282 Reports and Proceedings. 
A.M. Norman in honour of its discoverer. These were taken at 
Cumbrae. 
Mr. John Young having then taken the chair, Dr. Scouler in- 
troduced to the notice of the meeting two casts of the ancient 
erania found at Engis, in Belgium, and Neanderthal, in Germany. 
These crania are interesting on account of the antiquity assigned to 
them, as well as from their remarkable conformation. Omitting, 
however, the question of their antiquity, he confined himself to 
instituting a comparison between them and an extensive series of 
crania which he had on the table. The peculiarities of the Nean- 
derthal cranium were shown to exist in other crania, although not 
1o the same degree; and there was no ground for admitting that it 
was anything but a genuine human cranium. With respect to the 
degree of intellect which the owner of this peculiar skull possessed, 
nothing could be inferred, as classification of the brains and nervous 
system of animals would never give a seale of intelligence. Dr. 
Scouler likewise exhibited a very interesting collection of fossil 
bones from Gibraltar. 
Giascow GEoLoGicAL Socrety.—1. The Introductory Lecture 
of the Winter Session of this Society was delivered October 27, 
in the Hall of the Andersonian University, by Mr. Archibald 
Geikie, F.R.S.E., F.G.8., the subject being, ‘The Origin of the 
present Scenery of Scotland.’ Mr. Geikie stated that his object 
was to analyse the scenery of the country and to trace its various 
features to their original cause. The chief bulk of the country, 
mountain and valley, excepting some voleanic rocks here and there, 
has been formed of strata deposited in the sea, raised up as dry 
land, and subsequently furrowed with greater and less channels of 
drainage, the regularity of which suggests that some general uni- 
form agent has been at work, moulding the surface, and producing its 
pr esent configuration; and they bear no evidence of violent cataclasms, 
cither referable to the ups and downs of upheaval, or connected with 
fissures and dislocations of the rocky mass. ‘The mountain-gorges 
among the peaks and precipices of the Highlands are but parts of a 
harmonious and unifcrm drainage-system, and, though occasionally, 
do not necessarily coincide with ‘faults;’ neither are the mountain- 
ridges themselves broken through where these ravines cut into their 
sides, as they would be if the gorges were due to eracks ; uor can any 
drainage-system be supposed to be due to a system of fissures, any 
more than the runlets of retiring tide-water on harbour-mud, Again 
‘faults’ occur in numbers without the least relation to ravines and 
valleys which cross them at every angle, though sometimes valley 
and fissures coincide, as in the great Glen of Scotland. Water can 
excavate deep ravines in Boulder-clay in a short time; and in hard 
rocks in longer time; and it is not by great convulsions, but by the 
slow working of the forces still operating around us, that the super- 
ficial changes of the earth have taken place. The great hydro- 
graphical basins, with their independent systems of drainage, can 
only have been brought about by running water: an idea as old as 
the time of Hutton and Playfair, but lost sight of until lately. The 
