1 46 Annals of the Philosophical Club 



neglected manuscripts a poem describing the invasion of 

 England by William the Conqueror ; also a maritime history 

 of Genoa, commencing in 1099, and continued by authority 

 of the Senate ; the last entry being by John Doria, who 

 gives an account of two ships sent round Africa to the East 

 Indies. They never returned, and the last surviving 

 descendant of their crews was found by the Portuguese who 

 were coasting Africa prior to the departure of Columbus 

 (1492). 



At the H4th meeting (Oct. 27th) Professor Tyndall gave 

 some results of his work in the Alps during the past summer. 

 In the previous one he had placed a minimum thermometer 

 on the rocks close to the summit of the Finsteraarhorn 

 (14,025 feet), by which, according to another observer 

 this year, a temperature of 32 or 34 (Cent.) had been 

 registered. Professor Frankland and he had attached six 

 thermometers to as many strong posts at intervals from 

 the bottom to the top of Mont Blanc. They had spent 

 a night in a tent on the summit, whence the colour effects 

 of the sky and the mountains in the early morning were 

 remarkably fine. Candles of the same size were burnt there 

 and at Chamonix for definite periods. There was no appreci- 

 able difference in the rate of consumption, but that at the 

 top gave a very feeble light, and the blue of the flame 

 extended one-eighth of an inch above the tip of the wick. 



Sir C. Lyell described his examination of the gravels 

 above the Somme valley near Amiens,, whence he had 

 obtained sixty-five flint hatchets, and proved the correctness 

 of Professor Prestwich's accounts. Though the evidence was 

 not yet complete, he had little doubt that the Siberian 

 mammoth and the tichorhine rhinoceros were contempora- 

 neous with the makers of the hatchets. Commenting 

 on the absence of human bones from these deposits, he 

 remarked that not a single human skeleton had been found 



works, dying there May i8th, 1843 ; or a grandson of his uncle, S. G. J. 

 Perthes (1749-1816), who devoted himself, with his sons, to publishing 

 important geographical works, such as Petermann's Mitteilungen. From 

 the nature of the communication the latter seems more likely. 



