XXVIU PROCEEDINGS, JUNE. 



Hourly Readings, 1884. Meteor. Office, London. Part 1, January- 

 March. — From the Department. 



Imperial Federation, London, May, 1887. — From the Editor. 



Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society, current Nos.- — From the 

 Society. 



Journal of the Society of Arts, current Nos. 



List of Members and Catalogue of Library of Geological Society of 

 Australasia, 1886-7. — From the Society. 



Machinery Market and Machinery Exported, London, 1887. — From 

 the Editor. 



Magnetical and Meteorological Observations, Bombay, 1885. — From 

 the Department. 



Meteorological Observations at six stations in India, 1886. — From the 

 Department. 



Mitterlungen des Vereins fiir Erdkiinde Zu Leipzic, 1883-5. — From 

 the Department. 



Monthly Weather of the Meteorol Office, London, June and 

 November, 1886.^ — From the Department. 



Monthly Notices of the Royal Microscopical Society, London, March, 

 1887.— From the Society. 



Nature, March, 1887. 



Observations and Researches made at the Hong Kong Observatory 

 Bombay, 1885. — From the Department. 



The Rev. J. B. Woollnodgh read a long and interesting paper 

 entitled, "Notes on Iceland." Mr. Woollnough prefaced his paper by 

 calling attention to three books he had placed upon the table — two 

 published by Icelanders in their own country, and the third published 

 by an Englishman, containing a collection of the national songs, including 

 a national anthem set to the same air as our own National Anthem, of 

 which he gave a metrical translation. The paper opened by a reference 

 to the eminence obtained in Iceland in literature, science, and art in 

 comparatively early days, and the manner in which the people had 

 solved, with no little success, the social and political problems, thereby 

 influencing in no small degree their fellow-men in other parts of the 

 world. Its literature, after 300 years of natural life, was one of the best 

 in Europe, and formed one of the brightest gleams of light in the 

 darkness of the middle ages. To Englishmen this country could not fail 

 to be interesting. It had founded a colony in Greenland in the tenth 

 and another in America in the eleventh century, which led to the later 

 discovery of America by Columbus, who desired to test the Icelandic 

 accounts of the lands towards the west. England was now testing 

 a national system of education, about 50 years old, but Iceland with no 

 schools at all had the best educated people in the world. With all this 

 to be said about it the population was only half as great as Tasmania — a 

 little over 60,000 people who lived and struggled against the most 

 adverse circumstances. It appeared to have been first visited by Irish 

 monks a.d. 800, but about the year 900 the change introduced in Norway 

 by Harald Fairhair caused many nobles and others to emigrate to Iceland. 

 These sea rovers when they landed on Iceland took up a definite area of 

 land, prescribed by custom, and no more, allotting portions to their 

 retainers by a rough sort of feudal tenure. In 929 the whole seaboard, 

 the only habitable part of the island, was taken possession of, and in 

 that year the general Legislative Assembly or Althing met for the first 

 time, and adopted shortly afterwards a general code of laws. This 

 national Parliament was composed of 144 members, being the chiefs of 

 the various districts, and two other members nominated by each. They 

 •were lawyers by nature, and the whole of their early history is composed 



