Aiigiist 26, iSooj 



NA TURE 



383 



hrips ta1;e a large stone in each hand, and I have certainly found 



this useful in traversing rapid glacier streams when mid-thigh deep. 



Frenchay, near Bristol, August 18 F. F. Tuckett 



Fascination 



Is it a fact that snakes can fascinate birds ? With reference 

 to the fascination of man, the ingenious explanation offered in 

 Nature, vol. xxii. p. 338, seems to me unsatisfactory, in that 

 it supposes the individual fascinated to be self-conscious in a 

 degree necessary for the consideration which of two courses to 

 adopt to escape danger. This supposition implies an amount 

 of self-consciousness which surely is absent in such cases as 

 narrated ? I have frequently experienced this fascination when 

 standing on the railway platform as the engine was steaming in, 

 and with myself at those times it was to be accounted for by the 

 absorption of attention by the external object, little being left for 

 self. That cries for assistance showed consciousness of danger, 

 as in cases mentioned by Mr. Cnrran in Nature, vol. xxii. 

 p. 318, might be explained by the fact that these would follow 

 on a much less attention to self than would be required for 

 movement to carry the body out of danger. Indeed they would 

 be the outcome of feeling rather than of tkoiight. This view 

 seems to be borne out by the very description of those fascinated, 

 e.g., "have had their senses so engaged by a shell in its 

 descent," "whose every gyration in the air he could count" 

 (Nature, vol. xxii. p. 318), and it is expressed definitely by 

 Mr. Spencer ("Principles of Psychology," vol. ii. p. 438) : — 



"When the external object or act is an astounding one, the 

 observer partially loses consciousness of himself. He is, as we 

 say, lost in wonder, or has forgotten himself; and we describe 

 him as afterwards returning to himself, recollecting himself. In 

 this state, the related impressions received from the external 

 object, joined with representations of the objective changes about 

 to follow, monopolise consciousness, and keep out all those 

 feelings and ideas which constitute self consciousness. Hence 

 what is called 'fascination;' and hence the stupefaction on 

 witnessing a tremendous catastrophe. Persons so ' possessed ' 

 are sometimes killed from the inability to recover self-conscious- 

 ness in time to avoid danger." Rich.\rd Hodgson 



Cambridge, August 17 



" Hyper-Space" 



If some one learned in many dimensions would throw some 

 light on rudimentary contour lines in hyper-space, it would 

 doubtless interest many readers of Nature, and inconceivably 

 yours, V - I 



August 9 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 



THE fiftieth Annual Meeting of the British Association 

 was opened yesterday evening at Swansea, when 

 Prof. AUman resigned the presidential chair to Prof. 

 Ramsay, who gave his inaugural address. 



At midday on Monday the reception rooms at the 

 Agricultural Hall, St. Helen's Road, were formally opened 

 for the transaction of the business of the Association, 

 under the direction of Mr. Gordon, the permanent under- 

 secretary of the general staff, and the local honorary 

 secretaries, Dr. \Vm. Morgan and Mr. James Strick, a'nd 

 their efficient local staff. The hall, our Swansea corre- 

 spondent informs us, is admirably situated on the border- 

 line that separates the business part of the town from the 

 west end residential suburbs, and the conveniences of the 

 place are augmented by a good line of tramway and a 

 temporary cab-stand in front, and telegraph, telephone, 

 and post-office within the building. The arrangements 

 had been brought to a very creditable state of comple- 

 tion by Monday, and the visitors have been pouring 

 into the town steadily since Saturday. The suburban 

 watering-place of Oystermouth, or The Mumbles, and 

 many others of the favourite summer resorts of Gower 

 are full to overflowing, but in the more immediate out- 

 skirts of the town, on the gently-sloping hill-sides that 

 ofier such excellent fresh air and such extended prospects 

 of landscape and sea-view, there is ample accommoda- 



tion for all comers, thanks to the really warm local 

 hospitality and to the careful arrangements of the Local 

 Committee. 



