I go 



NA TURE 



[Dec. 



i88 



whether abraded or unrolled, with other surface features of the 

 specimens — showed that the flint implements from the Thames 

 Valley may be divided into three groups, decreasing in age from 

 the highest beds of drift to those lower in the valley as the pro- 

 cess of erosicn and part infilling of the valley continued. The 

 implements and flakes found at the Creflield Road working site, 

 which are as sharp and unabraded as on the day they were 

 struck from the cores, were compared both as to their forms and 

 associated Quaternary fauna with those from the upper drift of 

 England and France. When considered in reference to M. 

 G. de IVIortillet's'classification of four divisions — i.e. the Chelleen 

 or Acheuleen, with vhich remains of the older Quaternary 

 fauna, such as E. antiquus. Rhinoceros hemitachus, hippo- 

 potamus, large cave-bear, &c., are associated ; the Moustierien 

 characterised by lance-heads, chopping-tools, &c. , formed, 

 from flakes, with the later Quaternary fauna, such as the 

 E. primigenius. Rhinoceros tichorhiniis, reindeer, cS:c. ; and the 

 less ancient divisions of the Solutreen and Magdalenien — Mr. 

 Allen Brown showed, from the discoveiy of Rhinoceros hcmi- 

 (ochiis, of hippopotamus, and an older form of deer, &c. 

 (though at the mid-terrace stage of the erosion of the valley), by 

 Colonel Lane-Fox and others, that the fabricators of the human 

 relics discovered at the workthop site at Crefiield Road lived 

 contemporaneously with some of the older Quaternary fauna, 

 and that they may therefore be considered as older than the 

 epoch Moustierien, and may perhaps belong to the Chelleen 

 period ; but it is evident most of them were intended for mount- 

 ing in handles or shafts, as such implements are hafted now by 

 Australians and others, and not as "the coups de poings" ox 

 fist-strikers, of M. de Mortillet ; and that, since they were made, 

 the vast mass of matter represented now by the space between 

 the ico-foot contour and the present bed of the Thames, two 

 miles away, has been eroded. A large collection of objects 

 from the workshop floor were exhibited, and m.any other flint 

 implements from Korth-West Middlesex, illustrating the author's 

 classification. - 



Geological Society, December i. — Prof. J. W.SJudd 

 F.R.S., President, in the chair. — Henry Howe Arnold-Bemrose, 

 Richard Assheton, Francis Arthur Bather, Rev. Joseph Camp- 

 bell, John Wesley Carr, Thomas J. G. Fleming. Thomas 

 Forster, Edmund Johnstone Garwood, George Samuel Griffiths, 

 Dr. Frederick Henry Hatch, Robert Tuthill Litton, Frederick 

 William Martin, Richard I'. Oldham, Forbes Richard, Albert 

 Charles Seward, Herbert William Vinter, and Charles D. 

 Walcott were elected Fellows of the Society. — The President 

 announced that he had received from Prof. Ulrich, of Dunedin, 

 New Zealand, the announcement of a very interesting discovery 

 which he had recently made. In the interior of the South Island 

 of New Zealand there exists a range of mountains, composed of 

 olivine-enstatite rocks, in places converted into serpentine. The 

 sand of the rivers flov^ing from these rocks contains metallic 

 particles, which, on analysis, prove to be an alloy of nickel and 

 iron in the proportion of two atoms of the former metal to one 

 of the latter. Similar particles have also been detected in the 

 serpentines. This alloy, though new as a native tenestrial pro- 

 duct, is identical with the substance of the Octibeha meteorite, 

 which has been called octibehite. Prof. Ulrich has announced 

 his intention of communicating to the Society a paper dealing 

 with the details of this interesting discovery— which is certainly 

 one of the most interesting that has been made since the 

 recognition of the terrestrial origin of the Ovifak irons. — The 

 follow.'ng communications were read : — On a new genus of 

 Madrtforaria — Glypliastrica, with remarks on the Glyphastraa 

 forhesi, Edw. and H. , sp. , from the Tertiaries of Mary- 

 land, U.S., by Prof. P. Martin Duncan, M.B., F.R.S.— 

 On the metamorphic rocks of the Malvern Hills, part i, by 

 Frank Rutley, F. G. S. , Lecturer on Mineralogy in the Royal 

 School of Mines. Part i is the result of conclusions arrived at 

 in the field ; part 2 will be devoted to a microscopic description 

 of the rocks. The author referred especially to the paper by the 

 late Dr. Holl, whose work he, in the main, confirmed. Dr. 

