part 2] PKOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOaiCAL SOCIETY. Ixxi 



proceeds of the Daniel- Pidgeon Fund for 1922 to Heebeet Peice 

 Lewis, B.A., Greological Department, University of Sheffield. 

 The recipient proposes to investigate the structure of Caninoid 

 Corals occurring in the Carboniferous Limestone of North Wales 

 at higher horizons than their reputed range. 



Sir Chaeles John Holmes, Director of the National Gallery, 

 proceeded to deliver a lecture on * Leonardo da Vinci as a 

 Greologist.- The Lecturer began by referring to the growth in 

 recent years of Leonardo's reputation as a man of science. This 

 rapid growth led recently to a reaction, and it was now not 

 infrequently stated that Leonardo's scientific discoveries were in 

 the nature of fortunate guess-work, and were neither proved nor 

 accompanied by experimental research. In view of this attitude, 

 the Lecturer felt thai he could not present any statement of 

 Leonardo's discoveries to a scientific body, such as the Geological 

 Society, except in the form of extracts from Leonardo's own 

 writings, which would enable them to judge for themselves 

 whether his scientific reputation was firmly founded or not. 



Reading extracts from the translations made by Mr. McCurdy 

 and Dr. Richter, the Lecturer pointed out how Leonardo was 

 really the first to have a large and accurate conception of the 

 causes underlying the physical configuration of the Earth. His 

 studies of aqueous erosion, of the formation of alluvial plains, of 

 the process of fossilization, and of the nature of stratification, led 

 him to a logical conviction of the immensity of geological time, 

 and were so far in advance of the dogmatic thought of his age, 

 that they exposed Leonardo to the charge of atheism. There can 

 b© no doubt whatever, that if he had not confided these dis- 

 coveries to the almost undecipherable script of his note-books, and 

 kept them hidden there, he would have been one of the first and 

 most notable of the martyrs of science. 



Caution thus compelled him to work in isolation, and to keep 

 his results concealed : he had no scientific instruments, no corre- 

 spondents to furnish him with observations on geological conditions 

 elsewhere ; yet his grasp of the physical history of the portions of 

 Italy which he had personally visited, was so sound, so firmly based 

 on experiment and research, and so entirely in accordance with 

 modern knowledge, that he must be considered the one great 

 geological predecessor of Lyell. 



Since publication of his discoveries was impossible, Leonardo 

 left a record of them in his paintings, as in the background of the 

 ' Monna Lisa,' the ' Madonna & St. Anne,' and in a less degree in 

 our own ' Madonna of the Rocks ' in the National Gallery. Here 

 we find pictures of the primeval world as he imagined it, when 

 seas and lakes ran up to the foot of the mountains, to be slowly 

 displaced and silted up by the detritus which the rain carried down 

 from the summits. From this reconstruction the pictures derive 

 that sense of action, apart from place or time, Avhich has fascinated 



