PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. XCV11. 



unbroken by milder intervals. A good supply of coal, one seam 

 being 24ft. thick, is now found in the Transvaal, and it has also 

 been discovered, at a depth of 1,668 feet, in a seam of almost 

 equal thickness, under the sandstone to the west of the South 

 Staffordshire coalfield, according to the predictions of geologists, 

 after nine years' work in sinking. The Dover coalfield shows 

 great promise, seams amounting to 22 J feet having been found 

 at Dover at a depth of 1,000 feet, and others at other places in 

 the neighbourhood at depths down to 1815 feet. The British 

 output of coal in 1906 was 6-33 per cent, more than in 1905, or 

 251,050,809 tons. Rubies have been found in the Transvaal, 

 though not yet on a large scale, and an enormous quartz crystal 

 has been found in Japan, stated to be 4^ feet long and i J feet 

 thick. The largest in the British Museum (Nat. Hist.) is 3 feet 

 long and more than i foot thick, and comes from Madagascar. 

 An interesting association between diamonds and garnets has 

 before been noticed, the former having been found embedded 

 in the latter crystals. Now conversely a diamond has been 

 found containing a garnet. An excellent geological map of 

 Cape Colony is being published, and the tenth International 

 Geological Congress was held last September in Mexico, but 

 was attended by hardly any delegates from England. 



Recent researches in Irish caves in county Clare have shown 

 that they do not generally contain stalagmite floors, but usually 

 two distinct deposits, the lower of a clayey nature with 

 bones of the bear, reindeer, Irish elk, and Arctic lemming ; 

 the upper layer being brown earth with implements, charcoal, 

 and bones of domestic animals. Remains of the wild cat 

 also occurred, and in the mammoth cave, near Doneraile, co. 

 Cork, were found, for the first time in Ireland, bones of the 

 cave hyaena. Another specimen of a pterodactyl from Eichstatt, 

 showing the wing membranes, is now in the U.S. National 

 Museum, and is valuable on account of the rarity of fossils 

 in which such soft parts are preserved. As a rule we can only 

 speculate on their form and markings from analogies with living 

 animals. The frequent occurrence of fossil cycads in the 



