Deep Boring in a Coral Reef 253 



had arisen. It had four faculties arts, law, medicine, and 

 science ; the teaching was professorial, not tutorial, and the 

 staff, including lecturers and demonstrators, was 46 in 

 number. 



April 28th, 458th meeting (anniversary). Professor Judd 

 gave an outline of the progress made in investigating the 

 structure of a coral reef by boring. The committee, 

 appointed by the Royal Society, had selected the atoll of 

 Funafuti, one of the Ellice Islands, of which Captain Field 

 in H.M.S. Penguin had made a very complete survey. Two 

 borings were put down in 1896 by Professor Sollas, and a 

 third in 1897. This, under charge of Professor Edgeworth 

 David, 1 of Sydney University, had reached a depth of 698 

 feet. The materials obtained had been sent to England for 

 examination, and it was hoped that the committee, formed 

 in Sydney to co-operate with the Royal Society, would be 

 able to continue the deep bore-hole and to sink one, with the 

 aid of the Lords of the Admiralty, into the bed of the lagoon. 2 



June 1 6th, 46oth meeting. Professor Riicker communi- 

 cated the results of experiments with a self-recording 

 magnetometer, recently set up in South Kensington. The 

 self-registered curves (which he exhibited) showed periodic 

 magnetic disturbances, of about 3 minutes' duration, 

 superposed on the photographic trace of the instrument. 

 On every week day they began about 6 a.m. in the morning 

 and continued till about 11.15 p.m., but there is no trace 

 of them during the night or on Sunday, when the electric 

 trains of the South London Railway are not running. 

 Careful comparison with records, obtained at Greenwich 

 Observatory, of trains running on the South London Electric 



1 Tannatt William Edgeworth David, C.M.G., F.R.S., Professor of 

 Geology in the University of Sydney, was born in 1858, and graduated from 

 New College, Oxford (of which University he is now a D.Sc.). Besides 

 his valuable work in Funafuti as head of the second expedition, he was 

 scientific officer on the Shackleton Antarctic Expedition from 1907 to 1909, 

 making the ascent of Mount Erebus, and leading a party to the South 

 Magnetic Pole. 



2 In 1898 the boring was carried down to 1114 feet, and two, near 

 together, were sunk into the bed of the lagoon, one to a depth of 144 feet. 

 See Minutes for Feb. 8th, 1900. 



