457 



Mr. D. Sharpe has read before this Society an account of parts of 

 Portugal. He acquaints us that the rocks around Oporto consist of 

 granite succeeded by gneiss and mica schist, which are overlaid by 

 conglomerates containing anthracite, and by blue clay. Between 

 Oporto and Lisbon he points out trappsean rocks and an ancient 

 secondary sandstone overlaid by a limestone with belemnites. The 

 estuary of the Tagus is stated to exhibit on its shores a tertiary series 

 separable into three divisions. The lowest of these is a fossiliferous 

 blue clay ; the intermediate and most extensive group is made up of 

 sand and arenaceous limestone, which, judging from their fossil con- 

 tents, are probably of the Sub-Apennine age. Organic remains have 

 not yet been observed in the uppermost group, although we may 

 incline to the belief, that in a country so convulsed by earthquakes 

 within the term of history, these superficial beds of sand may prove 

 of the same age as the youngest shelly deposits which have been 

 raised upon the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. 



British Colonies. — I expressed, on a former occasion, the hope that 

 our East Indian possessions might soon be rendered more interesting 

 to us by an exposition of their geological relations, and particularly 

 by descriptions of the carbonaceous and other deposits of thePeninsula. 

 We have in the mean time received an account of the structure of 

 Pulo Pinang, and its adjacent islets, drawn up by Dr. Ward, an able 

 and zealous naturalist, at the suggestion of the East India Company's 

 Resident, Mr. Kenneth Murchison. Although we may regret that the 

 Malayan Archipelago offers no other than primary rocks, here and there 

 covered with their disintegrated materials, we must hold up as highly 

 worthy of imitation that good spirit which prompted the Resident to 

 take all the means at his disposal to obtain for us this amount of natu- 

 ral knowledge ; as it is obvious, that similar efforts on the part of the. 

 chief officers in our numerous distant colonies would prove of inap- 

 preciable value. And here I would point your attention to the short 

 " Instructions for Young Geologists," which were prepared for dis- 

 tribution in the colonies ; and I would request you in circulating these 

 Instructions, to urge upon your friends in the West Indies the real 

 service they may perform by sending home suites of specimens, to 

 afford us the means of instituting a comparison between the silicified 

 zoophytes of those parts, and the existing corals of the adjoining seas. 



Continental Writers. — The Discourse of the President of this 

 Society must, from its brevity, be chiefly devoted to the review of the 

 discoveries and proceedings of the English school ; for so numerous are 

 the European observers, that a volume would scarcely suffice to eluci- 

 date their annual productions. In this place, therefore, I can simply 

 allude to a few of those writings which, from their comprehensive 

 nature, will best acquaint you with the recent pursuits of our coad- 

 jutors in various parts of the continent. 



M. Boue\ in his " Considerations geuerales sur la Nature et 1' Ori- 

 gine des Terrains de l'Europe," brings into discussion every great 

 general and theoretical question, with reference to the origin of each 



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