258 



NATURE 



[December 22, 1910 



coided ; loo soundings were made ; 200 specimens of the 

 water collected; twenty dredgings were carried out; 

 observations of interest in magnetism, in solar radiation, 

 zoological and botanical collections, and additions to our 

 knowledge in other directions, rendering the expedition 

 from the scientific point of view completely successful. 



COMPARISONS OF JURASSIC FLORAS. 



AT the forty-ninth annual meeting of the Yorkshire 

 Naturalists' Union, held at Middlesbrough on 

 Saturday, December 17, Prof. A. C. Seward, F.R.S., 

 delivered his presidential address, entitled " The Jurassic 

 Flora of the East of Yorkshire in Relation to the Jurassic 

 Floras of the World." It was pointed out that the 

 estuarine beds of east Yorkshire were among the most 

 famous and important strata of the world from the point 

 of view of their fossil contents. Since the publication in 

 1822 of Young and Bird's " Geological Survey of the 

 Yorkshire Coast " much attention has been paid to the 

 fossil plants of Yorkshire by British and foreign students. 

 During the first half of the nineteenth century a consider- 

 able amount of work was done by such pioneers as 

 William Bean, John Williamson, W. Crawford William- 

 son, John Phillips,, and others. Prof. Seward gave a 

 general sketch of the flora which the labours of York- 

 shire naturalists have enabled students to investigate. 

 Prof. Nathorst, of Stockholm, who has more than once 

 invaded our shores, recently transported a portion of our 

 island to his country. By establishing a department 

 devoted to the floras of the past, the Swedish Academy 

 has set an example which the trustees of our national 

 collections would do well to imitate. Palaeobotany is still 

 without a representative in the British Museum ! 



Prof. Seward then reviewed the various fossil remains 

 of Algae and Fungi, Hepophyta, Equisetales, Lycopodiales, 

 Filicales, Gymnosperma;, Ginkgoales, and Coniferales, 

 being some of the types which occur in the Yorkshire 

 strata. The Yorkshire coast flora is characterised by the 

 abundance of ferns and cycads and certain types of 

 conifers, though as yet it is not possible to make any 

 statement as to the relative abundance of these different 

 groups. It is also probable that the Ginkgoales played a 

 fairly prominent part in the composition of the vegetation. 

 The most interesting fact in regard to the Jurassic ferns 

 is that they afford strong presumptive evidence in support 

 of the view that their nearest living allies are to be sought 

 in the southern hemisphere. As regards the cycads, com- 

 parison with recent genera is rendered more dift'icujt 

 because of the greater gulf between recent members of 

 the group and those which flourished in the Jurassic era. 

 There can, however, be no reasonable doubt that the 

 cycads of to-day are derived from an ancient stock which 

 produced also Williamsonia and other Jurassic genera. 

 Here, again, the recent plants most nearly akin to those 

 of the Mesozoic floras are chiefly characteristic of southern 

 and warmer regions. The same general statement is 

 applicable to the relation of some of the Jurassic conifers 

 to recent types. Finally, in the genus Ginkgo of the 

 Jurassic flora we have a- member of a group which would 

 probably have ceased to be represented among living plants 

 were it not for the fact that the recent species has been 

 long held in veneration in the Far East as a sacred tree. 

 With these southern forms there grew in profusion stal- 

 wart Equisetums, which afforded one of the few instances 

 of a genus still represented by several species in the British 

 flora which can claim a Jurassic ancestry. 



At first sight one might be tempted to infer that there 

 is clear evidence of a tropical, or at least subtropical, 

 climate in Jurassic Europe. This would, perhaps, be a 

 correct conclusion, but it is one which cannot be con- 

 fidently made, so far, at least, as the botanical evidence 

 is concerned. The fact must be borne in mind that among 

 living plants very closely allied types, or even one of the 

 same species, may flourish under widely different climatic 

 conditions, as in the case of our own familiar bracken 

 fern, which appears to be equally at home on the York- 

 shire moors, in Tasmania, Abyssinia, and elsewhere. The 

 comparison of a past with a recent flora is bound up with 

 numerous considerations in addition to those connected 

 with the comparison of existing and extinct species. 



