424 Notices of Memoirs—C. & HE. Reid—Bovey Tracey Lignites. 
increase of available earth heat or a lowering of elevation. These 
earlier ice formations were, however, not accompanied by cold seas, nor 
upon their disappearance were zonally distributed climates established. 
The approaching, culminating, and succeeding phenomena of the 
Ice Age were therefore far more remarkable and significant than the 
corresponding phenomena accompanying the occurrences of ice as 
a geologic agent in the earlier ages. The worldwide distribution of 
cold temperate life just preceding the equally worldwide phenomena 
of Pleistocene glaciation, and the succeeding era of zonally distributed 
temperatures and life distinctly dominated by solar control, mark 
a profound change in the climatic history of the earth, and make it 
manifest that but once have the oceans chilled to that degree of cold 
which warrants the use of the term Ice Age. 
Summary.—The phenomena of the earlier glaciations and the pre- 
ceding, accompanying, and succeeding distributions of temperatures and 
of life appear to warrant the conclusions—(1) That these phenomena 
did not occur during eras of solar climatic control; (2) that there were 
apparently marked fluctuations in the amounts of available earth heat; 
(3) that during periods of deficiency and upon elevated areas, and 
particularly in zones of downcast atmospheric currents, local glaciers 
of great extent formed; (4) that these glaciations disappeared or 
varied from one of several causes, (@) accessions of heat from the 
crust, (2) variations in the elevation of the crust, (¢) possible inter- 
mittent thinnings of the denser cloud formation of earlier eras in the 
regions of minimum cloud formation, permitting solar radiation to 
reach the earth’s surface in these latitudes; (5) that these glaciations 
were not of the same order of magnitude nor did they mark the 
climacteric era of the evolution of climates as did the Ice Age. 
II.—Royat Soctery.—Tue Lienrre or Bovey Tracey. By Crement 
Rew, F.R.S., and Exzanor M. Rerp, B.Sc. Read June 16, 1910. 
N 1863 Heer and Pengelly published in the Phil. Trans. an account 
of these lignite beds and their flora. Heer classed the lignite as 
Lower Miocene, considering it equivalent to the Aquitanian of France 
and to the Hamstead Beds of the Isle of Wight. These latter are now 
referred to the Middle Oligocene. 
A statement by Starkie Gardner, that Heer’s Bovey plants are the 
same as those found in the Bournemouth Beds (Middle Eocene), has 
caused the Bovey Beds to be classed as Eocene in recent textbooks 
and on recent maps of the Geological Survey, leaving a great gap in 
the geological record in Britain. Our researches have not supported 
this view, but tend to show that Heer was right, the Bovey lignite 
being highest Oligocene, or perhaps lowest Miocene. We could find 
in the Bournemouth collection nothing to support Gardner’s view, and 
he does not appear to have collected at Bovey, his comments referring 
to the collection now in the Museum of Practical Geology. 
We therefore made a collection in the Bovey deposits, as far as the 
state of the lignite pit would allow, in order to settle if possible the 
true age. The results were unexpected, for by using new methods 
we obtained a considerable number of species, mainly identical with 
