5S6 



NA TURE 



[OCTOUER 15, 1896 



by views of the coast and microscopic slides shown by means of 

 tlie lantern. Indeed, it is to be hoped that the use of the lantern 

 will in future be encouraged by the Section ; so many of the 

 papers gained new interest and importance from the bringing 

 into the room, so to speak, of the sections described by authors. 

 Both igneous rocks and sediments were described ; the former 

 appeared to include rhyulites, often with magnificent nodular 

 structure, and basalts, both occurring as lava (lows with accom- 

 panying beds of tufl' and ash. The age of the rocks appears to be 

 aljout equivalent to the Bala or Llandovery rocks of the mainland. 

 The microscopic aspect of the fclsites, basalts, porphyrites, and 

 clastic rocks was also described. 



In his paper on the " Geology of the Isle of Man," intended 

 as an introduction of the subject to those members who jour- 

 neyed thither on the following Thursday, Prof. Boyd Dawkins 

 dealt first with the Ordovician massif, its crush-conglomerates, 

 slates, and grits ; ne.\t he passed to the Carboniferous Limestone, 

 which in the south is associated w'ith lavas, ashes, and intrusive 

 dykes. The red sandstone and conglomerates to the east of 

 Peel he regarded as Permian, and not of Lower Carboniferous 

 or Old Red Sandstone age. Four borings through the drift of 

 the north part of the island were next described : one of these 

 reached Triassic marls with salt, of which a total thickness of 

 33 feet had been penetrated ; the other three reached Carboni- 

 ferous Limestone at depths varying from 168 feet to 947 feet, 

 two of them passing through Permian strata, and one through 

 Voredale sandstones and shales. 



Mr. Garwood presented a report on the work on Carboniferous 

 zones, containing a plan of campaign and a list of observers who 

 had undertaken to collect carefully from each horizon of the 

 rock, in order to ascertain whether it was possible to break up 

 this great division on pakeontologicril lines. Mr. G. H. Morton, 

 in his paper on the distribution of Carboniferous fossils, did not 

 give much encouragement to this Committee, for he showed that, 

 taking what are at present regarded as species of brachiopods and 

 mollusca, they appear to have a very wide range through the four 

 main divisions of the limestone in Llangollen, Flintshire, and 

 the Vale of Clwyd. In this paper he dealt with rare and common 

 species, and showed that it was only the latter which would be 

 of any real use in identifying zones, on account of the rarity and 

 sporadic distribution of the former. 



Passing to newer rocks, Mr. H. C. Beasley referred to foot- 

 prints from the Trias in the neighbourhood of Liverpool. A 

 slab of sandstone in University College contains about ninety- 

 five prints in an area of about three .square feet. Prints of 

 webbed feet appear to be rare ; a recently discovered footprint 

 may belong to a chelonian. Other forms have been recently 

 described by the author in a paper published by the Liverpool 

 Geological Society. Mr. Morton described a boring near Altcar, 

 which showed that the New Red Mar! in this district was not 

 less than 971 feet thick, but no .salt or saline springs were met 

 with. Another boring, on the west of Bidston Hill, showed only 

 454 feet of Red Marl, and 244 feet of Keuper sandstones ; it then 

 passed into a fault, and penetrated the upper soft sandstone of the 

 Bunter from 133 feet. 



Mr. Montagu Browne described the true bone-bed of Aust 

 Cliff, and the Pullasira arcnicola bed which occurs above it ; the 

 latter he considered to be the equivalent of the so-called bone- 

 bed of Westbury and Penarth, but the bone-bed of the Spinney 

 Hills in Leicester he considered to be the same as that of Aust, a 

 suggestion which was strengthened by the occurrence of Ccratodus 

 in both. Sphenoiichus, hitherto recorded from the Lias, has now 

 been found in the bone-bed at Aust Clifl'and at the Spinney Hills. 

 The third and final report of the Committee on the Stonesfield 

 Slate gives the following corrected section through these beds : — 



ft. ins. 



( Limestone with corals ") 



Great Oolite -' Limestone and marls (oyster beds) j ' •^ 



y Stonesfield Slate 5 3 



Fullonian ... Fawn-coloured (Chipping Norton) 



limestones, about iS o 



( Sandy limestones with some marl "j 

 Lower limestones with vertical I 

 Inferior Oolite - plant markings (Lower Estuarine 1" " " 



Series j 



I Ciypeus grit zone of A. Parkiiisoni 13 o 

 About 12 feet of inferior Oolite strata can be made out below. 