NO. 2147, VOL. 85] 



During the Rh;ctic and Jurassic eras, and in the succeed 

 ing Cretaceous and Tertiary epochs, the genus Ginks 

 was very widely distributed in Europe. So recently as tr 

 Lower Tertiary period it existed in what is now the we 

 of Scotland in a form hardly distinguishable from til 

 maiden-hair tree. Are we justified in assuming that tl 

 living species is a safe criterion as regards power 

 resistance or capabilities of life with which the famt 

 was endowed at the zenith of its vigour? Were it possil 

 to learn from the maiden-hair tree what vicissitudes if 

 ancestors passed through since the days of the Jurassl 

 period, we might hear of unequal competition and gradus 

 migration from northern to southern latitudes. 



In dealing with the relation of the Yorkshire Jurassic'] 

 flora with that of other parts of the world, it is remark- 

 able to find that almost precisely similar plants to thosel 

 occurring in the local rocks also are found embedded irjf 

 strata of about the same age at places so far distant as) 

 Bornholm, Poland, Turkestan, Siberia, Korea, Japan,! 

 Franz Josef Land, Spitsbergen, Greenland, America, India,! 

 and Australia. This extraordinary distribution would] 

 certainly seem to indicate that the climate in Jurassic] 

 times must have been much more uniform the world over} 

 than obtains to-day. 



As a result of Prof. Seward's address and his interest! 

 in the union's work, a committee was formed for the! 

 investigation of the Jurassic plants of Yorkshire, with] 

 Prof. Seward as first chairman. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Sheffield. — Mr. R. J. Pye-Smith has resigned the pro-| 

 fessorship of surgery. The council has adopted the follow- 

 ing resolution : — " that the resignation of Mr. Pye-Smith 

 as professor of surgery in the University be accepted with 

 great regret. Mr. Pye-Smith, who is the senior member 

 of the teaching staff, has been a teacher of surgery for 

 thirtv-four vears, first in the old Medical School, next in 

 the University College, and finally in the Universitv, and 

 the council desire to place on record their appreciation of 

 the distinguished services which he has rendered to th*" 

 cause of medical education in Sheffield." 



Dr. E. W. Adams has been appointed to the post of 

 lecturer in materia medica and assistant to the professor 

 of materia medica, pharmacology, and therapeutics. 



Dr. W. Goodwin, head of the chemical department at 

 the South-Eastern Agricultural College, Wye, has been 

 appointed principal of the Midland Agricultural College, 

 Kingston, Derbyshire. 



A Reuter message from Chicago announces that Mr. 

 John D. Rockefeller has made a final donation of 

 2,000,000/. to Chicago University, making a total of 

 approximately 7,000,000/. given by him to that institution. 



The annual meeting of the Geographical Association 

 will be held on Saturdav, Januarv 14, iqii, in the Lecture 

 Hall, London School of Economics. The following short 

 papers will be read : — Geography at seven years. Miss C. 

 von Wyss ; map-making as a school subject, F. Beames ; 

 practical contouring round a London school, J. Fairgrieve ; 

 the tra'ining of teachers in geography, J. F. Unstead. An 

 address will be delivered bv the president, Mr. Douglas W. 

 Freshfield, and a lecture on " The Highways of England 

 and Wales, Past and Present, and their Relationship to 

 Geographical Conditions," by Mr. G. Montagu. 



Liverpool.— The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 

 (Incorporated) at the time of the death of the late Dr. 

 J. E. Dutton in the Congo Free State, whilst investi- 

 gating sleeping sickness and other tropical diseases there, 

 started a fund to establish a chair in the University in 

 his memory. The necessary amount has now been raised, 

 mainlv through the generosity of the late Sir Alfred Jones, 

 Mr. W. H. Lever, Sir William Hartley, and many others. 

 The Liverpool School has at present a lectureship in 

 tropical entomology, and the committee decided, therefore, 

 that the best form the memorial could take would be the 

 foundation in the University of a Dutton professorship m 

 tropical entomology. The value of close investigation mto 



