NEWS OF UNIVERSITIES, MUSEUMS, AND 

 SOCIETIES. 



British Association. 



The recent meeting of the British Association held in Edinburgh was well- 

 attended, the total number of tickets issued being 2,070. There were many distin- 

 guished foreign guests, and the number of associates would doubtless have been 

 greater had not so many of the residents of Edinburgh been spending their vacation 

 elsewhere at the time. In Natural Science, Geology was an especially prominent 

 feature. Sir Archibald Geikie's Presidential Address dealing with the Doctrine of 

 Uniformity and the Antiquity of the Earth in a popular manner, while the Sectional 

 Addresses of Professors Lapworth and James Geikie were devoted to what we elsewhere 

 (p. 481) term " The New Geology." Sir Archibald Geikie contended, from geologi- 

 cal evidence, that the Earth must be much older than supposed by Lord Kelvin and 

 other physicists. 



Apart from the brilliant new ideas in Professor Lapworth's Address, the 

 Geological Section advanced little beyond minor matters of detail. Mr. J. Lomas' 

 demonstration of the scattering of fragments of rock from Ailsa Craig (in the middle 

 of the Firth of Forth) over the Isle of Man, North Wales, and parts of Cheshire, was 

 of great interest, the rock being so characteristic as to be always readily recognised. 

 Messrs. Peach and Home exhibited a supposed deep-sea ooze with radiolaria from the 

 Silurian of the south of Scotland, and showed how the chert in contact with granite 

 became completely recrystallised, consisting of large grains of quartz with inclusion 

 of some garnets and mica. Mr. Clement Reid described seeds of some truly Arctic 

 plants from the lowest deposit of certain silted-up lochs near Edinburgh ; and Mr. 

 E. T. Newton contributed a preliminary notice of the Elgin Dicynodonts and other 

 reptiles, which have at last been rescued by the Geological Survey from the obscu- 

 rity in which they have lain for si.\ years at the Edinburgh Museum. The Committees 

 of the Geological Section are not so active as they might be, and some of the Reports 

 this year were far from satisfactory. 



The success of the Biological Section was very marked in each of the three 

 subdivisions. It is estimated that the aggregate number of zoological, botanical, 

 and physiological papers was higher than that of all the other papers presented to 

 the Association. Professor Rutherford's Address was an elaborate exposition and 

 criticism of current views on the physiology of the colour-sense. A discussion on 

 the possibility of uniting all the organisations devoted to Sea Fisheries in the British 

 Isles may lead to important legislation. The Committees for the exploration of the 

 West Indies and the Sandwich Isles reported good progress ; and Mr. H. O. Forbes 

 exhibited recently-discovered bird-remains from New Zealand. Dr. McCook gave 

 an address on spiders, in which he described them as solitary animals ; and in 

 General Biology Dr. Beard discussed the relation of larval to adult animals. In 

 the Botanical Department, foreign visitors came conspicuously to the front. 

 Professor Goebel, of Munich, contributed a very important paper "on the simplest 

 form of Mosses " — viz., Buxbaumia , long known to Bryologists as an extreme form, 

 by reason of its remarkable sporogoniuln, and inconspicuous vegetative characters. 

 Professor Goebel now announces that its antheridia are borne on the protonema. 

 There is room for a difference of opinion as to the precise significance of this 

 astonishing discovery, but the botanists present appeared to agree, on the whole, in 



