ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. ' Ux 



Amongst the interesting discoveries of fossil remains during the 

 past year, I may mention that of the first example of the subgenus 

 Buhalus yet recognized as fossil in Great Britain. It consists of the 

 cranial partof the skull with the horn-cores nearly perfect. Prof. Owen, 

 after a careful examination and comparison with recent crania, 

 stated, that, as far as the materials at his command enabled him to 

 judge, the differences between the fossil and recent Musk Buffalo are 

 not of specific value ; he considered that the Buhalus moschatus of 

 the Arctic region, with its now restricted range, is the slightly modified 

 descendant of the contemporary of the Mammoth and the Tichorine 

 Rhinoceros, which with them enjoyed a much wider range both in 

 latitude and longitude, over lands that now form three divisions or 

 continents of the northern hemisphere. 



Mr. Prestwich has added a communication respecting the gravel 

 near Maidenhead in which these remains were found. A mass of 

 ochreous gravel occupies the Valley of the Thames from Maidenhead 

 to the sea. It consists principally of subangular chalk-flint. The 

 author considers the date of its deposition to be posterior to that of 

 the boulder-clay of Norfolk and Suffolk, and also posterior to the 

 gravel which caps the chalk-plateau traversed by the Valley at 

 Maidenhead. The low-level gravel rests at Maidenhead on chalk- 

 rubble, and the skull of the Musk Buffalo was found, with fragments 

 of other bones, low down in the gravel, where it begins to be mingled 

 with the chalk-rubble. 



A communication has also been read to us by Mr. Prestwich on 

 the boring sunk through the chalk at Kentish Town. This boring 

 has pierced the following succession of beds : — London Clay, 

 236 feet; Woolwich and Reading Series, 6 If feet; Thanet Sands, 

 27 feet ; Middle Chalk, 244|- feet ; Lower Chalk, 227i feet ; Chalk 

 Marl, 172 feet; Upper Greensand, 59 feet; Gault, 85 feet; and 

 then 1 7^^ feet of a series of red clays with intercalated sandstones 

 and grits, the total thickness being 1290 feet, and as yet no water 

 had been obtained. It was naturally expected that the sands of the 

 Lower Greensand formation would be found immediately to succeed 

 the Gault. Instead of them, however, red sandy clays have presented 

 themselves, and the important question arises, What are these beds ? 

 Are they a local variation of the Gault ? Or have the Lower Green- 

 sands here assumed a new character ? Or have the workmen suddenly 

 got into a new formation ? The very few fossils rnet with in these 

 clays, if indeed they can be depended upon as really coming out of 

 this formation, are in favour of their being Middle Cretaceous, and 

 above the horizon of the Lower Greensand. But the occasional 

 occurrence in the clay of large rolled fragments of syenite, porphyry, 

 basalt, hornstone, and Old Red Sandstone, and its general mineral 

 features, appear to indicate a littoral character for these deposits, and 

 to point to the possible neighbourhood of a ridge of older rocks which 

 have modified the conditions under which the lower cretaceous beds 

 were formed in this area. This question becomes one of great 

 interest in connexion with Mr. Godwin- Austen's theory of the 

 possible occurrence of the carboniferous rocks immediately or nearly 



