420 Chronicles of Science. | July, 
President's address. The report represents the society to be in a 
very flourishing condition, both numerically and “ financially.” 
The address contains notices of a large number of the more im- 
portant geological works that were published during 1865 ; but as 
most of them are by this time familiar to our readers, we shall not 
stop to discuss them. We cannot, however, refrain from noticing 
an opinion, which is very heterodox, but which, nevertheless, may 
one day turn out to be valuable, perhaps premonitory of a great 
discovery. Mr. Hamilton (the president of the society) thinks “ that 
the time is come when it is desirable to investigate this question— 
Whether the theory of central incandescent heat is tenable?” So 
far so good, except that it seems difficult to imagine heat itself as 
“incandescent ;” but the sequel is extraordinary—namely, ‘‘ Whether 
the plastic condition of the earth, to which its oblate spheroidal 
form has been attributed, be not owing to an aqueous rather than 
to an igneous origin?” Mr. Hamilton further enunciates the 
following problem as a corollary :—“ Whether the formation of the 
earth may not have commenced with a central nucleus consisting of 
an aqueous paste, gradually increasing in size as matter was 
deposited around it from the circumambient fluids and gases which 
filled the solar space before solid matter was aggregated round those 
spots which now form the planets in our solar system?” Mr. 
Hamilton suggests these and other questions for the consideration 
of the society ; but the inquiry is purely one for physicists and 
astronomers. 
Two out of the three papers contained in the same number of 
the ‘Quarterly Journal’ are deserving of notice. In the first, 
“On the Western Limit of the Rhetic Beds in South Wales, and 
on the Position of the Sutton Stone,” Mr. E. B. Tawney shows 
that the Rheetic beds are continued as far westward as near Pyle, 
west of Bridgend; and that the Sutton stone and some beds above 
(named by him the Southerndown series), which occur at and 
near Dunraven Castle, Sutton, &c., do not belong to the Lias but to 
the Rheetic beds. He also expresses the opinion that the Sutton 
beds are slightly anterior in time to the Avicula-contorta series, so 
that his discovery of Ammonites in them is of somec onsiderable 
importance. In a note to this paper, Dr. Duncan gives more 
decided evidence respecting the age of the Sutton beds as the 
result of an examination of the corals. He states that these corals 
“in the Alpine Trias would be deemed St. Cassian,” and the only 
consideration which induces him to make any reservation about the 
St. Cassian age of the Sutton beds, is the defective nature of our 
information respecting the range of the St. Cassian corals, and their 
relation to those of the Dachstein and Koéssen strata. If further 
researches confirm the high antiquity here suggested as belonging 
to the Sutton beds, a zone of life will have been discovered in 
