624 
NATURE. 
[JANUARY 29, 1914 
porphyrites, and dolerite. The Llandeilo rocks are 
mainly confined to the low-lying ground along the 
shore of Lough Nafooey, and have yielded no fossils. 
They dip at a high angle off the Arenig rocks, which 
extend in a band from a third to half a mile wide from 
end to end of the area. The Arenig rocks consist 
of spilite-lavas associated with coarse breccias, and 
with bands and patches of chert in which at two points 
radiolaria were found. Unfortunately, no graptolites 
were found in the Arenig rocks. Silurian rocks form 
the whole southern half of the area. They are highly 
inclined. They include representatives of the Llan- 
dovery, Tarannon, and Wenlock formations. The 
occurrence of Monograptus galaensis confirms the 
field evidence as to the Tarannon age of certain grey 
flags. The Wenlock beds are represented by thick 
grits. The paper concludes with a table comparing 
the rocks of the Lough Nafooey area, with those of 
Kilbride. and those of the Killary district.—T. C. 
Nicholas: The geology of the St. Tudwal’s Peninsula 
(Carnarvonshire). The St. Tudwal’s Peninsula is 
situated at the S.E, extremity of S.W. Carnarvonshire, 
and forms the N.W. limit of Cardigan Bay; it is 
underlain by Cambrian and Ordovician rocks. In 
the southern part of the peninsula the structure is 
simple, and the succession plainly displayed in cliff- 
sections ; Cambrian rocks similar in character to those 
of Merionethshire. form most of the coast, but the 
interior is occupied by Arenig beds, which rest with a 
marked unconformity on every local member of the 
Cambrian in turn. The latter have escaped cleavage, 
and mudstones in the midst of the series have yielded 
fossils belonging to the zone of Paradoxides hicksi. 
The P. davidis zone appears to be absent. This 
southern area is separated by an overthrust from a 
more northern area in which members of the Tre- 
madoc, Arenig, and Llandeilo series have been recog- 
nised, but in which the rocks are crushed, faulted, 
and disturbed, and the relations between the beds are 
far from clear. Pisolitic iron-ore is well developed in 
the district, and occurs chiefly in the Llandeilo beds 
along the line of the overthrust. Evidence is pre- 
sented to show that, during the last phase of glacia- 
tion, the ice was moving across the peninsula in a 
westerly direction out of Cardigan Bay. 
Linnean Society January 15.—Prof. E. B. Poulton, 
president, in the chair.—H. A. Baylis: Some observa- 
tions on the tentacles of Blennius gattorugine. <A 
study of sections of the branched tentacles shows an 
abundant supply of nerves in the centre of the organs, 
sending off branches to their smaller twigs. The 
function of the tentacles is still doubtful, but so far as 
the evidence goes, it only proves that they are sensitive 
to tactile stimuli, and probably the fusiform cells are 
concerned in the perception of such stimuli.—G. 
Claridge Druce: A new marsh Orchis. The author 
proposed the name Orchis praetermissa for the plant 
which he contrasted with the true flesh-coloured O. 
incarnata of Linnaeus, as described by C. B. Clarke 
in Journ. Linn. Soc., vol. xix. (1881), p. 206, showing 
how it differed in the shape of the. flowers and in 
other characters from that plant. He has as yet been 
unable to see any description or figure of his plant in 
British or European works. 
Royal Anthropological Institute, January 20.—Annual 
general meeting.—Prof. A. Keith, president, in the 
chair.—Prof. A. Keith ; Reconstruction of human fossil 
skulls (presidential address). The ordinary anthropo- 
logical methods employed for the examination and 
description of complete skulls are not applicable to 
fragmentary fossil skulls. During the last six years 
the president had endeavoured to discover and perfect 
methods which might be employed in the recon- 
struction of skulls from fragments. Recently frag- 
NO. 2309, VOL. 92] 
ments of a human skull, representative of the pieces 
of a fossil human skull found at Piltdown, had been 
submitted to him for reconstruction. A cast of the 
original sku!l was kept by those who submitted the 
fragments to him. There was no apparent trace on — 
the fragments of the middle line along the vault. 
The reconstructed skull with a cast of the original 
was submitted to the meeting. Tracings of the re- 
constructed skull were exhibited side by side with 
similar tracings from the lecturer’s reconstruction of 
the Piltdown skull to show that the problem of re- 
construction was the same in each case, and that in 
all dimensions the cranial cavity of the Piltdown skull 
was larger than the test skull submitted to him. 
Royal Meteorological Society, January 21.—Annual 
general meeting.—Mr. C. J. P. Cave, president, in 
the chair.—C. J. P. Cave: Presidential address : Upper 
air research. Research in the upper air may be by 
means of manned balloon with observer and instru- 
ment, or by self-registering instruments sent up in 
kite, captive balloon, or free balloon. Wites were first 
used for this purpose by Dr. Wilson, of Glasgow, 
1749, and also in Arctic expeditions in 1821 and 1836. 
The box-kite and the use of steel piano wire instead 
of line enabled greater heights to be obtained, and both 
were adopted by the Blue Hill Observatory in 1895. 
The use of kites was not taken up in England until ° 
1902, when Mr. Dines flew them from a steamer. 
After referring to the use of balloons and the ascents 
made by Glaisher and others, the president said that 
danger to life in high ascents caused MM. Hermite 
and Besancon to use a registering balloon in 1893; a 
free balloon carried a recording instrument, the re- 
covery of the instrument being dependent on the 
balloon being found after its descent; a height of nine 
miles was reached in France and thirteen miles in 
Germany soon after. The International Commission 
for Scientific Aéronautics directs the studies for upper 
air research, and special days are arranged for inter- 
national ascents of balloons and kites, stations in- 
various parts of the world taking part in the work. 
The first great result of these researches has been the 
discovery that the atmosphere is divided into the tropo- 
sphere, where the air is in constant movement hori- 
zontal and vertical, and the stratosphere, where turbu- 
lent motion seems to cease. The stratosphere begins 
at about 7-5 miles in these latitudes. 
Mathematical Society, January 22.—Prof. A. E. H. 
Love, F.R.S., president, in the chair.—S. T, Shovelton ; 
(i) A generalisation of .the Euler-Maclaurin sum 
formula. (ii) The deduction of the formule of 
mechanical quadrature from the generalised Euler- 
Maclaurin sum formulz.—(iii) A generalisation of 
certain sum formule in the calculus of finite differ- 
ence.—Prof. A. E.-H. Love: The potential of an elec- 
trified circular disc.—Dr. A. Young; Binary forms.— 
J. R. Wilton ; Darboux’s method of solution of partial 
differential equations of the second order. 
DUBLIN. ; 
Royal Irish Academy, December 8, 1913.—Count 
Plunkett, vice-president, in the chair.—R. Southern : 
Polychaeta. Part ii., in connection with Clare Island 
Survey. This paper dealt with the second part of the 
Polychaeta from the Clare Island district, and com- 
prised the Polychaeta sedentaria. | The number of 
species in this section is 105, bringing the total num- 
ber of Polychaeta from Clew Bay and the adjacent 
waters to 250. _One new genus, Thelepides, is 
described, and eight new species, belonging to the 
genera Nerinides, Aonides, Chetozone (2), Proto- 
thelepus, Armandia, Chone, and Euchone. 
January 12, 1914.—Rev. Dr. Mahaffy, president, in 
the chair.—W. J. Lyons: Climatology, in connection 
