February 13, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



257 



A number of papers on subjects of local 

 interest were read by Mr. Morton, Mr. 

 Mellard Reade, Mr. Beasley and others, on 

 the Trias and its footprints, the boulder 

 clays, submerged forests, and on the ad- 

 vance of the sea upon the coast. Excur- 

 sions were organized to most of the places 

 mentioned in these papers and a long ex- 

 cursion to the Isle of Man conducted by 

 Mr. Lamplugh and Prof. Boyd Dawkins, 

 the latter of whom read a paper on the 

 geology of the Island in which he described 

 its Ordovician, Carboniferous, Permian, 

 Triassic and Pleistocene deposits, together 

 with the igneous rocks. 



Messrs. Howard and Small made a com- 

 munication on the nodular and felsites and 

 other igneous rocks of Skomer Island, which 

 they had determined to be interbedded 

 lavas, associated with tuffs of Bala or 

 Llandovery age. Mr. Garwood presented 

 a report on the progress of his work on 

 the zoning of the Lower Carboniferous 

 rocks by means of their fossils, in which he 

 showed that considerable progress had 

 been made, but the inquiry was hampered 

 by the variable character of what are at 

 present regarded as species in the brachio- 

 pods and other organisms. 



Mr. Wethered gave an illustrated lec- 

 ture on the organisms characteristic of the 

 chief limestones in our scale, and dwelt 

 much on the evidence which tended to 

 prove that oolitic structure was of organic 

 origin. 



Prof. Hull proposed a new theory to 

 account for the glacial period. If the West 

 Indian Islands were much upheaved at that 

 period, as appears from Spencer's observa- 

 tions to have been the case, the Gulf 

 Stream would no longer accumulate in the 

 Gulf of Mexico and would in consequence 

 reach the North Atlantic about ten degrees 

 colder than it is at present. The amount 

 of high land in the northern hemisphere at 

 this time would also be a contributing cause. 



Mr. Clement Reid gave an account of his 

 excavations at the classic locality of Hoxne, 

 in Suffolk, directed towards ascertaining the 

 age of the Paleolithic implements discov- 

 ered there. Under the top layer, which has 

 yielded the implements, comes a series of 

 lacustrine deposits, including a bed of lig- 

 nite; these strata rest in a hollow denuded 

 out of the boulder-clay, which in turn rests 

 on sands and gravels. The estuarine beds 

 indicate that the glacial climate of the 

 boulder-clay was succeeded by a temperate 

 climate and that by a second arctic climate 

 before the implement-bearing beds were 

 laid down. These determinations depend 

 on the evidence derived from the relics of 

 fossil plants, mostly seeds, found in the 

 estuarine beds. 



Mr. Kendall read a paper on the changes 

 which many Yorkshire rivers had under- 

 gone in their courses since the glacial pe- 

 riod. Both the Wharfe and the Mdd have 

 been diverted from their old channels,which 

 are still traceable, and now flow through 

 gorges in the lower part of their courses. 

 Similarly the Swale and the Wishe were 

 once tributary to the Tees, though they 

 now drain into the Derwent, which itself 

 flows west from Scarborough, instead of 

 east and straight to the sea. A vast amount 

 of water has thus been brought to the 

 Humber which did not originally belong to 

 it. The usual discussions as to the origin 

 of various glacial deposits between the ad- 

 vocates of marine action and those of land- 

 ice work were rife on the day devoted to 

 Pleistocene subjects, the battle ground 

 shifting from the Isle of Man to the Vale 

 of Clwyd and back again to Ayrshire and 

 Kintyre. 



Mr. Cornish gave the results of his work 

 with the sand-blast and on ripple marks, in 

 which he endeavored to distinguish be- 

 tween the forms caused by waves from 

 those due to streams and wind. Prof. 

 Milne described his seismographic work in 



