THE 



QUARTERLY JOURNAL 



OF 



THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDOxN. 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF 



THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



February 4, 1857. 



Wyville Thomson, LL.D., Professor of Geology, Queen's College, 

 Belfast, and Edwin Lees, Esq., F.L.S., Worcester, were elected 

 Fellows. 



The following communications were read : — 



1. On Me Rock-Basins o/ Dartmoor. By John Cleghorn, Esq. 



[Communicated by Sir R. I. ^lurchison, F.G.S.] 



I have just seen in the 'Athenaeum' (No. 1510) of 4th October 1856 

 a letter from G. Wareing Ormerod, Esq., F.G.S., headed "Druidical 

 Antiquities," giving the particulars of a "Rock-Basin" discovered 

 by him on Dartmoor. The account given of this basin and the others 

 in its neighbourhood, and the generally received opinions as to their 

 origin, induce me to think they are misunderstood by antiquaries 

 and geologists. 



I had my attention called to such basins in 1853 by the paper of 

 Robert Chambers, Esq., of Edinburgh, " On Glacial Phenomena in 

 Scotland and parts of England*," in which he described the cele- 

 brated ^'Giant's Pots" of Sweden. In that paper Mr. Chambers 

 says, " In the midst of a glaciahzed surface, perhaps on the side of a 



* Edinb. New Phil. Joum., April 1853. 

 VOL. XIII. — part I. S 



