353 



BRITISH ASSOCIATION NOTES. 



Dr. B. N. Peach's address to the Geological Section dealt with the 

 Cambrian Faunas of Scotland and North America, and with the Cambrian 

 Paiaeogeography of the two areas. 



In a paper on ' Prehistoric Remains in the Upper Stort Valley,' Dr. 

 A. Irving (the discoverer of the famous ' I'rehistoric horse ' which turned 

 out to be a modern one), recorded bones of horse, ox and sheep ! 



The Erratic Blocks Committee's report contained many Northumber- 

 land and Durham records, by Messrs. Weyman, Walker, Woolacott and 

 Smythe ; Dogger Bank records by Mr. J. W. Stather, and records from a 

 bank in the Humber estuary, by Mr. T. Sheppard. 



A sum of £10^6 1 8s. 8d. was voted by the British Association at Dundee 

 for scientific purposes. Among the amounts we notice the following : — 

 Erratic Blocks, ^^5 ; Old Red Sandstone of Dura Den, £j^ ; Nomenclator 

 Animalium genera et subgenera, ;^ioo ; Roman sites in Britain, ^^15 ; 

 Structure of Fossil Plants, £1^ ; Jurassic Flora of Yorkshire, ;^i5 ; Cor- ■ 

 responding Societies, £2^. 



At the Conference of Delegates, Miss A. L. Smith gave the results of the 

 circular sent by the British Mycological Society to the various corres- 

 ponding societies of the British Association in reference to certain Fungoid 

 pests. There had practically been no response. Mr. Harold Wager 

 referred to the work of the Yorkshire Mycological Committee, and sub- 

 mitted a list of the published papers and records issued by the members of 

 the Committee. This had been compiled by Mr. C. Crossland, and con- 

 tained several hundred entries. 



At one of the evening discourses. Dr. Arthur Keith dealt with ' Modern 

 Problems relating to the Antiquity of Man.' He concluded that ' the 

 problem of man's antiquity is not yet solved. The picture I wish to leave 

 in your minds is that in the distant past there was not one kind but a 

 number of very different kinds of men in existence, all of which have become 

 extinct except that branch which has given origin to inodern man. On 

 the imperfect knowledge at present at our disposal, it seems highly probable 

 that man, as we know him now, took on his human characters near the 

 beginning of the Pliocene period. How long ago that is must be measured, 

 as Professor Boyd Dawkins insists, by the changes which the earth and 

 living things have undergone, and yet it is only human to try to find a 

 means of measuring that period in a term of years, and the estimates at 

 hand give an antiquity of at least a million and a half of years.' 



Prof. G. Elliot Smith, in his address to the Anthropological Section, 

 said : ' In these discursive remarks I have attempted to deal with old 

 problems in the light of newly-acquired evidence ; to emphasise the un- 

 doubted fact that the evolution of the Primates and the emergence of the 

 distinctively human types of intelligence are to be explained primarily 

 by a steady growth and specialisation of certain parts of the brain ; that 

 such a development could have occurred only in ]\lammalia, because they 

 are the only plastic class of animals with a true organ of intelligence ; 

 that an arboreal mode of life started Man's ancestors on the way to pre- 

 eminence, for it gave them the agility, and the specialisation of the higher 

 parts of the brain incidental to such a life gave them the seeing eye, and 

 in course of time also the understanding ear ; and that all the rest followed 

 in the train of this high development of vision working on a brain which 

 controlled ever-increasingly agile limbs.' 



The Index Geneviim et Specieyum Animalium Committee gave its 

 final report. ' As regards the continuation of the work, the Committee 

 has great pleasure in reporting that the Trustees of the British Museum have 

 included the compilation of the " Index Animalium " in the General 

 1912 Nov, I. 



