Proceedings. liii. 
St. Bees in Cumberland, and he exhibited and described 
numerous specimens of the various rocks which he had 
obtained from it. 
The Presipent added some remarks upon the subjects 
which Dr. Carpenter had brought before the meeting. 
With regard to the cannon ball, he suggested that this 
might be a relic of one of the skirmishes which were known 
to have taken place at Croydon during some of the old Civil 
Wars. Other indications of these existed, There were at 
Lambeth Palace several letters which were written to Arch- 
bishop Whitgift by the then Vicar of Croydon, during the 
building of the Whitgift Hospital, and in these it was 
mentioned, that in making the new road on the south side of 
the Hospital, which is the modern George Street, a number of 
human skeletons were found, and that in consequence of this 
the works were stopped for atime. These were believed to be 
the remains of some of the men who fell during the Civil 
Wars. Quite recently another human skeleton was discovered 
in excavating for the new sewer in George Street. 
With regard to the teeth to which Dr. Carpenter had 
referred, these were of peculiar interest, as very few mam- 
malian remains had been found in the Croydon gravels. He 
also added that he had himself a fine molar tooth of an 
elephant, and some pieces of bone, probably from the same 
animal, which had been found in the gravel at Thornton 
Heath, and he understood from Mr. Baldwin Latham that 
bones of elephants and of extinct deer had lately been 
discovered in similar gravel at Mitcham. There was no 
reason why these remains should not occur about Croydon, 
as similar remains had been found in many places in drift 
gravels in the valley of the Thames. 
Referring to the nests which had been exhibited, Mr. FLower 
dissented from the views expressed by Dr. Carpenter. He 
believed that no line of demarcation could be drawn between 
instinct and reason. A habit was formed under the influence 
of reason, and if that habit became fixed and was inherited it 
became an instinct. But even after its formation an instinct 
was always capable of a very large amount of modification, 
and might even disappear altogether by altered circumstances. 
A very good instance of this was shewn in the fear which 
most birds and wild animals had of man. That fear, where it 
existed, was undoubtedly now due, to a great extent, to 
instinct. But the fear was purely an acquired fear, and did 
not exist in places like uninhabited islands, where birds had 
not been subjected to persecution and ill-treatment from men. 
Even in Scotland the same thing might be seen. In the 
higher hills in the deer forests, where the Ptarmigan are not 
