78 Address. [Feb., 



lines of disturbance being still principally east and west. The same 

 rocks occupy the ground between Kabul and Peshawar. A remarkable 

 feature of this traverse between the Oxus and India is that no rocks 

 were taken to be older than carboniferous : even the crystalline schists 

 being taken to be rocks of that period or newer. 



Another labourer in the field has been Dr. Giles, who was attached 

 as naturalist to Colonel Lockhart's mission. He passed through Yassin, 

 Chitral, and the border of Kafiristan, and, though not a professed geo- 

 logist, has made interesting notes upon the physical features and rocks, 

 specimens of which he brought back for inspection. Mr. Lyddeker had 

 previously examined the ground traversed by the mission as far as 

 Gilgit and described it as an almost unbroken geological waste of gneiss 

 and schistose rocks, taken to be partly altered palaeozoic, but largely also 

 archaean, as the continuation of the schists and gneiss underlying the 

 Silurian and Cambrian slates in the Himalayan sections to the south- 

 west. From Dr. Giles* specimens and notes it would be inferred that 

 the whole of the ground traversed by him westward of Gilgit was of 

 the same description. There was no vestige of a fossil and all the rocks 

 were more or less metamorphic, the more crystalline varieties predo- 

 minating. By itself this could not be remarkable, but, compared with 

 the concluding section of Mr. Griesbach's tour, it is rather perplexing 

 in the greatness of the contrast. There remains about 100 miles of 

 Kafiristan separating the two sections ; and it is to be feared that some 

 time will elapse before materials for solving the problem thus presented 

 to us will be available. 



The publications of the Geological Survey comprise the ' Records,' 

 ' Memoirs,' and the ' Palceontologia Indica.' Of the Records, the volume 

 for 1886, contains twenty-five papers of varied interest by members 

 of the staff and others. The Palceontologia continues its useful work 

 and gives us contributions by Mr. R. Lydekker on the Reptilia and 

 Amphibia of the Maleri and Denwa groups of the Indian pre-tertiary 

 vertebrata and a supplement to his Siwalik mammalia of the tertiary 

 and post-tertiary series, and by Messrs. P. Martin Duncan and W. 

 Percy Sladen on the Gaj (miocene) series, the Makran (pliocene) series, 

 and the fossil Echinoidea of Kachh and Kathiawar belonging to the ter- 

 tiary and upper cretaceous fauna of Western India. Also on the Ccelen- 

 terata of the productus-limestone of the Salt-range by Dr. Waagen, and 

 a concluding part of the Gondwana Flora series by Dr. Feistmantel. 



Meteorology. — And now I come to what may without disparagement 

 be called the youngest of all sciences, for, notwithstanding the atten- 

 tion given to it of late years, meteorology is still only in the first stages 

 of generalisation and presents us with a mass of observational detail, out 



