1-40 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF QUEENSLAND. 



Very soon after my fondest hopes Avere realised, and my 

 Brandon Beds gave up their choicest secret — flint implements. 

 I waited till I had got them in more than one locaUty — and 

 they were as scarce as they were precious. I had of course 

 notified my chiefs — they were not overwhelmingly congratula- 

 tory, and I don't think ever really convinced, though they 

 were very nice to me, and allowed me to insert a meagre 

 Bowdlerised edition of mj- views, in my official Report on the 

 Gun-fhnt Industry. 



Naturally the news created a sensation. Geologists were 

 asked to gulp at least three heresies in one bolus. First, the 

 Glacial Epoch was to be taken in three courses. Second, the 

 salt of the Chalky Boulder Clay had lost its savour and was 

 vapid freshwater stuff. Tliirdly, that man went a hunting 

 during fits of interglacial mildness between the cold chill 

 worldng hours of glaciation. 



Prof. T. McK. Hughes had left the Geological Survey and 

 ascended the throne of SedgeA\-ick at Cambridge. It was his 

 delight, not once or twice in my poor Brandon storj% to come 

 down in full panoply of professorial dignity, with a tail of 

 glorious undergrads, howk me out and go over the ground 

 with me, and egg me on to expound, while he stood by mute. 

 Then would he strip his sleeves, and standing on the Brandon 

 Beds prove they were not there. He showed how my poor 

 Boulder Clay was nought but solid chalk, and in fine 

 demonstrated that I cUdn't understand geology but he did. 

 Among those who listened and profited by this A^dsdom was the 

 present Professor Marr, his successor (who has just exhumed 

 me from obli\don), as he reminds me in a letter just to hand., 



I vaUantly bearded the Cambridge lions in their den, and at 

 the Philosophical Society meekly suggested that the genesis of 

 man and man in Genesis were not convertible terms. After 

 being soothed by the strains of a paper on Smith's function in a 

 rectangular parallelepipedon I was called on. It was Hughes's 

 hour of triumph, and he was glad he had been bom. In presence 

 of megaspores of dons, he got me down and roUed on me, he 

 took me in his teeth and mangled me, and then fhnging my 

 remains onto a cane-bottomed chair, sat down panting but 

 proud. One man alone had arnica for me — the Rev. Osmond 

 Fisher, our greatest mathematical geologist, who had been 

 over the evidence with me, and whose guest I was. A truly 



