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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 356, 



dency of Professor Arthur W. Eiicker in 

 the university building during the week 

 beginning September 11. In attendance 

 the meeting was not quite so successful as in 

 previous years, the total number of mem- 

 bers registered being 1,912. The following 

 Americans had the honor of attending as 

 guests of the Association : Chancellor Mac- 

 Cracken of the University of ISTew York, 

 Mr. Edward Atkinson of Boston, Professor 

 Arthur Michael of Tufts College, Professor 

 Edward "W. Morley of Cleveland, Professor 

 A. Lawrence Eotch of the Blue Hill Ob- 

 servatory and Professor J. Play fair Mc- 

 Murrich of the University of Michigan. 

 The papers presented to the meeting 

 reached the usual standard of excellence, 

 and reports of the proceedings of the vari- 

 ous sections will appear in later numbers 

 of Science. 



The usual public lectures were given by 

 Professor W. Kamsay, on ' The Inert Con- 

 stituents of the Atmosphere,' and by Mr, 

 Francis Darwin on ' The Movements of 

 Plants.' As is customary, numerous recep- 

 tions were held in honor of the Association, 

 and the majority of the members took 

 advantage of the suspension of meetings of 

 the sections, on the Saturdaj'^, to make ex- 

 cursions to various points of interest in the 

 western Highlands or to visit some of the 

 numerous great industrial enterprises which 

 have made Glasgow famous. 



THE GEOLOGICAL SECTION. 



As might have been expected from the 

 place of meeting of the Association, much 

 of the material presented to the Geological 

 Section dealt with the geology of Scotland. 

 The president of the section, Mr. John 

 Home, acting director of the Geological 

 Survey of Scotland, gave as his address a 

 review of the progress in our knowledge of 

 Scottish geology during the quarter-century 

 which has elapsed since the last meeting of 

 the Association in Glasgow, and furnished 



such abundant evidence of the activity 

 and skill of the Scotch geologists in 

 recent years as to justify the hope which 

 was expressed that their work might form a 

 fitting sequel to the labors of such men as 

 Hutton, Hall, Murchison, Lyell, Hugh 

 Miller, Fleming, Nicol and Eamsay, all of 

 whom claimed Scotland as the land of their 

 birth. It would be difficult to satisfac- 

 torily abstract the address, since from the 

 wealth of material with which it had to 

 deal, it in itself was but an all too brief 

 synopsis ; but there may be mentioned, 

 among the important additions to geology 

 to which reference was made : the tabula- 

 tion of the various divisions of the Torri- 

 donian sandstones by the Geological Survey 

 and the determination of the pre Cambrian 

 age of that formation ; the collection of evi- 

 dence of post- Cambrian terrestrial move- 

 ments in the northwest Highlands resulting 

 in the production of reversed faults and 

 thrusts for which a parallel can be found 

 only in the Alps and Provence, the deter- 

 mination of the order of succession of the 

 Silurian rocks of the south of Scotland by 

 Professor Lapworth, the unraveling of the 

 history of the secondary rocks by Professor 

 Judd ; and the study of the Tertiary volcanic 

 rocks of the western coast. 



In connection with this last-named topic 

 attention was called to the recent discovery, 

 in the island of Arran, of a volcanic vent 

 covering an area of about eight square miles 

 and now filled with volcanic agglomerate 

 and large masses of sedimentary material 

 which has yielded Rhsetic and Lower Tri- 

 assic fossils. And in a special paper Sir 

 Archibald Geikie described an interesting 

 circumstance which gave a basis for esti- 

 mating the time intervals between success- 

 ive lava flows in the inner Hebrides. This 

 was the occurrence in the basalt of the west 

 coast of Mull of a fossil tree whose roots 

 were apparently imbedded in a lower sheet 

 of lava, in which were signs of soil. The 



