282 Scientific Meetinq in Germany. 



After the delivery of Dr. Haniel's address, and a few words up- 

 on the subject of it from Colonel von Siebold and Dr. Drescher, 

 the meeting separated into the various sections, where the only- 

 business performed was the election of their respective presidents. 

 The afternoon was pleasantly and profitably consumed in eating 

 and drinking. 



On Saturday (September the 19th), the proceedings of the Geo- 

 logical Section commenced with some observations by Dr. Jager 

 of Stuttgart, on the origin of regular forms in rocks, which he re- 

 ferred to processes of crystallisation in the sedimentary masses. Dr° 

 Otto Volger, of Frankfort exhibited a series of specimens with the 

 view of demonstrating the results of his inquiries (some of which 

 had been already published) on the history of the development 

 of mineral bodies, and the mode in which the various rocks origi- 

 nate. 



Dr. Volger maintained that these specimens afforded direct 

 and irrefragable proof that Feldspath and Quartz were formed in 

 nature under circumstances which utterly excluded the notion of 

 a high temperature having been one of the concurrent causes of 

 their formation. The specimens had been taken from the crys- 

 talline rocks of the Alps formerly regarded as " primitive rocks" 

 (Urgebirge) but afterwards claimed partly as plutonic lava rocks, 

 partly as masses belonging to the first period of refrigeration of 

 the globe from its original state of igneous fusion. According to 

 the speaker's investigations, these were nothing else than meta- 

 •morphic rocks that had arisen from, the regular development 

 depending upon chemical processes, of various mineral bodies 

 particularly Feldspath and Quartz, which had come in the place 

 of limestone masses contemporary with the Jurassic formation. 

 The speaker, in reference to this and to another more general and 

 important result of his inquiries, namely, that the silicates so far 

 from being primary formations, or even in the general case pos- 

 sessing ahigh degree of antiquity, as Geology had hitherto supposed, 

 were always younger than the carbonates, and that the history of 

 the development of the former constantly pre-supposed the earlier 

 existence of the latter ; he shewed by means of the specimens in 

 question, on the largest and on the smallest scale, that Feldspath 

 and Quartz had grown upon and between Carbonates of lime 

 (Kalkspathen), which last were still to be found in a portion of 

 specimens, well preserved, and without exhibiting the slightest 

 trace of the operation of heat, partly surrounded by Feldspath and 



