March lyth, ipoj.] Proceedings. xxv 



Mr. Melvill also showed a Wedgwood plaque of Linnaeus, 

 given to him by Sir Joseph Hooker, with the information that it 

 had been pronounced by Dr. Solander to be " a better likeness 

 of his master than any ever painted." 



Mr. Melvill also exhibited a long holograph letter of 

 Sir James Edward Smith, founder of the Linnean Society. This 

 was addressed to Dr. Nathaniel Wallich, of Calcutta, and bears 

 date March, 1820. In connection with this, Mr. Melvill mentioned 

 that he possesses a large herbarium of New South Wales plants 

 collected about the year 1792-3, in which all the new species 

 described by Smith in J^ees' Cydopadia are present, mostly with 

 autograph descriptions and notes. This is evidently a secondary 

 collection to that specially selected by Sir J. E. Smith for his 

 own herbarium, now in the possession of the Linnean Society, 

 and was most probably used as a duplicate set of co-types by the 

 describer, its then owner. 



Mr. Melvill read a paper entitled : " Report on the 

 Plants obtained by Mr. Rupert Vallentin in the Falk- 

 land Islands, 1901-2," and exhibited the plants mentioned. 

 This collection contained about one-half of the species hitherto 

 recorded as inhabiting these desolate and treeless islands, where 

 the most conspicuous plants are the Balsam Bog {Bolax g/elxiria), 

 Tussack Grass {Poa caspitosd), and, off the coast, the Giant Alga 

 ( Macrocystis pyriferd). 



The following paper was read . — 



" On the Discovery of an Ossiferous Cavern of 

 Pleiocene age, at Dove Holes, Buxton, Derbyshire." 

 By W. Boyd Dawkins, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S., Professor of 

 Geology in Owetis College^ Victoria University, Manchester. 



The carboniferous limestone, riddled with fissures and pot- 

 holes, in the neighbourhood of Dove Holes, has from time to 

 time, in the course of the working of the quarries, yielded 

 remains of the extinct mammalia of the Pleistocene age. The 

 latest discovery of a group of mammalia, of far higher antiquity 

 than the Pleistocene, is now brought before this Society. The 

 Victory Quarry, Bibbington, in which the discovery was made, 



