Oct. 17, 1889] 



NATURE 



609 



and although it had been found not to extend to Seaton Carcw, 

 there was no doubt that the eastern and northern borings at 

 South Bank and North Ormesby did not mark the limits of the 

 salt in those directions. The thin coals found in the Seaton 

 boring were regarded by Prof Lebour as being of gannister or 

 millstone-grit age, and hence of little value except in giving an 

 idea of the structure of the Carboniferous rocks below their red- 

 rock covering. Mr. De Ranee's Underground- water Report gave 

 the details of some of these boring?, as well as others from 

 Devon, Worcester, Leicester, Lincoln, Lancashire, Hertford- 

 shire, and the south of England. Dr. Embleton contributed a 

 description of Loxoiinna Alhnatiii from the Northumberland 

 coal-field ; Dr. Traquair, of Devonian fishes from Scannienae 

 Bay and Campbellton, in Canada ; and Mr. Smith Woodward, 

 of Onychodus from Spitzbergen, and of six new species and two 

 new genera of Liassic fishes. Dr. R. Laing read a paper on a 

 Neolithic interment in Robin Hood Cave, and on the discovery of 

 Felis hrevirostris in a Pleistocene deposit in the same cavern. 



The Section then joined with Section A to hear a joint paper 

 by Profs. Thorpe and Riicker, on the relation between the geo- 

 logical constitution and magnetic slate of the British Isles. In 

 this the authors recorded that the magnetic elements had been 

 determined at 200 stations in the United Kingdom, with 

 the result that the declination was found to be subject to local 

 or regional disturbing causes centred in a comparatively small 

 number of spots or lines distributed in various parts of England. 

 The regions mentioned are : (i) the fault-line of the Caledonian 

 Canal ; (2) the basaltof the Inner Hebrides ; (3) the coal-field of 

 South Scotland; (4)theregionofSouth-East Yorkshire, where the 

 Jurassic rocks are thin ; {5) the basalt of Mid-Wales and Shrop- 

 shire ; (6) the line of the " London Palaeozoic Ridge" ; (7) the 

 basalt of Antrim ; (8) the igneous rocks of Connemara. All the 

 principal masses of basalt, and those spots where geologists know 

 or suspect the older rocks to be near the surface, form centres or 

 lines of attraction. As the result of this and of the following 

 reasons, the authors are strongly of opinion that the disturbance 

 is due, not to earth-currents, but to local magnetic rocks, such 

 as basalt, or others like the Malvern diorite, which, though not 

 strongly magnetic in the laboratory, produces a deviation of 20' 

 of arc even at a distance of a mile from the axis. Only small 

 earth-currents, or none, were detected at such places as Melton 

 Mowbray ; and near Reading and Windsor, where the disturb- 

 ance was great, the earth-currents must circulate round the 

 disturbed districts in a manner for which it would be difficult to 

 find an adequate physical cause, while, if the currents are deep- 

 seated, it is not easy to understand the extreme localization of 

 their action. In connection with this paper we may note the 

 exhibition, by Prof Hull, of a piece of magnetically polar 

 diorite, and a paper by Dr. Edward Naumann, in which he 

 advocated a magnetic survey of the globe, and brought for- 

 ward a set of results from Japan and elsewhere to show the 

 dependence of magnetic lines on lines of fault, fissure, and ele- 

 vation. He, however, attributed the magnetic disturbance to 

 the deflection of earth-currents by the great lines of fissure and 

 tectonic disturbance, 



Tuesday was chiefly devoted to Pleistocene papers, opened by 

 Dr. Crosskey, who exhibited a large map showing the distribu- 

 tion of Welsh, Lake Country, Scotch, and local erratics. His 

 report described erratics reported by the Yorkshire Boulder Com- 

 mittee and by Mr. Bucknill in Lancashire, and drew attention 

 to (i) the grouping of erratics from special localities; (2) the 

 occasional mingling of groups ; (3) the occurrence of high and 

 low level erratics ; and (4) the distribution of trails of the latter 

 in accordance with existing physical features. Mr. Whitaker 

 described a deep and steep-sided channel filled with drift in the 

 Cam Valley ; Mr. Lamplugh, a new locality for the Arctic 

 shell bed in the boulder clay on Flamborough Head ; and Mr. 

