xcvi. PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



mixing with fibre rubber whilst in the milk state. A serious fact 

 for rubber-tree planters is that chemists have very nearly, if 

 they have not already quite, succeeded in making indiarubber 

 synthetically, which is likely to bring down the value of the 

 natural product. 



GEOLOGY. 



Last year I had to record the occurrence of the terrible earth- 

 quake at San Francisco. This year, on January i4th, there took 

 place one, also attended with great loss of life and destruction 

 to property, at Kingston, Jamaica. It was confined to a small 

 area, as places 30 miles distant were scarcely affected. It will 

 interest those present to know that Dr. Vaughan Cornish, so 

 lately a Member and Vice-President of our Club, was in 

 Kingston at the time, and, though a sufferer, as well as Mrs. 

 Cornish, from injuries from the falling walls of the Myrtle 

 Hotel, the ruins of which were figured in the illustrated papers, 

 he managed, with true scientific spirit, to take photographs and 

 notes of the devastation. They are now starting again to make 

 further observations. One of our Members, Mr. Arthur 

 Symonds, was also injured in the earthquake. A great earth- 

 quake on August 1 6th, 1906, also partly destroyed Valparaiso. 

 Nearer home one of the strongest shocks which have visited this 

 country took place over South Wales on June 2yth, 1906, and 

 did much damage, in Swansea especially, though trifling in 

 comparison with those I have just described. By other move- 

 ments of the earth's crust, doubtless the effect of a submarine 

 volcano, a new island was at the end of 1906 formed in the Bay 

 of Bengal, 307 yards long by 217 broad and 19 feet high. 

 Probably, however, it would not, from the loose nature of the 

 materials composing it, be very permanent. At the York 

 meeting of the British Association the President of the 

 Geological Section reviewed the evidence on which a belief 

 in the occurrence of mild interglacial epochs rested, showing 

 that it was weak, and that the glacial period, which at one time 

 clothed the greater part of our country in ice, was probably 



