupy the position I do to- 

 night among Yorkshire naturalists." After thanking the Union for the honour they 

 had done him, he proceeded to his address on " The Geographical Distribution of 

 British Birds," of which a printed copy was presented to each member. 



On the motion of Dr. Sorby, a vote of thanks was accorded to the President, 

 and the Union is now able to add one more to the long list of distinguished men 

 who have honoured it by their tenure of office. 



It was announced that the Presidency for 1894 had been offered to, and accepted 

 by, Mr. R. H. Tiddeman, M.A., F.G.S., of the Geological Survey, and the next 

 annual meeting is to be held at Doncaster. 



