xviii. Proceedings. [March 8th, 192 1. 



they found stone circles round the lead mines ; in Shropshire 

 they found stone circles near the lead mines of the Minsterley 

 district ; and in parts of Wales their mining- centres possessed 

 megalithic monuments. So apparently, the megalith builders 

 were attracted to these places by the same thing as the Romans, 

 the desire for certain forms of wealth. 



The principal of association of human settlement and geo- 

 logical formations provides us with an instrument of research 

 in human geography. Such a distribution as that of the 

 megalith builders suggests the existence of purely economic 

 motives in their settlement of the country. In the case of the 

 Romans, the fact that their settlements are not wholly in direct 

 association with geological formations shows that political aims 

 also played their part in influencing their choice of localities 

 for settlement. Communities such as those of the Saxons and 

 Teutonic tribes apparently show no relationship whatever to 

 geological formations, and in these cases it is obvious that 

 entirely different motives from those which actuated the 

 megalith-builders were at work. It would seem, from the 

 anah^sis of the localisation of the settlements of any given 

 civilisation, that it would be possible to estimate the parts 

 played by the purely economic and by the purely political 

 forces in the life of the community, and, by the comparative 

 study of various civilisations, to help towards the building-up 

 of a stable theory of society. 



General Meeting, March 8th, 192 1. 



Sir Henry A. MiERS, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S. {President), in the 



Chair. 



Mr. R. F. Clark, Resident Engineer, The Cambridge and Paul 

 Scientific Instrument Co., Ltd., 8, Exchange Street, Manchester; was 

 elected an Ordinary Member of the Society. 



Ordinary Meeting, March Sth, 1921. 



Sir Henry A. Miers, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S. (President), in the 



Chair. 



A vote of thanks was passed to the donors of the books upon 

 the table. These included : — Vols, xxiii. and xxiv. of the 

 " Annals of Botany " (Svo., London, 1909 and 1910), presented 

 by Professor F. E. Weiss; and " Average Figures for the Per- 

 formance of Some Different Types of Steam Boilers," by David 

 Brownlie (8vo., London, 1920), presented by the Author. Mr. 



