go NATURAL SCIENCE. Feb.. 



tinuous series, with a regular dip to the south, he finds the beds to be 

 much folded in several broken troughs, and to be constantly inverted. 

 Older beds thus appear to overlie (conformably) newer strata. He 

 concludes that the realisation of these facts will necessitate, in future, 

 a great reduction in the tiickness hitherto given to the llfracombe 

 series, and the rearrangement of the fossil zones. Jukes, in 1866, 

 drew prominent attention to the crumplings of the strata, and he then 

 remarked : 'J' From what I saw elsewhere about llfracombe and 

 Mortehoe, I believe that, while there is a real general dip to the south 

 throughout the district, this dip is by no means so prevalent as it 

 appears to be, and that the real thickness is accordingly much less- 

 than would be at first supposed." [Quart, jfmirn. Geo!. Soc, vol. xxii.,. 

 P- 357-) 



An excellent portrait of Sir Archibald Geikie, and a memoir of 

 him by M. de Lapparent, appear in Nature for January 5. A brief 

 memoir and a portrait of Professor T. Rupert Jones are published in 

 the Geological Magazine for January. The biographical notice of Sir 

 Archibald Geikie is one of the strangest misrepresentations that has 

 appeared for some time. We are glad to observe that a wTiter in the 

 Daily Chronicle of January 14 has placed the facts of the case before 

 the public. 



Attention is sometimes called to the poor attendance at the 

 meetings of the learned societies, except on occasions when a warm and 

 exciting debate is expected. This is natural enough when the papers 

 to be read are of a detailed character ; they may be important, and they 

 will interest a few members, but to the many they must be dry. At 

 the Linnean Society much time is profitably devoted to the explana- 

 tion of specimens exhibited. It is, however, questionable whether 

 the average attendance at scientific meetings has seriously decreased. 

 Writing in 1 821, Leonard Horner says: " I went to the Geological 

 Society, which seems to me to have got into very feeble hands, and 

 to want a great deal of the energy it had in former days." He refers 

 to times when Warburton, Wollaston, and Greenough were among 

 the leading spirits. Horner, who had joined the Society in 1808, and 

 was chosen as one of the secretaries in 1810, was (at the time he 

 writes) living in Edinburgh, so that he only occasionally attended the 

 meetings. Coming to reside again in London in 1827, he must have 

 enjoyed many of the gatherings, when Sedgwick, Fitton, Buckland, 

 Murchison, De la Beche, and Lyell were there ; and also the subse- 

 quent proceedings, when, " after the meeting, we adjourned to Lord 

 Enniskillen's ; Owen, Clift, Buckland, Fitton, Major Clarke, and 

 Edward Bunbury and his brother, and we had Crustacea, carbonised 

 fragments of Costa; of a mammal (probably Bos-broiled boniensis), 

 and much smoke and merriment." ' 

 1 See Memoir of Leonard Horner, by K. M. Lyell, vol. i., p. 192, and vol. h., p. 44. 



