256 Annals of the Philosophical Club 



coral blocks at the depths attained in the floor of the lagoon 

 and of masses of reef -building corals at depths of more than 

 1000 feet, favoured the view that in these atolls subsidence 

 had predominated over elevation. 1 



April 5th, 476th meeting (anniversary). Sir W. Crookes 

 stated the results of his recent studies of uranium and its 

 compounds in regard to their radio-active properties. That 

 these were inherent in them had been taken for granted, 

 but he had found that by chemical fractionation they can 

 be divided, one portion having strong radio-active pro- 

 perties, the other almost, or entirely, without them. The 

 strongest of the former is capable of darkening a photo- 

 graphic plate in five minutes, while the extreme one of the 

 latter scarcely produces a visible effect after an exposure of 

 150 hours. He had succeeded in separating the active body 

 from uranium, but not, as yet, in obtaining it unmixed. It 

 was not polonium, for its radiations pass easily through glass 

 and metal, while those of polonium are stopped. Whether 

 or not it is radium, is at present doubtful, for, though it 

 closely resembles that body in some of its characters, it 

 differs in others, as described in the researches of M. and 

 Mme. Curie. 



Nov. 22nd, 48oth meeting. Dr. Blanford pointed out 

 that the distribution of the garial (Garialis gangetica) 

 favoured the idea of a depression in the upper part of the 

 Bay of Bengal. It is a crocodile inhabiting rivers only, 

 being never found like Crocodilus palmtris in ponds or 

 marshes, or like Crocodilus porosus in tidal waters or the 

 sea. It occurs in the Brahmaputra, Ganges, and Indus, with 

 their larger tributaries, and in the Mahanadi in Orissa and 

 the Koladyni in Arakan. The simplest explanation of its 

 presence in these two rivers is that they were once tribu- 

 taries of the Ganges. This would require the Bay to have 

 extended not farther north than about 19 N., where now 

 its depth is about 800 fathoms. At Calcutta a well section 



*A full report of these expeditions and of the materials obtained, 

 ^vith maps and illustrations, is given in The Atoll of Funafuti, Report of the 

 Coral Reef Committee of the Royal Society, 1909. 



