ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 209 



Then as to the power of such currents, transporting hard bodies, to 

 produce the furrows and striae, I should be disposed to refer to the 

 physicieTii to him conversant with the laws of mechanical philosophy, 

 the questions whether rounded blocks and gravel, moving in watery 

 passing over rocks, would be capable of producing on them these 

 deep furrows and striae ; or whether it is not more probable that 

 they were worn by angular fragments of rock held fast in ice, and 

 pressed, as the current floated the iceberg, against the opposing 

 rock, with a vast force derived from the weight of the mass ? 



We learn from the * Magazine of Natural History' of last Sep- 

 tember, that letters had been received the preceding month from 

 Mr. Harry Goodsir, attached, as Naturalist, to the Arctic Expedi- 

 tion under the command of Sir John Franklin, dated from Disco in 

 Baffin's Bay the 7th of July last ; and it is stated that " Mr. Goodsir 

 is making minute observations upon the ice of the bergs, and as he 

 purposes continuing them throughout the voyage, there can be little 

 doubt of his arriving at valuable conclusions." It is added, *' We 

 also find some observations upon the action of floating ice upon the 

 granitic shores of the islands. All the rocks below high-ivater marky 

 and some considerably above it, are rounded off into long irregular 

 ridges with intervening hollows by the half-floating masses of ice.'' 



Palaeontology. 



This great department of Geology is now cultivated with so much 

 industry by so many naturalists in Europe and America, that 

 scarcely a month elapses without some valuable additions to our 

 knowledge. It is not possible for me to do more than briefly refer 

 to some of the more important of those which I have had an oppor- 

 tunity of becoming acquainted with. 



At the last Meeting of the British Association at Cambridge, 

 Professor Edward Forbes made an interesting and important com- 

 munication to the Natural History Section, in which he pointed out 

 a connexion of the present distribution of plants with geological 

 changes which took place during the later tertiary periods. He 

 maintains, for example, that the existing flora of Britain belongs, 

 not to the present epoch only, but is composed in part of the re- 

 mains of the floras of the pliocene and post-pliocene periods. He 

 considers that certain peculiarities of the vegetation of the west of 

 Ireland depend on an ancient geological connexion with the Astu- 

 rias ; those of the Scottish and Welsh mountains on the migration 

 of plants from Scandinavia during the glacial period, and the sub- 

 sequent upheaval of the land, and consequent cliange of climate ; 

 whilst the groat mass of the British flora migrated across tiu^ up- 

 heaved bed of the Pleistocene sea. He further iiolds, that the deter- 

 mination of the date of the migrations of terrestrial plants and ani- 

 mals will eventually aid in fixing the periods of many geological 

 events. 



In the year 1828, M. Eiie de Beaumont published in the ' Annalcs 

 des Sciences Naturelles' an account of some observations he had 



VOL. JI. — J'ART I, r 



