746 REPORT—1899, 
of stalactites and stalagmites, and being on a microscopic scale the author sug 
gests the term ‘ micro-stalagmitic’ to indicate this structure. 
Such structures are not limited to those formed from carbonate of lime. 
Urinary concretions of uric acid, urates, oxalate of lime, often show this structure 
to perfection. 
Sea-water as a solvent of carbonate of lime and a retainer of OO, is still much 
of a problem, notwithstanding many researches. As a general statement, deep- 
sea water may be said to contain more of these materials than surface-water, 
because it is under greater pressure and cooler. With currents setting from great 
depths to more shallow regions, the water will rise in temperature and diminish 
in pressure, and so lose its bicarbonate of lime. Now we know that oolitic rocks 
were chiefly shallow water and shore deposits, and here we have all the elements 
favourable to the formation of oolites—namely, supersaturation of water by lime 
bicarbonate and constant rolling movement. Another and perhaps equally import- 
ant source must be the innumerable calcareous springs from land drainage issuing 
all over the sea-bottom for miles from the shore, churning up sand and depositing 
their burden of calcite at the same time. 
10. Report on the Tyn Newydd Caves. See Reports, p. 406, 
11. Report on Fossil Phyllopoda. See Reports, p. 403. 
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16. 
The President's Address was delivered. See p. 718. 
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18. 
The following Papers and Report were read :— 
1. Homotaxy and Contemporaneity. By Professor W. J. Soutas, F.K.S. 
On the occasion of the centenary of William Smith’s great discovery of the 
identification of strata by fossil remains, which formed the basis of historical 
geology, attention might fitly be called to the triumphs of the last two decades 
which had been achieved by its means, The study of the distribution of zonal 
fossils had unexpectedly vindicated the old-fashioned notion of the contem- 
poraneous formation of similar stratified systems over great parts of the world, 
and no one could any longer assert that the Silurian system in Europe might 
possibly be contemporaneous with the Devonian in America. The distribution of 
Ammonites in the Cretaceous zones of Europe, America, and Pondicherry could 
be shown to prove that the difference in age of the same zone in different localities 
was not equal to the whole time required for a species to migrate from one place 
to another, but to the difference in the times occupied by Pacific species in passing 
to Europe, and Atlantic species in passing to Asia. Further, the lapse of time 
during migration or transport was a vanishing quantity in comparison with the 
long periods occupied in the evolution of species. ‘The results of recent work had 
been to inspire geologists with renewed confidence in the accuracy and logical 
basis of their methods. 
