TuLy 3, 192] 
NATURE 
239 
Geological Society, June 11.—Prof. C. Lapworth, F.R.S., 
in the chair.—A descriptive outline of the plutonic complex of 
Central Anglesey, by Dr. Charles Callaway. The central 
complex of Anglesey was originally composed of diorite, felsite 
and granite. The gneiss and granitoid rock of the area, for- 
merly regarded as sedimentary in origin, are now known to be 
plutonic masses.—Alpine valleys in relation to glaciers, by Prof. 
T. G. Bonney, F.R.S. The author discusses some hypotheses 
about the formation of Alpine valleys which have been advanced 
by Prof. W. M. Davis, but has left the Ticino Valley, on which 
the latter lays much stress, to Prof. Garwood, who has very 
lately visited it. Prof. Davis maintains that the upper and wider 
parts of Alpine valleys were excavated in pre-Glacial times, the 
lower and narrower portions during the Great Ice Age. The 
author tests this hypothesis by applying it first to the valley of 
the Visp, of the eastern arm of which, and of the ‘‘ hanging 
valley” like a gigantic corrie, where Saas Fee is situated, he 
gives a description, pointing out that all parts are so connected 
that any separate explanation of their form is impossible. To 
obtain an idea of the condition of the Alps in Middle and Later 
Tertiary times, we may consider the effect of alterations of 
temperature, on the assumption (which, as he shows, is not 
likely to be seriously incorrect) that the altitude of the Alps 
during the greater part of their existence has remained un- 
changed. A rise of temperature of from 6° to 7° F. would 
have the same effect as lowering the district by 2000 feet ; a rise 
of 10° would correspond with 3000 feet. In the latter case the 
Pennine chain about the headwaters of the Visp would be com- 
parable with the range from Monte Leone to the Ofenhorn. 
With a rise of 14° glaciers would almost vanish from the Alps, 
for the snow-line would then be at 12,000 feet above sea-level. 
Thus glacial action in the Oligocene and Miocene ages would be 
a negligible quantity, and it would gradually become sensible 
during the Pliocene ; but glaciers would not invade valleys now 
free from them until the temperature was some degrees lower 
than it is at present—in other words, can have only occupied 
these during a small portion of their existence. The author 
passes in review a number of other Alpine valleys, which lead 
to the same conclusion. He calls attention once more to the 
connection of cirques with valleys, to the impossibility of refer- 
ring the former to glacial action, and to the unity exhibited by 
all parts of the Alpine valleys, touching upon some structural 
difficulties which Prof. Davis has been content to meet with 
hypotheses. Alpine valleys in all parts, as the author shows, 
indicate by their forms meteoric agencies other than glaciers, 
which can only have acted for a comparatively short time and 
have produced little more than superficial effects. —The origin 
of some ‘‘hanging valleys” in the Alps and Himalaya, by 
Prof. E. J. Garwood. Lateral valleys which enter the main 
valley marked by discordant grades in the Jongri district of the 
Sikhim Himalaya have been attributed by the author to Pleis- 
tocene elevation and super-erosion of the main valley by water. 
Similar valleys in the Val Ticino have recently been attributed 
to overdeepening of the main valley by ice. The author shows 
that there is no real proof of this, in fact the evidence seems 
strongly to point to fluviatile and not glacial erosion of the main 
valley. This is shown by the overlapping profiles and river- 
gorges situated both above and below some of these ‘‘ hanging 
valleys,” and by the fact that a greater relative amount of erosion 
has taken place towards the upper end of the main valley than 
at the lower, where the mouths of the ‘‘hanging valleys” are 
less elevated. 
Zoological Society, June 3.—Dr. Henry Woodward, 
F.R.S., vice-president, in the chair.—Mr. Lydekker exhibited 
the mounted head of a male Siberian wapiti, and made 
remarks on the various forms of the wapiti met with in northern 
Asia.—Mr. G. A. Boulenger, F.R.S., exhibited a strap 
made of the skin of the okapi (Okapza johnstonz), which 
had been received in Belgium from the Mangbetta country 
(lat. 30° N., long. 28° E.) in December, 1899, a year previous 
to the arrival in this country of the two bandoliers upon which 
the name Zguzs johnstont had been founded.—Dr. Forsyth 
Major exhibited a reduced photograph of the skin of a female 
okapi (Ofafia johnstonz), recently received by the Congo State 
Museum at Brussels, together with the skeleton of a male. 
Dr. Forsyth Major also made some remarks on this material, 
which had been handed over to him for publication.—Mr. E. J. 
