52 Royal Society. 



detaching a fragment. The other boukler occurs at Baldock, and 

 consists of hard chalk containing common bhick flints. It is about 

 3 feet 9 inches high above ground, 1h feet long, and nearly 2 feet 

 broad. 



The current by which the drift was accumulated, the author con- 

 ceives came from a point to the east of north, and he is of opinion 

 that the materials have been derived in part from Scandinavia and 

 in ])art from the destruction of strata, which once occupied the site 

 of the German Ocean. After the deposition of the clay. Dr. Mitchell 

 believes, that there was a violent action which accumulated the beds 

 of gravel in some places to the depth of above 100 feet (Beaumont 

 Green, 110 feet ; the Isle of Dogs, 124 feet) ; and that this action 

 will account for the clay not being found in more places, and being 

 occasionally associated with beds of gravel. 



The paper concludes with a slight allusion to a similar north-east 

 drift, north of the counties enumerated in the title ; and it is stated 

 that grey quartz boulders continue to be thrown in at Spurn Head, 

 Yorkshire, similar to those which are found in some of the vales of 

 the counties of Lincoln, Nottingham, and Leicester. Fragments of 

 mountain limestone, lias, oolite, grey quartz, white quartz, and hard 

 chalk ai'e said to occur about Mount Son-ell. 



ROYAL SOCIETY. 

 [Continued from vol. xiii. p. 467.] 



November 15, 1838. — A paper was read, entitled, " Discovery of 

 the Source of the Oxus." By Lieut. Wood, of the Indian Navy. 

 Communicated by James Burnes, K.H., D.C.L., F.R.S., in a letter 

 to the Secretary of the Royal Society. 



The following notice of the discovery of the source of the Oxus 

 by Lieut. Wood, one of the officers serving under Captain Alex- 

 ander Burnes, F.R.S., in his political and scientific mission to Cabul, 

 is contained in a letter from Captain Burnes : 



" This celebrated river " (the Oxus) " rises in the elevated region 

 of Pameer in Sinkoal. It issues from a sheet of water, encircled on 

 all sides, except the west, by hills, through which the Infant river 

 runs ; commencing its course at the great elevation of about 15,600 

 feet above the level of the sea, or within a few feet of the height of 

 Mont Blanc. To this sheet of water Lieut. Wood proposes to as- 

 sign the name of Lake Victoria, in honour of Her Majesty." 



November 22, 1838. — A paper was read, entitled, " On the State 

 of the Interior of the Earth." By W. Hopkins, Esq., M. A., F.R.S., 

 F.R.A.S., &c. 



ITie object of the present memoir is to inquire into the modes in 

 which the refrigeration of the earth may have taken place, on the 

 hypothesis that its entire mass was originally in a fluid state ; an 

 hypothesis which was at first founded on astronomical considera- 

 tions, and is now corroborated by the discoveries of modern geology, 

 exhibiting the apparent injection from below of large masses of un- 

 stratified rocks, through the fissures of sedimentary strata. As- 



