ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXXV 



Many of the papers read during the past year have been of much 

 interest and well serve to maintain the character of our discus- 

 sions and pubKcations. Those connected with glacial and drift- 

 action continue to occupy an important place. 



Glacial and Tertiary Geology. 



The Eev. W. Bleasdell shows how a small island in the St. Law- 

 rence has been removed piecemeal by river-ico floating off detached 

 portions during floods ; and Dr. Brown applies the result of his ex- 

 perience in the arctic regions of America to the explanation of the 

 glacial phenomena of Scotland, the sub-azoic Boulder-clay of which 

 country he considers analogous to the deposit under the ice-cap of 

 Greenland, while the as^ciated fossiliferous laminated clays were 

 formed in the fiords and bays skirting the ice-covered land. 



Professor Harkness objects to former hypotheses respecting the 

 distribution of the Shapfell Granite boulders over the high hills of 

 Yorkshire, and suggests that their transport could only have been 

 effected by the agency of coast-ice during a depression of the land of 

 1500 feet. 



The superficial drift-deposits of South Hampshire and the Isle of 

 Wight have been carefully investigated by Mr. Codrington, who 

 shows that the unfossiliferous gravels of the higher plains were 

 probably not of river-origin, but were spread out in an inlet of 

 the sea, when the land stood 400 feet lower, whilst the gravels on 

 the lower levels, with mammalian remains and flint implements, 

 were afterwards deposited by river-action, 



Mr. De Eance has described the Preglacial and Glacial deposits 

 of "Western Lancashire and Cheshire. He considers that at the 

 commencement of the Glacial period the land stood higher than it 

 now does, and that the higher ground was covei'ed with an ice- 

 cap and great glaciers, that the higher Boulder-clay is referable to 

 this land^ice, and that the lower Boulder-clay spread over the lower 

 ground was formed during a period of subsidence when the land- 

 ice was floated off. He infers also that, when the land stood higher, 

 Ireland would have been connected with "Wales, so as to render 

 possible the migration of mammals and plants. 



Mr. Searles Wood, jun., has reviewed the vexed question of the 

 origin of the Weald "Valley, and doubts the sufficiency of the various 

 hypotheses that have been proposed to explain the denudation of 

 that district. From the comparative absence of Lower Cretaceous or 

 Wealden debris in the Thames vaUey, and the presence of Tertiary 