Bles exhibited and made remarks upon some living tadpoles of 
the Cape clawed frog (Xenopis laevis). This species had bred 
in the Society’s Gardens, and the event had formed the subject 
NO. 1705, VOL. 66] 
of a paper in the Society’s Proceedings by Mr. F. E. Beddard 
(ff. P.Z.S. 1894, p. 10r), but Mr. Bles was able to supply some 
additional particulars.—Mr. Lydekker described the head and 
skin of a wild sheep from the Thian Shan, recently presented 
by Mr. St. George Littledale to the British Museum, as belong- 
ing to a new subspecies, which he proposed to call Ouds sazrenszs 
Mittledalez. He also exhibited and described a specimen of the 
sheep named by Severtzoff Ovis borealis, which had been brought 
home by Mr. Talbot Clifton from the Yana Valley.—A com- 
munication was read from Dr. R. Broom containing an 
account of the differences exhibited in the skulls of Dicynodonts 
from the Karroo deposits of South Africa. The author was of 
opinion that these differences, in many cases, were not specific, 
but were due to sex, and, consequently, that many of the 
specimens which had received specific rank really belonged to the 
same form.—Mr. F. E. Beddard, F.R.S., read a paper on the 
gonad ducts and nephridia of the annelid worm Eudrilus, in 
which supplementary facts to those already ascertained by 
previous authors concerning these organs were adduced.—Dr. 
C. I. Forsyth Major read a paper on the pigmy hippopotamus 
from the Pleistocene of Cyprus, in which he described the fossil 
remains Of Azppopolamus minutus, Blainv., exhibited by the 
author at the meeting of the Society on April 15. The 
characteristic features of this primitive hippopotamus were 
pointed out, and reasons were given for the assumption that the 
type-specimens of the species, Cuvier’s Petit Hippopotame fossile, 
supposed to have been found near Dax in the Landes, had been 
brought over from Cyprus.—Mr. Hamilton H. Druce contributed 
a paper containing remarks on several species of butterflies of 
the family Lyczenidz from Australia, especially in reference to 
those described by Herr Semper. He also read descriptions of 
several apparently new species of the same family from the 
Eastern Islands and from Africa. —Mr. R. I. Pocock read a 
paper which dealt with the habits of the littoral spiders belonging 
to the genus Desis. The seven known species were enumerated, 
and one of them was described as new, under the name esis 
kenyonae.—Mr. H. R. Hogg contributed a paper which con- 
tained additional information concerning the Australian spiders of 
the suborder Mygalomorphe. Out of a collection of forty 
specimens (comprising examples of eleven species and nine 
genera) received by the author, no less than nine species and five 
genera had proved to be new, and were described in this paper. 
EDINBURGH. 
Royal Society, June 2.—Dr. Ferguson in the chair.— 
Prof. Metzler communicated a paper on some identities con- 
nected with alternants and with elliptic functions, in which it 
was shown that an identity established by Cayley and discussed 
by Muir, and believed by them to be of general validity, was not 
true in a particular set of cases.—Prof. A. Smith read a paper 
on amorphous sulphur and its relation to the freezing point of 
liquid sulphur. He showed that the freezing point, which in 
books is stated to be very variable within certain limits, was 
determined by the amount of amorphous sulphur present. When 
the amount of amorphous sulphur present was plotted against 
the freezing point an almost perfect straight line was obtained, 
indicating 119°25 as the freezing point of liquid sulphur quite 
free from the amorphous form, although practically that had 
never been obtained. Taking this value and estimating the 
depressions of the freezing point due to the presence of the 
amorphous sulphur, he calculated the molecular depression by 
means of van ’t Hoff’s formula and finally found 7°6 as the 
estimated molecular weight of amorphous sulphur—a value 
which under the difficulties of the experiment was a good 
approximation to 8.—Dr. W. Peddie, in a paper on the use of 
quaternions in the theory of screws, &c., showed how by a new 
interpretation of the scalar and vector parts of a quaternion a 
screw could be completely symbolised, and the whole theory 
developed in a compact and systematic way. The direction of 
the axis of the screw was determined by the direction of the 
vector part of the quaternion, and the scalar part of the 
quaternion represented the associated translation, the pitch being 
the ratio of the scalar to the tensor of the vector part. Any 
quaternion so regarded represented a screw through the origin ; 
but the same quaternion could be made to represent a screw 
with axis not passing through the origin by breaking up the 
vector part into two portions, one of which represented the 
displacement, while the other represented the axis and with the 
scalar gave the pitch.—Dr. Hugh Marshall contributed a short 
paper on the dissociation of the compound of iodine and 
