1892. 



NEWS OF UNIVERSITIES, ETC. 317 



curatorship of the Society's Museum last October, after a service of 20 years. Mr. 

 Edgar R. Waite has been appointed to the vacant position. Among the more 

 noteworthy additions to the collection of the Museum during the year, are a series 

 of British birds' eggs and a case to illustrate the transformation of insects. 

 Photographs of temporary sections of the Coal-measures in and near Leeds are also 

 a noteworthy acquisition. 



Natural Science is well represented in this year's list of selected candidates 

 for the Fellowship of the Royal Society, which includes the names of Frank Evers 

 Beddard, Hans Gadow, Francis Gotch, William Abbot Herdman, Frederick 

 Wollaston Hutton, Louis Compton Miall, Benjamin Neve Peach, and Augustus 

 D. Waller. The remaining names representing Physical Science are those of 

 Robert Young Armstrong, John Ambrose Fleming, Clement Le Neve Foster, John 

 Joly, Joseph Larmor, and Ale.xander Pedler ; while Political Economy is honoured 

 in the person of Mr. Robert Giffen. 



By the death of Mr. William Reed, M.R.C.S., F.G.S., of York, at the advanced 

 age of eighty-two years, on May 9, the Yorkshire Philosophical Society has lost 

 its greatest benefactor. Not only did Mr. Reed give to the Museum of that Society 

 his own magnificent general collection of fossils, but with rare liberality he purchased 

 and presented the Whincopp and Baker collections of Crag fossils, the Wood 

 collection of Palaeozoic fossils (especially rich in Yorkshire Carboniferous Limestone 

 species), part of the Bean collection (chiefly Jurassic), and the Elwes collection of 

 Tertiary fossils. So far as we remember, Mr. Reed's only paper was a short note 

 on a boring at Masham. 



Two parts of the Transactions of the Hertfordshire Natural History Society and Field 

 Club (vol. vi., pt. 7, vol. vii., pt. i) have just been issued, the first occupied by 

 abstracts of proceedings, the second by Mr. Hopkinson's Presidential Address on 

 Francis Bacon. Vol. v. (1S91) of the Essex Naturalist has also been completed, and 

 the first four numbers of vol. vi. (for 1892) have reached us. This publication is 

 now up to date, and the editor, Mr. William Cole, urges his fellow-members of 

 the Essex Field Club to assist him in issuing the monthly parts punctually and 

 regularly. Last year's volume contains, among others, valuable contributions on 

 the cryptogamic and flowering plants of the county, on certain groups of lepidop- 

 terous insects, on the mollusca of the Thames estuary, on the Essex boulder clay, 

 and on the undulations of the Chalk. The new volume opens with an interesting 

 account of the existing flowering plants of Epping Forest as compared with the 

 earlier records, by Mr. J. T. Powell; and Mr. William Cole follows with a dis- 

 cussion of the boundaries of the Forest. Mr. J. French describes evidence of 

 supposed old fish-reservoirs, perhaps dating back to a period anterior to the Roman 

 occupation of Britain. Mr. W. Whitaker contributes statistics of Essex well- 

 sections ; and the Rev. Hilderic Friend has a series of notes on British earthworms, 

 with special reference to those of Essex. The Report of the Marlborough College 

 Natural History Society for 1891 lately issued contains many small notes of local 

 interest, and there are some observations by Mr. A. S. Eve on " coombs " and 

 " lynchets." Coombs are dry valleys in the Chalk, and lynchets are horizontal 

 ridges or banks on the slopes of the Chalk hills. Mr. Eve thinks that the latter 

 were not made by man. 



The May number of the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society (vol. xlviii., 

 pt. 2) contains many noteworthy papers, of which those by Professor Prestwich and 

 Mr. Clement Reid on Pleistocene Britain are noticed elsewhere. In his Presidential 

 Address, Sir Archibald Geikie treats of volcanic action in Britain from the Devonian 

 age onwards. Among the papers the older rocks attract much attention ; and there is 

 a valuable memoir by Messrs. Jukes-Browne and Harrison on the Oceanic Deposits 

 of the Barbados. The latter paper, supplemented by a note by Mr. J. W. Gregory, 