 Holl's object was to demonstrate that the rocks which had 

 hitherto been treated as syenite, and supposed to form the axis 

 of the hills, were in reality of metamorphic origin, and belonged 

 to the pre-Cambrian. Mr. Rutley restricted his observations to 

 the old ridge of gueissic syenite, granite, &c., which constitutes 

 the main portion of the range, and, reversing the order of his 

 predecessor, commenced at the north end of the chain. He 

 considers that the beds of crystalline rock, mostly of a gneissic 



character, in the old ridge have been disposed in a synclinal 

 flexure, which stretched from the north end of the chain to the 

 middle of Swinyard's Hill, where they receive an anticlinal 

 flexure, and are faulted out of sight. The length of this synclinal 

 fold would be over 5^ miles. The lithological evidence is in 

 favour of the rocks forming the north part of Swinyard's Hill 

 being a repetition of those on the Worcestershire Beacon. We 

 might expect to find the older beds having the coarsest granula- 

 tion, and being even devoid of foliation, and this is what occurs 

 on the Malverns, where the northern hills are made up of the 

 coarsest rocks, with finer schistose beds towards the south ; the 

 exception is at Swinyard's Hill ; hence there are two groups of 

 coarsely crystalline rocks at either extremity of the presumed 

 synclinal. The contrast between these and the fine-grained 

 rocks of the other portions of the range has already attracted 

 attention. The most northern of the coarse-grained masses is 

 cut off towards the south by a fault near the Wych, while the 

 other lies between a fault on the north side of the Herefordshire 

 Beacon and the before-mentioned fault on Swinyard's Hill. The 

 metamorphic rocks of the Malverns seem, therefore, to be 

 divisible into three series, extending from the North Hill to Key's 

 End ; a Lower, of coarsely crystalline gneissic rocks, granite, 

 syenite, &c. ; a Middle, of gneissic, granitic, and syenitic rocks 

 of medium and fine texture ; and an Upper, of mica-schist, finely 

 crystalline gneiss, &c. A diagrammatic section shows the distri- 

 bution of these : the northern block, extending as far as the 

 Wych, consists of the Lower and the lower part of the Middle ; 

 the central block, from the Wych to the fault in Swinyard's Hill, 

 consists chiefly of the Lower and upper Middle, but with a por- 

 tion of the Lower at the south end ; the southern block, south of 

 the fault on Swinyard's Hill, consists wholly of the Upper series. 

 How far the foliation of these rocks and their main divisional 

 planes represent original stratification must, the author thought, re- 

 main an open question. It has been held that the strike of foliation 

 lies parallel to the axes of elevation ; but this is far from being the 

 case in the Malverns. Still a once uniform strike may have 

 been dislocated by repeated faulting. The attthor further dis- 

 cussed the general question of how far foliation may or may not 

 coincide with planes of sedimentation. He admitted that the 

 absolute conversion of one rock into another by a process of 

 shearing has been shown to occur, but doubted its application in 

 this case. Although he is inclined to believe that the divisional 

 planes, with which the foliation appears to be parallel, may be 

 planes of original stratification, yet, as a matter of fact, they are 

 nothing more than structural planes of some sort, between which 

 the rocks exhibit divers lithological characters. — On fossil 

 chilostomatous Bryozoa from New Zealand, by Arthur Wm. 

 Waters, F. G. S. 'The fossil Bryozoa described in the present 

 paiier are from the localities of Petane, Waipuliurau, Wanganui, 

 and some simply designated as from the neighbourhood of 

 Napier. The first three represent deposits of a well-known 

 position, which was considered Miocene by Tenison- Woods, 

 but which Prof. Mutton (Quart, jfourn. Geol. Soc, vol. xli. ) 

 has more recently called Pliocene. Some others, sent over as from 

 " Whakati," are thought to be from Waikato. The genus 

 Alembraniporay which is largely represented from near Napier, 

 is not one of the most useful pateontologically, because the 

 shape of the opesial opening only, and not the oral, is preserved, 

 and also the appearance of the zocecia is often remarkably modi- 

 fied by the ovicells, which, however, are frequently wanting, 

 and in many well-known species have never been found. The 

 author pointed out that in the commoner and best-known species 

 of Bryozoa the amount of variation is recognised as being very 

 great, and considered that in the face of this there is too great a 

 tendency to make new species on slight dift'erences which may 

 be local variations, and that even in some cases, instead of the 

 description referring to a species, it may be that only a speci- 

 men has been described. A list of New Zealand Bryozoa has 

 been drawn up by Prof. Hutton, and our knowledge of the New 

 Zealand and Australian Bryozoa is being constantly increased 

 by MacGillivray, Hincks, and others ; nevertheless, enough is 

 not yet known to fix the exact age by means of the Bryozoa 

 alone, but the large number of species entirely identical with 

 those living in the neighbouring seas, and the general character 

 of the others, show that the deposits must certainly be con- 

 sidered as of comparatively recent date. Out of the seventy- 

 eight species or varieties, sixty-one are known living, twenty- 

 nine of these from New Zealand seas, forty-eight from either 

 New Zealand or Australian waters, and twenty-eight have been 

 found fossil in Australia. Judging from these alone, it would 



