314 MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 
The present annual temperature of the locality is about 6:3? C. 
Dove gives the normal temperature of the latitude (70^ N.) as 8:8?. 
Thus Greenland has too high a temperature; but if we come further 
to the eastward, we meet with a temperature of 0749? C. at Altenfiord. 
Even this extreme variation from the normal conditions of climate is 
9? C. lower than that which we are obliged to assume as having pre- 
vailed during the Miocene period. 
The author states that the results obtained confirm his conclusions 
as to the climate of Central Europe at the same epoch (conf. Heer, 
* Recherches sur le Climat et le Végétation du Pays tertiaire, p. 193); 
and shows at some length how entirely insufficient the views of Sar- 
torius Waltershausen are to explain the facts of the case. 
Herr Sartorius would account for the former high temperature of 
‘certain localities by supposing the existence of an insular climate in 
each case. Such suppositions would be quite inadequate to account 
for the extreme differences of climate which the evidence now under 
consideration proves to have existed. 
Professor Heer concludes his paper as follows :— 
I think these facts are convincing, and the more so as they are not 
insulated, but confirmed by the evidence derivable from the Miocene 
flora of Iceland, Spitzbergen, and Northern Canada. These conclu- 
sions, too, are only links in the grand chain of evidence obtained from 
the examination of the Miocene flora of the whole of Europe. They 
prove to us that we could not by any re-arrangement of the relative 
positions of land and water produce for the northern hemisphere a cli- 
mate which would explain the phenomena in a satisfactory manner. 
We must only admit that we are face to face with a problem, whose 
solution in all probability must be attempted, and we doubt not com- 
pleted, by the astronomer. 
Tug Atum Bay Lrar-BEp. By W. S. Mitchel, LL.B., F.G.8. 
The bed known to geologists as the “ Leaf Bed” or “ Pipe-clay 
Bed" of Alum Bay, is the band of white clay which occurs in the 
lower Bagshot beds, in Alum Bay, about 200 feet from their base, 
numbered 42 in the memoir of the Geological Survey. It is about 
six feet thick, but a small portion, only a few inches in thickness, con- 
tains the plant remains, and no other organisms whatever have been 
noticed in it. 
