are the chief means by which we are enabled to disentangle the often complex 

 web of geological succession and correlate the deposits in one district or covintry 

 with their eqviivalents in time in another. 



Passing up to the carboniferous system we twice visited portions of the 

 South AVales coal field. At Pontypool we had a most able address from a former 

 President of this Society, Mr. G. Phillips Bevan, who has done so much in 

 investigating this coal field. We had the pleasvire of meeting there the Cardiff 

 Naturalists' Society, under the presidency of Mr. Adams, to whom we are much 

 indebted for showing us his beautiful collection of coal measure fossils. Our 

 second visit was to the northern part of the field at Penwyllt, where we covild 

 see as in a diagram the Old Red of the Breconshire mountains, the Mountain 

 Limestone, and the Millstone Grit, dipping under the coal measures. The 

 Kev. \V. S. Symonds, to whom we have been so often indebted, kindly gave us 

 the field address, and I need not remind you how comprehensive and suggestive 

 it was, and how well it illustrated the great changes which were recorded in 

 the hills and valleys around us. Our subsequent visit to the beautiful water- 

 fall of the Scwd Hen Khyd, and the demonstration which it afforded to the 

 merest tyro in geology of the mode in which the valley of the Llech bad 

 been and is being eroded, showed us that the present state of the earth's 

 surface is by no means a final one, but that iuii^ortant and inevitable changes 

 are now going on slowly it may be but surely. These changes are again brought 

 before us to-day by Mr. La Touche in his paper on the Alluvial Deposit of 

 Rivers — a subject the investigation of which may enable us to form some reliable 

 estimate of the rapidity of the disintegration which different parts of the earth's 

 surface are now undergoing. 



The Animal Kingdom has engaged a large share of our attention, and has 

 enlisted several new workers in our ranks. Mr. Rankin's lucid and able paper 

 on the means of flight of birds brought before us a subject of daily interest, 

 and has probably led many of us to observe with more knowledge and conse- 

 quently with more pleasure the movements of a class of animals which more 

 than any other adds beauty to a landscape. The Kev. Thomas PliiUipps in 

 his paper on Snakes directed our attention to the most prominent cliaracteristics 

 of our few British species of this order of reptiles. It is to be regretted that 

 the dread insijired by these graceful creatures leads to the constant destruction 

 even of the harmless species. The Fishes were brought before us in Mr. Lloyd's 

 very instructive paper on their swim bladders, which I am siire contained matter 

 new to most of us. Many interesting points remain to be cleared np, especially 

 regarding the migratory species of this class of the animal kingdom, and there 

 could be no fitter work for this society. I hope we may have further contribu- 

 tions from the author of this paper on a subject which he has so many oppor- 

 tunities of studying. 



Entomology has been much more cultivated than formerly. Mr. Steele's 

 paper on Mason Wasps illustrat-ed a marvellous history of insect life, and Dr. 