 .Mr. H. B. Woodward communicated some notes on sections 

 along the London extension of the Manchester, Sheffield, and 



NO. 1407, VOL. 54] 



Lincolnshire Railway between Rugby and Aylesbury: Lower, 

 Middle, ami Upper Lias, Estuarine Beds, Great Oolite, Oxford 

 Clay, and Boulder Clay are exposed in different cuttings ; the 

 agent which produced the last, had evidently been forced over a 

 Great Oolite surface. 



A large number of papers dealing with Glacial Geology were 

 presented, and Monday was devoted to the discussion of them. 

 The Erratic Blocks Committee reported that the Yorkshire 

 Boulder Committee, and the Committees of Lincolnshire and of 

 the Belfast Field Naturalists' Club had continued their systematic 

 work. Special attention had been paid to the distribution 

 of the Ailsa Crag rocks around the Irish Sea, to the Shap 

 boulders down the Yorkshire coast into Lincolnshire and 

 about Doncaster, and to the Norwegian erratics south and east 

 from Staithes. A block of Shap granite had been found in the 

 estuaiy of the Mersey. Mr. A. Bell described the Tertiary de- 

 posits of North Manxland, and attributed the shells in them t 1 

 the period represented by the gravels of Wexford, Aberdeen, 

 and Iceland ; these are probably of Weybourn Crag age, anil 

 belong to the Pliocene period. Mr. Kendal gave an illustrated 

 account of certain river valleys in Yorkshire which have changed 

 their direction in part since the Glacial period. The Derwent 

 flows west instead of east, the Swale and Wiske appear to have 

 been formerly tributary to the Tees. The Nidd flow s through 

 a new gorge at Knaresborough and Plumpton, its old valley from 

 Ripley past Brearton into the Vale of \oxV having been dammed 

 by drift, while the Wharfe has been similarly diverted into a 

 gorge from Wetherby to Tadcaster ; these diversions apjiear to 

 have been due to drift deposited on the flank of a great eastern 

 glacier. The same author, in conjunction with Mr. Lomas, 

 described the glacial phenomena of the Clwyd Valley. There 

 appears to have been no glacial submergence. The earlier drift 

 seems to have been formed by Welsh ice, which was jiowerful 

 enough to flow over even the Mocl Fammau range ; this was 

 afterwards overpowered by ice bringing northern erratics, and 

 compelled to divide into two streams, one of which escaped 

 westwards Ijy the Menai Straits ; the other eastwards into the 

 Midlands. Clay and shells like those of Lancashire occur in 

 the northern part of the vale. Mr. J. Smith dealt with the 

 marine shells in high-level drifts in Ayrshire, describing the 

 order of succession, and giving a list of the shells, most of 

 which are fragmentary. The Clava Committee described the 

 shell-bearing clays in Kintyre, which had Ijeen investigated by 

 borings carried out by the aid of grants from the Royal Society 

 and the British Association. The wide extent of the clay was 

 proved, a list of the shells given, and the composition and 

 character of the deposit ascertained and accurately described. Dr. 

 Callaway adhered to that interpretation of the superficial deposits 

 of Shropshire, which attributes to them a marine origin. He 

 laid special stress on their similarity to littoral deposits, their 

 abundant marine fauna, and the ripple-marking so common 

 in the sands. Chalk flints are abundant, and the author had 

 found a Cornbrush fossil in the sands of Wellington. The hills 

 and crags of the area do not present a glaciated outline. 



The Hoxne Committee dealt with the very full exploration, 

 undertaken by Mr. Clement Reid and his colleagues, into the 

 pakvolithic deposits of this place. They succeeded in establish- 

 ing, by borings and excavations, that the boulder clay had 

 been cut out into a valley of which no signs no^v appeared 

 at the surface, as it had been filled with some remarkable 

 lacustrine deposits in which plant remains had been found. 

 The earliest of these indicated a temperate climate, the plant 

 beds culminating in a bed of lignite. Succeeding these beds 

 conies a black loam with the remains of arctic plants, and on 

 the top of this is the sand, loam, and gravel in which pateolithic 

 remains occur. No traces of human workmanship have yet been 

 found beneath this upper layer, and hence the known human 

 relics in this area are separated by two important climatic 

 changes from the period of the boulder clay ; the first from arctic 

 to tem]ieiate, and the second back from temperate to arctic 

 conditions. The work of this Committee apjiears to be well 

 w'orthy of imitation, for it was undertaken and com]>leted with 

 great energy and a good deal of hard work within a year, and 

 its results appear to admit of but one interpretation, that the 

 human relics found here have nothing whatever to do with the 

 Glacial period, with which they were once supposed to have been 

 connected. 



The la.st Glacial paper that we need notice is that by Prof. 

 Hull, who suggested that the great uplift of the West Indian 

 Islands might have contributed to cause the cold of the glacial 



