8 PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



much damage in the N. Island, and another serious one in 

 San Salvador early in June, 1917. A small movement in 

 the seismograph at Shide in the Isle of Wignt is believed to 

 have been caused by the Messines explosion on June 7th 

 at 3.10 a.m., when 19 large mines, containing altogether 

 about 450 tons of explosives, were simultaneously fired, 

 making craters up to a size of 100 yards in diameter and 70 

 feet deep. Even the Arctic regions are now being worked for 

 coal, wnich is being brought to Norway from Spit zber gen. 

 it being estimated that tnis coalfield might produce 200,000 

 tons per annum. Coal is also found in Bear Island in the 

 same region. To turn to fossils, a most interesting fossil 

 of an Ichthyosaurus, shewing the skin and other soft parts, 

 has been presented to the Natural History Museum from 

 tne Lias of Barrow-in-Soar, Leicestershire. The skin of 

 the paddle seems to have been ornamented with rosettes 

 of dark spots. The stomach contained remains of cuttlefish. 

 A nearly complete skeleton of a gigantic fossil bird from the 

 Lower Eocene of Wyoming has lately been added to the 

 American Natural History Museum, New York. It was 

 nearly seven feet high, with a huge head 18in. in length, a 

 large compressed beak, and a massive neck and small wings. 

 A few fragments were discovered 40 years ago and named 

 Diatryma. The skull of a new genus of bats, Zanycteris, 

 has been discovered in a very early Tertiary formation in 

 Colorado and seems to belong to a family still found in tropical 

 America. Other more recent fossil bat remains have been 

 found in caverns at Porto Rico. Specimens of huge fossil 

 Dinosaurs of various species have also been obtained from 

 Wyoming and from the Upper Cretaceous of Alberta and 

 Montana, including a nearly complete skeleton of Mono- 

 clonius. These have been described by Professor Osborn. 



ASTRONOMY. 



In my address last year I alluded to the theory that the 

 force of gravity was slightly affected by the motion of the 



