38 Reports and Proceedings. 
with the subject, and the Antiquity of Man. Mr. Maurice Lothian 
then took the chair, and a vote of thanks to Mr. Page for his con- 
duct as chairman last session was heartily awarded by the meeting. 
2. A fortnightly meeting of the Society was held November 24, 
Mr. C. Maclaren, president, in the chair. A communication on the 
Dinornis robustus, from Mr. T. Allis, vice-president of the York- 
shire Philosophical Society, sent in by Mr. J. Haswell, was the first 
paper read. Mr. David Page read a paper on the ‘ Wash-out’ at 
Hailes Quarry. Premising that the terms ‘ Wash-out,’ ‘ Nip-out,’ 
and the like were employed by miners and quarry-men to designate 
certain deep troughs and gorges in the stratified rocks from which 
the solid matter of the strata had been eroded by aqueous or other - 
action, Mr. Page drew attention toa very remarkable ‘wash-out’ at 
Hailes Quarry where the superincumbent shales and underlying sand- 
stones had been cut through to the depth of sixty feet, and to a width 
varying from twelve or fourteen feet at the surface, but gradually 
narrowing to only two or three feet at the bottom. It was a wedge- 
shaped gorge, smoothed and polished on the sides by ice and watery 
action, and now filled with clay and boulders, the residue of the 
Glacial Period during which the ‘wash-out’ had been excavated. 
This gorge, and several others which he instanced, appeared to him 
to be evidences of the land-surface of the Glacial or Boulder Epoch, 
which had been eroded partly by running water and partly by 
moving ice, and, as the Glacial Period closed, had become filled with 
clay, boulders, and other débris, from the surface. The Hailes 
‘wash-out’ was remarkable for its great depth and narrowness ; but 
some, like one described at the Newcastle Meeting of the British 
Association in 1868, which could be traced for miles, and was up- 
wards of 200 yards in width, were in fact the old river-courses of 
the country before, and perhaps during part of, the Glacial Hra. 
3. A meeting of this Society took place on December 1, Mr. M. 
Lothian, §.8.C., P.F., in the chair. Dr. Wrany, of the Pathological 
Library, Prague, was elected a foreign corresponding member. Mr. 
D. J. Brown read a paper on ‘The Causes which lead to the Phe— 
nomenon of Mountains and Mountain-Chains.’ 
GEOLOGICAL Socirty oF GLascow.—The Monthly Meeting* was 
held in the library of the Andersonian University, on December 8th, 
E. A. Wiinsch, Esq., in the chair. Mr. Armstrong exhibited six 
species of Cypricardia from the Carboniferous Shales of the West of 
Scotland, two of which were rare, and as yet undescribed. ‘Two of 
them, C. rhombea, Phil., and C. striato-lamellosa, De Kon., from 
Craigen Glen, Campsie, he said, appear to be more characteristic of 
the lower stage of the Clydesdale Series, while the two undescribed 
species from Gare, Carluke, have as yet been found only in the 
Upper Marine Shales. Mr. A. Armour exhibited a collection of 
Ichthyolites from the Glasgow Coalfield, including some very fine 
and rare Ichthyodorulites, or Fish-spines, of the genera Gyracan- 
* The Monthly Lecture (Noy. 24) will be noticed in our next Number. 
