178 
NATURE 
| Fune 30, 1870 
solve the problem of the origin of the immense quantities of pro- 
toplasm that form a bottom to the sea, but is disinclined to re- 
gard it as consisting of the mycelium of sponges, an opinion 
advanced by Wyville Thomson. He finds the well-known yellow 
cells of Radiolaria to contain starch, the reactions of which are 
not distinguishable from those characteristic of starch derived 
from vegetables. ‘These starch granules make up more than half 
of the entire mass of the Radiolaria. 
The Bulletin de la Société Imperiale des Naturalistes de Moscow, 
1869, No. 2 (received June 15, 1870), contains, amongst other 
valuable papers, a carefully-worked-up description of the anatomy 
and development of the Pedicellina, by B. Uljanin, which is ac- 
companied by two plates illustrating the changes undergone as 
far as he had an opportunity of observing them. 
In the last number (Heft iv. Band lx.) of the Sitsungsberichte 
der K. Akad. der Wissenchaften zu Wien is a long paper by Dr. 
A. Polotebnow on the origin and mode of increase of Bacteria. 
These, as most of our readers are aware, consist of very small 
rods, which present a kind of tranverse striation at tolerably 
regular intervals, like an extremely diminutive sugar-cane of from 
two to six or seven joints, and which exhibit irregular vibratory 
movements. ‘They have been, like other lowly organised forms, 
sometimes considered, as by Dujardin, to belong to the animal 
kingdom ; sometimes, as by Cohn, to represent a form of vege- 
table life ; and sometimes, as by Pertz, to occupy an intermediate 
position on the confines of the two kingdoms. Dr. Polotebnow 
finds that an unbroken series of forms can be observed between 
the minute round cells which form the mycelium of Penicillium, 
and probably other fungi, and fully-developed Bacteria. In re- 
gard to their multiplication, he thinks this can only occur from 
the cells above mentioned, and that when they have once become 
fully formed Bacteria they are no longer capable of further mul- 
tiplication. 
SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 
LONDON 
Geological Society, June 8.—Mr. Joseph Prestwich, F.R.S. 
president, in the chair. 
Mr. Henry G. Vennor, of the Geological Survey of Canada, 
Montreal ; Alexander Kendall Mackinnon, Memb. Inst. C. E., Di- 
rector-General of Public Works, Montevideo, South America ; 
and Mr. Arthur Roope Hunt, Quintella, Torquay, were elected 
Fellows of the Society. 
1. ‘“‘Onthe Superficial Deposits of the South of Hampshire, 
and the Isle of Wight.” By Thomas Codrington, F.G.S. 
This paper treated of the gravel deposits covering the tertiary 
strata of the country between Portsmouth and Poole, and of 
the Isle of Wight. The strikingly tabular character of the 
surface is best seen on the east of the Avon, where from the 
coast for more than twenty miles inland a grayel-covered plain 
can be followed, rising gradually from 80 feet to 420 feet above 
the sea, at the rate of about 20 feet per mile. The high plains 
of the New Forest, to the eye perfectly level, and indented 
by deep valleys, are portions of this table-land. The plateau 
between the Bournemouth Cliffs and the Valley of the Stour, 
and detached gravel-capped hills further inland, are the rem- 
nants of a similar table-land on the west of the Avon, while 
eastwards the same character prevails up to Southampton Water. 
Sections parallel with the coast show the level nature of the 
country, broken only by well-defined river-valleys. On the east 
of Southampton water a similar tabular surface, sloping at a 
steeper angle towards the shore-line, and cut through by the 
valleys of the Itchen, Hamble, and Titchfield rivers, remains ; 
and in the Isle of Wight the gravels capping the flat-topped 
tertiary hills coincide with a corresponding plain sloping north- 
wards. The gravel covering these table-lands is composed 
chiefly of subangular chalk-flints, with a varying proportion of 
tertiary pebbles. Sarsen stone blocks are found everywhere, and 
on Poole Heath granitic pebbles ; and in the gravel of Portsea 
large boulders of granitic and paleozoic rocks are met with. 
In the Isle of Wight, chert from the Upper Greensand, and 
materials from the Lower Cretaceous beds also occur. The 
colour of the gravel is generally red ; and the origin of the 
white gravel, which often overlies the red, is to be ascribed to 
the bleaching action of vegetable matter. Brick-earth is generally 
associated with the gravel at all levels but the highest; but the 
contorted appearances attributed to glacial action only occur at 
low levels. No organic remains have been found in the gravel 
covering the plains, while the valley-gravels of the district 
have afforded mammalian bones and teeth of the usual species. 
