PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. cv. 



not, I believe, anything to support it amongst existing allied 

 species. Visitors to the British Museum will be interested in an 

 enlarged wax model of Eurypterus fischeri, an arachnid of 

 Silurian times ; and I will conclude my geological notes by refer- 

 ence to two fossil insects and a mammoth find. The first is a 

 wasp of the genus Paraliphia, from Colorado Miocene strata, 

 characterised by the absence of a portion of a normal nervure in 

 the wing. This apparent deformity has persisted to the present 

 day, and characterises the numerous species of this genus of 

 wasps, which occur in North America. The other insect, from 

 the same Miocene bed, is either a tsetse fly or extremely closely 

 allied to that genus (Glossina), and it is suggested that its 

 presence may possibly have had something to do with the 

 extinction of some of the Tertiary mammalia of America. 

 Against this rather startling theory stands however, it seems to 

 me, the fact that in Africa the tsetse fly does not injuriously affect 

 wild animals. The mammoth remains were found preserved in 

 ice in North-east Siberia, and an expedition has been despatched 

 by the Russian Government to secure them for the St. Petersburg 

 Museum. 



ASTRONOMY. 



I have always felt in obtaining the very little knowledge that I 

 have of astronomy that it was a most confusing science, and one 

 which required a remarkably clear head, and the power of 

 realising the result when one was told that the heavenly bodies 

 were all moving with different velocities and in all sorts of 

 different directions at any given moment. There are some 

 people so constituted that, if you were to ask them to screw in a 

 screw they would not realise that it was necessary to turn it 

 round in the right way ; but, even if one can do that, one could 

 hardly expect to be equally successful if there were a hundred 

 screws, all of which required different arrangements. The 

 inaugural address of the President of the British Association 

 on the science of measurement brings this feeling forcibly to my 



