lyuj-iaii.j a a i 



the Hymenomycetes and the Gas/eromycetes, and these included 

 most of the forms popularly known as Fungi, such as Mushrooms, 

 Puff-balls, Boleti, and the numerous forms of Tube-Fungi. In 

 conclusion, the lecturer dealt with the question of classification, 

 which he said was still very imperfect, and he described some of 

 the salient morphological features upon which it was based. 



The reading of the paper was followed by a lengthy con- 

 versational discussion, in which nearly all present took part. 



THE CLOSE OF AN ICE-AGE : A COMPARISON 

 BETWEEN IRELAND AND SPITSBERGEN IN 1910. 



The fourth monthly meeting of the Winter Session of the 

 Club was held in the Museum on 21st February, when Professor 

 Grenville A. J. Cole, M.R.I.A., F.G.S., Delegate from the Irish 

 Field Club Union, gave an interesting lecture, entitled " The 

 Close of an Ice-Age : a Comparison between Spitsbergen and 

 Ireland in 1910." The President, Mr. Robert J. Welch, M.R.I. A., 

 occupied the chair and presided over one of the best-attended 

 meetings of the Club for some time. 



Professor Cole said — The boulder-clays that cover so much of 

 Ireland, whether as sheets or as the rounded hills styled drumlins, 

 are known to be full of scratched stones, which betray their glacial 

 origin. Louis Agassiz convinced geologists of this some sixty years 

 ago by his comparison of these deposits with those in Switzerland ; 

 but he insisted that they pointed to the occurrence of a world-wide 

 ice-age. They were laid down by ice-sheets rather than by local 

 glaciers, and the gravels associated with them were washed from 

 them during the melting of continental ice. The widely spread 

 glacial striations on the rock-floor of Ireland similarly support the 

 view that broad masses of ice occupied the plains and passed over 

 many of the hills. 



The waning of an ice-age may still be studied in the Antarctic 

 and Arctic regions, and Spitsbergen, lying about latitude 78^° 



