Linnean Society. 365 
in the British Museum, was first shown in London at the Egyptian 
Hall, its exhibitor asserted that Indian arrow-heads were found 
among the diluvian bones. 
We are anxious to call the attention of British geologists to this 
subject, in order that we may concur in the pursuit with our French 
neighbours, and under the impression that our own valleys and beds 
of diluvian gravel will supply evidence of the same kind. Mr. 
Wetherell of Highgate has a most beautifully formed and perfect 
spear-head of flint, which was lately found by the workmen employed 
in the parish of Hornsey on the Great Northern Railway. The ac- 
count given of it was, that it was found in a bed of gravel 3 or 4 
feet below the surface. How came it there? Many will say, that 
after being placed on the surface of the ground, it had in the course 
of ages worked its way downwards. We do not think such a change 
of position possible. Not even a pebble could have travelled that 
short journey, much less a long, thin, finely-wrought instrument, 
with sharp edges. Wherever it was originally laid in the gravel, 
there it must have rested for hundreds, nay thousands of years. We 
ought therefore rather to suppose that, when that part of Hornsey 
was a river-bed, perhaps 3000 years ago, a fisherman lost his spear, 
and after the wintry floods had covered it with a load of gravel 
brought down from the higher land, the wooden shaft and its 
fastenings of cord or leather underwent decay, and were dissipated, 
whilst the stone was preserved in its original state. But by further 
attention we shall probably discover in the British Isles not only 
those finished productions, which our antiquaries have hitherto col- 
lected, but weapons and tools of a more primitive form, in an un- 
finished state, and in all the stages of progress from the original 
fragments of rock to the polished Celt; and it is by pursuing these 
researches, as M. Boucher de Perthes has done, that we may carry 
back British history to its earliest date, and re-establish the old title, 
“Homo Diluvii Testis.” —J. Y. 
PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 
LINNZAN SOCIETY. 
February 6, 1849.—E. Forster, Esq., V.P., in the Chair. 
A series of specimens of the natural order Cycadeeé was exhilited, 
and a portion of them presented to the Society, by James Yates, Esq., 
JD sad oad Bete Berson 
In his catalogue of these specimens Mr. Yates followed the ar- 
rangement and adopted the names of Miquel in his ‘ Monographia 
Cycadearum,’ 1842, and of Brongniart in the ‘ Ann. des Sc. Natu- 
relles,’ sér. 8. tome 5, 1846. 
In the course of his communication the author offered the follow- 
ing remarks :— 
Genus Cycas. 
Cycas revoluta.—Since the year 1799, when a female plant of this 