-A fair number of papers are down for reading in the 

 various sections, the usually popular section of geography, 

 however, exhibiting a sad dearth of contributions ; we 

 trust things may look brighter here before the end of the 

 meeting. 



Inaugur.\l Address of Andrew Crombie Eamsav, LL.D., 

 F.R.S., V.P.G.S., Director-General of the Geo- 

 logical Survey of the United Kingdom, and of 

 the Museum of Practical Geology, President 

 On the Recurrence of Certain Phenomena in Geological Time 



In this address I propose to consider the recurrence of the 

 same kind of incidents throughout all geological time, as exhibited 

 in the various formations and groups of formations that now 

 form the known parts of the external crust of the earth. This 

 kind of investigation has for many years forced itself on my 

 attention, and the method I adopt has not heretofore been 

 attempted in all its branches. In older times, Hutton and 

 Playfair, in a broad and general manner, clearly pointed the way 

 to the doctrine of uniformity of action and results, throughout 

 all known geological epochs down to the present day ; but after 

 a time, like the prophets of old, they obtained but slight atten- 

 tion, and were almost forgotten, and the wilder cosmical theories 

 of Werner more generally ruled the opinions of the geologists of 

 the time. Later still, Lyell followed in the steps of Playfair, 

 with all the advantages that the discoveries of William Smith 

 afforded, and aided by the labours of that band of distinguished 

 geologists, Sedgwick, Buckland, Mantell, De la Beche, Mur- 

 chison, and others, all of whom some of us knew. Notwith- 

 standing this new light, even now there still lingers the relics of 

 the belief (which some of these geologists also maintained), that 

 the physical phenomena which produced the older strata were 

 not only different in kind, but also in degree from those which 

 now rule the external world. Oceans, the waters of which 

 attained a high temperature, attended the formation of the 

 primitiz'c crystalline rocks. Volcanic eruptions, with which 

 those of modern times are comparatively insignificant, the sudden 

 upheaval of great mountain chains, the far more rapid decon\- 

 position and degradation of rocks, and, as a consequence, the 

 more rapid deposition of strata formed from their waste — all 

 these were assumed as certainties, and still linger in some parts 

 of the world among living geologists of deservedly high reputa- 

 tion. The chief objecl of this address is, therefore, to attempt 

 to show, that whatever may have been the state of the world 

 long before geological history began, as now written in the 

 rocks, all known formations are comparatively so recent in 

 geological time, that there is no reason to believe that they were 

 produced under physical circumstances differing either in kind 

 or degree from those with which we are now more or less 

 familiar. 



It is unnecessary for my present purpose to enter into de- 

 tails connected with the recurrence of marine formations, since 

 all o-eologists know that the greater part of the stratified rocks 

 were deposited in the sea, as proved by the molluscs and other 

 fossils which they contain, and the order of their deposition and 

 the occasional stratigraphical breaks in succession are also familiar 

 subjects. What I have partly to deal with now, are exceptions 

 to true marine stratified formations, and after some other 

 important questions have been considered, I sha'l proceed to 

 discuss the origin of various non-marine deposits from nearly the 

 earliest known time down to what by comparison may almost be 

 termed the present day. 



Metamorphism. — All, or nearly all, stratified formations have 

 been in a sense metamorphosed, since, excepting certain lime- 

 stones, the fact of loose incoherent sediments having been by 

 pressure and other agencies turned into solid rocks constitutes a 

 kind of metamorphism. This, however, is only a first step 

 toward the kind of metamorphism the frequent recurrence of 

 which in geological time I have now to insist upon, and which 

 implies that consolidated strata have undergone .subsequent 

 changes of a kind much more remarkable. 



Common stratified rocks chiefly consist of marls, shales, slates, 

 sandstones, conglomerates, and hmestones, generally distinct 

 and definite ; but not infrequently a stratum, or strata, may 

 partake of the characters in varied proportions of two or more 

 of the above-named species. It is from such strata that meta- 



