The President's Address. 101 



Arctic animals. I hope to have an opportunity of enlarging 

 upon this suhject on some future occasion. 



Our Field Meetings cannot but have left pleasant memories 

 with us all. In spite of unfavourable weather on many 

 occasions, they have always been well attended, and their 

 success is largely due to the efforts of the eminent gentle- 

 men who have acted as our conductors. The best thanks 

 of the Club are due to Sir Antonio Brady, Professor 

 Boulger, Dr. M. C. Cooke, Major-General Pitt-Eivers, Mr. 

 B. H. Cowper, Mr. D'Oyley, Mr. Worthmgton Smith, and 

 Mr. Henry Walker ; whilst upon our Honorary Secretary 

 has not only devolved the organization of these meetings, 

 but likewise the preparation of those excellent reports 

 which have appeared in the Woodford Times, and which we 

 shall many of us peruse with the interest of personal 

 experience as nowpubhshed in our "Proceedings." Among 

 the most memorable of these excursions was the visit to 

 Ilford in July, under the leadership of Sir Antonio Brady 

 and Mr. Henry Walker, on which occasion most interest- 

 ing collections of flint implements and other objects of 

 Palseohthic and Neolithic age were exhibited by Sir 

 Antonio Brady and Mr. Worthington Smith ; and Mr. A. E. 

 Wallace favoured us with a brief sketch of his views on the 

 great question of geological climate which have recently 

 appeared fully elaborated in his admirable " Island Life." 

 It would be quite out of place to attempt here to lay before 

 you any of the lines of argument adopted by Mr. Wallace 

 in support of his theory, but it will be instructive, as show- 

 ing the rapidity of the onward march of science, if I just 

 mention one of his main conclusions, in so far as it bears 

 upon a statement made in my inaugural address delivered 

 last February. In speaking of the glacial epoch {i.e., the 

 last glacial period, with its alternations of warm periods), I 

 stated that the causes of these wonderful conditions of 

 climate wore of an astronomical nature, thereby of course 

 indicating the occurrence of winter in aphelion (brought 

 about by the precession of the equinoxes) during a period 

 of great excentricity of the earth's orbit. This theory, 

 due to Dr. Croll, has long been held by our most eminent 



