1864. | Geology. 747 
identified. The bronze period was represented by another group ; 
the period of occupation since the Romans by another ; and there is 
also a stone period earlier than the bronze. This latter is probably 
contemporaneous with the period of the lake villages, estimated from 
this source of independent evidence at about 6,500 years old. The 
fossil was found in this part. There is an element of doubt involved 
in the absence of certainty as to the limits of the deposit during 
the Roman occupation of the country. 
When this matter was debated, there were several communications 
bearing on the same subject, and an interesting discussion arose on 
the antiquity of the human race. The most remarkable feature was 
the unanimity of the speakers, and the perfect and manifest sympathy 
exhibited by a very large audience, who kept together in the Section 
room without flinching from 11 till 4 o’clock. The absence of Dr. 
Falconer and Mr. Busk, who have just started for Gibraltar, rendered 
any allusion to the newly-discovered human remains from that quarter 
undesirable. 
Another important communication was the account given by 
Mr. Sanders of a most admirable and detailed map of the Bristol 
coal-fields, prepared from parish maps, on a scale of four inches to a 
mile, independently of the Government survey. In the course of 
fifteen minutes Mr. Sanders gave an outline of the intelligent and 
indefatigable labour of a quarter of a century. The manner was 
worthy of the matter. 
Mr. Sorby directed attention to the fact that in metallic meteorites, 
iron (s. g. 7°8) and olivine (s. g. 3°4) appeared to have been in 
fusion together, the olivine being left diffused through the iron after 
cooling. He pointed out that this was impossible on or near the earth’s 
surface, owing to the difference of the specific gravities ; and suggested, 
as an explanation, that the fusion and cooling might either have taken 
place in the metallic centre of small independent bodies, where the 
specific gravity was nil, the meteorites being fragments of such bodies 
entering subsequently within the earth’s attraction, or that each 
meteorite had been itself a separate small body cooled in space. 
A new and original communication was that of the Rey. G. F. 
Browne, being an account of several ice-caves or glaciéres, some of 
them newly discovered, but others already known and described, in 
Dauphiné, Savoy, and parts of Switzerland. The enormous accumu- 
lations of ice, exhibiting in some caves a thickness of 180 feet, the 
rate of increase of the ice deposit from year to year, the condition 
and temperature of the ice in summer and winter, and the fact that 
while some caves at very moderate elevations are full of ice, others 
apparently under similar conditions and at much greater elevations 
are free, seem to exclude by turns all the theories that have been 
suggested. The texture of the cave-ice which occurs in groups of 
crystals, forming prisms in some parts of the mass, was the subject of 
a separate communication to the Chemical Section, but complicated 
the geological problem. It will be necessary to pay greater attention 
to this curious subject. 
