September 1898] NEWS 213 
On August 1 the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union made an excursion to Spurn, 
and succeeded in collecting many specimens of interest. 
THE Geologists’ Association of London held their Long Excursion in the Bir- 
mingham district from July 28 to August 3, under the Directorship of Professors 
Lapworth and Watts, Dr Stacey Wilson, and Messrs Jerome Harrison and Wick- 
ham King. Messrs Sollas, Blake, Sherborn, and Miss Wood of Birmingham, were 
among the fifty or sixty persons present. Mr Frederick Meeson acted efficiently 
as Excursion Secretary. The main attraction of the Excursion was the compari- 
son of the Archaean and Cambrian Rocks of the district with those seen on a 
previous occasion in the Shrewsbury area under the same directors. The clear 
and patient exposition of the “Old Boy,” as Professor Lapworth calls the 
Archaean rock, was warmly acknowledged by the visitors, many of whom had 
followed for a second time this eminent leader in British geology. The basic 
dyke in Abel’s Quarry, near Nuneaton, penetrating the Archaean, but cut off by 
the overlying Cambrian Quartzite, was an object of much interest, while the 
Hyolithes beds of Cambrian age yielded sparingly Kutorgina, Hyolithes, and 
other fossils. The remarkable bending of the edges of the Menevian beds under- 
lying the Carboniferous conglomerate was examined in detail, and the theory of the 
movement of soil-cap was held to be sufficient to account for it without calling in 
any more violent means. The geologists were shown, by Professors Lapworth and 
Watts, the imaginary restoration of the old Triassic sea, with its islands of Charn- 
wood, Nuneaton, Lickey, Shrewsbury, &c. The head of a trilobite was found for the 
first time in the Lower Stockingford Shales, thus helping forward the elucidation 
of the life of the period. The last day an excursion was made to the Dudley and 
Wren’s Nest Silurian, and owing to the excellent arrangements made by Mr 
Claughton the workings were explored in boats in a most complete manner, 
Heavy bags were made, chiefly of rock-specimens, and a rumour was current a 
few days later that the Oxford express had broken an axle. 
THe German Emperor, whose sympathy with all forms of literature, art, 
and science is notorious, must have had excellent reasons for prohibiting the 
intended meeting at Posen of the Polish Association for the Promotion of 
Medical and Natural Science, and for threatening with banishment any Prussian 
subject who should take part in the proceedings. That he should wish “to 
envenom the relations betwen the Polish and the German nationality,” no sane 
man can believe ; yet this is what is openly stated by sixty protestant professors 
in a circular addressed to leading members of the medical profession in Great 
Britain. 
Ar the Congress of Chemists in Vienna, Dr Leo Lilienfeld, a former pupil 
of Du Bois Reymond, and now at Vienna, demonstrated a simple synthesis of 
albumen, or rather pepton, said to be similar in composition and reactions to the 
natural product as formed by the digestion of albuminous substances. The 
ingredients are said to be phenol, glycocol, amydo-acetic acid, monochlorine 
acetic acid, and phosphoric oxychloride. Whether the nutritive qualities of the 
compound are the same as those of natural pepton has yet to be proved. There 
is no immediate prospect of its replacing the roast beef of old England. 
From the Bolletino del Naturalista we learn that a committee has been formed 
at Turin in order to establish there a freshwater aquarium for the advancement 
of pisciculture in Italy and specially in Piedmont. 
On August 1 the Public Library at Norwich was destroyed by fire. It had been 
founded over a century, and contained more than 60,000 volumes. The depart- 
ment of local archaeology was specially valuable, and many of the books so un- 
happily lost can never be replaced. 
