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multuous surf on the adjacent beaches. The glaciers in the Beagle 
Channel were generally bordered by a tongue of land composed of 
huge fragments of rock, and many boulders were strewed on the 
neighbouring shores. The glacier which he approached most 
closely descended to the head of a creek formed on one side by a 
wall of mica-slate, and on the other by a broad promontory from 
50 to 60 feet high, on which he landed: it appeared to consist en- 
tirely of enormous masses of granite. This promontory, he con- 
ceives, was once a lateral meraine, and as it projects nearly half a 
mile beyond the extremity of the glacier, and is covered with old 
trees, he infers that the glacier has diminished in length to that ex- 
tent. ‘ 
Mr. Darwin says it is impossible to explain the distribution of 
boulders without the agency of ice, but he adds, that neither the till 
of the Strait of Magellan which passes into, and is irregularly inter- 
stratified with, a laminated sandstone containing marine remains, 
nor the stratified gravel of Chiloe, can have been produced like 
ordinary moraines. The boulders, likewise, on the lower levels at 
the head of the Santa Cruz river, he considers, could not have been 
distributed in their present position by glaciers, the surface having 
been modelled by the action of the sea; and the little inclination of 
the high plain from the ridge of the Cordillera to where the boulders 
occur, as well as the absence of mounds or ridges on it, and the form 
of the fragments, render it very improbable that they were pro- 
pelled from the mountains by ancient glaciers. Hence, he con- 
cludes, that the blocks of Tierra del Fuego and Chiloe were certainly 
transported by floating ice, and most probably those of the low and 
high plains of Santa Cruz. Finally, he is of opinion, from the ge- 
neral angularity of the blocks, and from the present nature of the 
climate of the southern parts of America, which favours the descent 
of glaciers to the sea in latitudes extraordinary low, that it is more 
probable that the boulders were transported on the surface of 1¢e- 
bergs, detached from glaciers on the coast, than imbedded in masses 
of ice, produced by the freezing of the sea. 
May 19th.—Joseph Wickenden, Esq., Secretary of the Birmingham 
Philosophical Institution, was elected a Fellow of this Society. 
In conformity with Section VI., Clause 8, of the By-laws, the 
Chairman read the names of the following Fellows proposed by the 
Council to be removed from the Lists of the Society on account of 
arrears of annual contributions :-— 
Thomas Alderson, Esq., John Crawfurd, Esq., Sir George Duckett, 
Bart., John Dunston, Esq., John Hanson, Esq., and James Harfield, 
Esq., for the second time; and Joseph Backwell, Esq., and William 
Parker, Esq., for the first time. 
A paper ‘‘ On the Agency of Land Snails in corroding and making 
deep Excavations in compact Limestone Rocks,” by the Rev. Pro- 
fessor Buckland, D.D., F.G.S., was first read. 
