184 Annals of the Philosophical Club 



Sir Philip Egerton exhibited a stone, polished by blown 

 sand, which Lord Selkirk had picked up in March, 1849, 

 on the east side of the Red Sea not far from Suez near the 

 wells of Mabouk. These are on a flat strip of land between 

 the sea and a range of hills. Here the wind is always blowing 

 up and down, and the driven sand 1 polishes the exposed 

 surfaces of the stones. 



Oct. 28th, 2O4th meeting. Mr. Prestwich announced 

 that the Thames Tunnel had now been completed, still 

 wholly through the London clay, to 120 feet beyond the 

 river, on the south side, where the corresponding shaft was 

 being constructed. 



Dr. Carpenter stated the general results of the Deep-Sea 

 Dredging Expedition of the current year. In the cold area 

 of the Atlantic the temperature was ascertained to be as 

 low as 30 F. Its fauna was arctic in character and very 

 rich, including, at 650 fathoms, thousands of Arctic echino- 

 derms (Comatula escrichtii, etc.) with dwarfed forms of 

 ordinary British species. From depths of 550 to 700 fathoms 

 in the warm area numerous species of Holtenia and Hyalonema 

 were obtained. Hardly a species was common to the two 

 areas, which in places were within ten miles of each other. 

 A depth of 2435 fathoms had been reached in the north of 

 the Bay of Biscay, 250 miles W. of Ushant. Here a con- 

 siderable variety of animal life, representing nearly every 

 division of the invertebrata, had been found in the Atlantic 

 mud, among which was a new crinoid and certain chalk 

 fossils hitherto regarded as extinct. 



Professor Huxley announced that his examination of 

 specimens of Thecodontosaurus had proved it to belong to the 

 Dinosauria. 



Nov. 25th, 205th meeting. Professor Flower gave some 

 particulars of a fin-whale (Balaenoptera 2 ) which recently had 

 been stranded in Layston Harbour, near Portsmouth, and 

 produced some hairs from its beard. 



1 See April 26th, page 183. 



' 2 Four species, according to the British Museum Guide to the Mammalian 

 Galleries, are occasionally stranded on the British coasts. 





