474 Reviews — British Museum Annual Report. 



Three appendices contain accounts of the results of deep borings 

 at Market Weighton, Newark, and Hitchin respectively. The first 

 of these shows that the Trias and Permian do not thin away north 

 of the Humber, as was hoped; the boring was stopped in Lower 

 Permian Limestone at 3,100 feet from the surface. The boring at 

 Kelham, near !N"ewark, reached the Coal-measures at 1,401 feet, and 

 penetrated to the Carboniferous Limestone Shales. Only 148 feet 

 of strata can be assigned to the Millstone Grit, hence the boring 

 probably passed through at least one fault. The Hitchin boring 

 appears to indicate a thickness of 250 feet of drift near the western 

 margin of the drift-filled channel already known to exist in that 

 neighbourhood. 



R. H. R. 



II. — British Museum Return, 1917. Published by H.M. 



Stationery Office, London. 1917. Price Qd. 

 rSlHIS report as usual contains a large amount of interesting 

 JL information as to the progress of the various departments of 

 the Britisli Museum, together with the accounts of the special trust 

 funds. The number of visitors at Bioomsbury naturally shows 

 a great falling off, since for ten months out of the twelve the 

 galleries were closed to the public. At South Kensington most of 

 the galleries remained open during the year 1916 and the number of 

 visitors was nearly as large as usual, amounting to 402,673. The 

 staff carried out for the Government a large number of investigations 

 on subjects directly connected with the War, as well as other special 

 work of a more normal kind, and various topical exhibits have been 

 arranged. The number of new acquisitions is somewhat smaller 

 than usual, as might be expected, but the general routine work of 

 the Museum has sufi^ered little or no interruption, and the publica- 

 tion of serial reports has been continued. A large number of 

 valuable fossils have been presented to the Department of Geology, 

 of which the most important are perhaps those comprised in the 

 Hamling Collection from Devonshire, while the Department of 

 Minei'alogy has also acquired many specimens of interest, including 

 several meteorites from various falls not hitherto represented in the 

 collection. 



III. — The Work of Local Societies and Museums. 



IN spite of the adverse conditions of tlie present time as regards 

 scientific work on subjects not directly connected with the 

 War, it is gratifying to note that many local societies seem to 

 pursue the even tenour of their way with little visible disturbance. 

 For example, the fifty-first Report of the Rugby School Natural 

 History Society for the year 1917 contains evidence of great 

 keenness and enthusiasm among the members, who are carrying out 

 useful observational work o£ several kinds, zoological, botanical, 

 geological, and meteorological. The section of physics and chemistry 

 has also been active, and the report contains reprints of two interesting 



