138 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Jan. 13, 



by metamorphic changes during the age of elevation which marked 

 the close of the Palaeozoic age in China, have hitherto resisted the 

 action of the great solvent. 



Other facts of interest in connexion with the geology of the districts 

 treated of are, the absence of glacial action south of the Yangtse, 

 and the large deposits of rich iron-ore, together with consider- 

 able quantities of coal, in the central provinces, while the careful 

 study of the Tertiary and modern beds may probably at some future 

 period throw light on the vexed question of the antiquity of the 

 human race. 



Discussion. 



The President remarked that if the South of China had been dry 

 land since so early a period, the fauna might have been expected 

 to resemble that of the Siwalik Hills. Among the teeth was the 

 molar of a very small horse, presenting some of the characters of 

 Hijppotherium or Hipjparion, which might possibly be of Miocene 

 date. 



Prof. T. Rupert Jones alluded to the general parallelism of the 

 axial folds of the strata with the coast-line, and to the similar 

 strike of the gold-bearing rocks in the Gulf of Petchele, and men- 

 tioned that Cycadaceous remains occurred in the coal of some parts 

 of Germany as in China. 



Mr. W. Boyd Dawkins remarked that one of the equine molars 

 was the largest of the class he had seen. He agreed with the Pre- 

 sident as to the smaller molar. He was unable, from the specimens, 

 to determine whether they were Miocene or Pliocene. He men- 

 tioned the discovery in the laterite of India of a portion of a human 

 femur of most remarkably slender make. 



January 13, 1869. 



William Groome, Esq., B.A., of St. John's College, Cambridge, 

 was elected a Pellow ; and Dr. J. F. Brandt, of St. Petersburg, Prof. 

 A. E. Nordenskiold, of Stockholm, and Prof. E, Zirkel, of Kiel, were 

 elected Foreign Correspondents of the Society. 



The following communications were read : — 

 1. On Hyperodapedon. By T. H. Huxley, F.E.S., Pres. Geol. Soc. 



A LITTLE more than ten years ago, namely, on the 15th December 

 1858, Sir E. Murchison read a paper " On the Sandstones of Elgin " 

 before this Society. It was followed by an essay of my own " On 

 the Stagonolepis Bobertsonii/' an animal so named by Prof. Agassiz 

 in his ' Poissons fossiles du Yieux Gres Rouge ' from some impres- 

 sions of its dermal covering which had been discovered in the Elgin 

 sandstones. In the latter paper, and in notes added to both papers, 

 before their publication in the middle of the following year, the fact 

 that Stagonolepis was a reptile closely allied to the Mesozoic Croco- 