 Howorth contributed two papers on which there was considerable 

 discussion. In the first he combated the theory of an ice-cap, on 

 the grounds that many northern lands had no drift, that the 

 .southern glaciation was contemporaneous and not alternate with 

 the northern and that in New Zealand and Australia there is 

 nothing corresponding to the drift phenomena of the northern 

 hefnisphere, that there is little or no evidence of other earlier 

 glacial periods, that palseontological evidence is against such a 

 theory, and that the advance of ice-sheets over hundreds of 

 miles of plain without any vis a tergo is a physical impossibility ; 

 in the second, after showing that there is evidence of a connec- 

 tion in Pleistocene times between Siberia and America, not by 

 way of Japan, but probably through the shallow Arctic seas to 



the north, he considers that the necessary elevation of 25 or 30 

 fathoms would make the great Siberian rivers flow southward, 

 and terminate in an inland sea stretching east from the Caspian, 

 just as the principal rivers of Russia (Siberia in Europe) now flow 

 into the Black Sea and Caspian. In the discussion it was, 

 however, pointed out that many of the rivers flowed far too 

 rapidly to have their directions thus reversed. 



Among the other papers were : one by Prof Haddon, describing 

 the volcanic and coral deposits of the islands in Torres Straits, 

 where no proof of elevation or of subsidence was to be obtained ; 

 one by Mr. Dorsey, on the Witwatersrande Gold-fields ; a Report 

 by Mr. Bell, on the manure gravels of Wexford ; and one by Dr. 

 F. Clowes, describing rocks at Bramcote and Stapleford cemented 

 by barium sulphate, and the occurrence of the sanr.e substance 

 deposited in pipes and water-boxes connected with the pumps of 

 Duiham collieries. 



On Saturday Mr. Starkie Gardner's report on the Osborne 

 and Bembridge floras of the Isle of Wight and the correlation 

 of the Bovey beds with beds of about Bracklesham age was read, 

 followed by a short paper of Prof. Green's on the concretionary 

 nodules formed by molecular rearrangement into radial crystal- 

 line groups of the tufaceous deposits of the magnesian limestone. 

 Mr. Topley next gave an admirable resttmi of the work of the 

 Geological Survey in Northumberland and Durham, which have 

 been mapped on the 6-inch scale, and published in two sets of 

 "drift maps" and "solid maps" on the l-inch. He noted 

 the whole sedimentary series from the Silurian to the Trias, the 

 glacial beds, and the numerous intrusive and interbeddcd igneous 

 rocks. The last paper was an extremely interesting one by Mr. 

 R. H. Tiddeman on concurrent faulting and deposit in Carboni- 

 ferous times. The author describes three branches of the 

 Craven group of faults, and then shows that there are vast diflfer- 

 ences between the quality of the Pendleside grits and Bowland 

 shales on one side of the fault and the corresponding Yoredale 

 series on the other, while the 5500 feet of Carboniferous limestone 

 on the north side of the faults is in strong contrast to the 8cxD feet 

 on the other side, suggesting great differences in the conditions 

 of deposit. As the faults form the boundary between the two 

 types of rocks, as there is no trace of transition there, and as the 

 thickest beds are on the down-throw side, the author suggests that 

 faulting must have gone on contemporaneously with the deposit. 

 A note was appended describing knolls of crystalline limestone 

 full of fossils and bordered by limestone breccias, which were 

 regarded as reefs growing in the Carboniferous ocean. 



Reviewing this list of papers, it is obvious that, though many 

 of them were not of a class to interest the somewhat popular 

 audience which listened to them, there are a large number of 

 great scientific interest which mark a very considerable advance 

 made in our knowledge during the past year. 



THE BIOLOGICAL PAPERS AT THE BRITISH 

 ASSOCIATION. 



A S has been the custom for the last few years, a good deal of' 

 time was devoted to the discussion of topics of general: 

 biological interest. The subjects selected for these discussions 

 were, "The Transmission of Acquired Characters" and " The 

 Utility of Specific Characters," which were respectively opened 

 by Mr. E. B. Poulton, F.R.S., and Prof Romanes, F.R.S. 

 There were also an extremely large number of botanical and 

 zoological papers, but no physiological papers, owing to the 

 absence of most of the physiologists, who were attending the 

 Physiological Congress at Basle. In the following account 

 only a few of these papers are abstracted, as it would be im- 

 possible to do justice to all in a limited space. 



Mr. Romanes opened a discussion on specific characters as 

 useful and indiff'erent. The question to be debated was, whether 

 all characters were adaptive, and had been brougrht about by 

 natural selection, or whether there were not specific characters, 

 which had no utilitarian significance ? The naturalists who hold 

 the former view were apt to beg the question by assuming that, 

 if a given character could not be explained as due to utilitarian 

 principles, it was simply due to a failure to see the need for it ;. 

 this way of dealing with the question is really unscientific dog- 

 matism. The author had selected certain groups, and tabulated 

 the various specific characters, placing on one side those which, 

 were conceivably of advantage, and on the other side those which 

 were apparently useless ; the latter weie found to preponderate. 

 This was especially clear in the coloration of birds : to take one- 