Flint implements have been found at Bournemouth at 120 feet 
above the sea; at Lymington, near Southampton, at 80 and 150 
feet ; and also along the shore between Southampton Water 
and Gosport, at 35 feet above the sea, from gravel forming part 
of the covering of the tabular surface, and unconnected with the 
river valleys. The gravel capping the cliffs of the south coast 
of the Isle of Wight, in which the remains of “/ephas primt- 
genius have been found near Brook ane Grange, was probably 
deposited in the same river-basin as the mammaliferous gravel 
of Freshwater ; and the cutting back of the coast-line by the 
sea has given the tributaries of a river which flowed by Fresh- 
water northwards to the Solent, a direct outfall to the sea ; and 
the streams thus intercepted at a high level, under the changed | 
condition of flow, have originated the Chines. The gravel 
cliff of the Foreland, at the eastern end of the Isle of Wight, 
consists principally of raised shingle, which towards the south 
thins out, and is overlain by a thick deposit of brick-earth, 
a continuation of which caps the cliffs up to the chalk, and 
in which a flint implement was found by the author at 85 feet 
above the sea. 
General Considerations. —The marine gravel, with granite boul- 
ders covering the south of Sussex, is continued westward by 
the gravel with similar boulders covering Portsea Island ; and 
this again by the Hill-head gravels, with large blocks of Sar- 
sen stone, these lower gravels being bordered on the south 
by the raised shingle deposits of the Isle of Wight, and on 
the north by the higher. marine gravels of Avisford, Water- 
beach, and Bourne, from which the lower gravel is divided by 
a well-marked step, extending beyond Portsdown Hill to Titch- 
field, and traceable on the west of Southampton Water. The 
Hill-head gravels are considered to be an estuarine deposit, of 
the same age as the marine gravels of Sussex, and the low-level 
gravels of the river-valleys; they are supposed to have been 
formed when the Isle of Wight was still joined to the main 
land, and all the rivers now reaching the sea by Poole Har- 
bour, Christchurch Harbour, Southampton Water, &c., were 
affluents of a river communicating with an estuary opening to 
the sea in the direction of Spithead. The gravels lying above 
the step, such as those of Avisford and Waterbeach, Titchfield 
Common, Beaulieu Heath, and Bournemouth, are looked upon 
as equivalent in position and age to the high-level valley gravels. 
The level of the gravels on the highest parts of the table-lands 
is such as to indicate an age far greater than that of the highest 
gravels of the river-valleys ; but the uniform surface from the 
400-feet level downwards points to a long continuance of simi- 
lar conditions, during which the gravel from the highest levels 
to that of the Bournemouth Cliffs was deposited. The area 
that can with any probability be assigned to the catchment 
basin of a river such as that which has been before alluded to, 
is only three-quarters of the basin of the Thames above Hamp- 
ton, within which it is difficult to imagine that such an ex- 
tent of gravel could have been spread out; and the inclination 
of the flattest of the table-lands is for a river such as only 
mountain-streams have, and quite incompatible with the spread- 
ing out of large even surfaces more than twenty miles across. 
It is considered more probable that the materials of the gravel 
were brought down from the chalk country on all sides by rivers, 
and spread out in an inlet of the sea shut in on the south, and 
opening out eastwards. This view is not without difficulties ; 
it involves a gradual upheaval of the land, which, when the 
highest gravels now remaining were being spread out at or 
near the sea-level, must have stood more than 400 feet lower ; 
and a considerable part of this upheaval must have taken place 
since the formation of the gravel in which implements fashioned 
by man are imbedded. 
2. ‘* On the relative position of the Forest-bed and the Chilles- 
ford Clay in Norfolk and Suffolk, and on the real position of 
the Forest-bed.” By the Rev. John Gunn, M.A., F.G.S. 
The author commenced by stating that both at Easton Bayent 
and at Kessingland the Forest-bed is to be scea forming part 
of the beach, or of the foot of the cliff, and underlying the 
Chillesford Clay. He considered that the soil of the Forest-bed _ 
had been deposited in an estuary, and that after its elevation the 
trees, of which the stools are now visible along the coast, grew 
upon it, and the true Forest-bed was formed. After the sub- 
mergence of this first freshwater, then fluvio-marine, and finally 
marine deposits were formed upon it ; and the author proposed 
to give the whole of these deposits the name of the ‘‘ Forest-bed 
