April §th,i8g8?[ PROCEEDINGS. xxxiii 



Ordinary Meeting, April 5th, 1898. 

 James Cosmo Melvill, M.A., F.L.S., President, in the Chair. 



The thanks of the members were voted to the donors of the 

 books upon the table. 



Mr. Brothers communicated a note on stereoscopic and 

 pseudoscopic vision, with the object of eliciting views as to 

 whether, when the stereoscopic effect of stereoscopic pictures 

 is seen without the use of an instrument, the effect can be said 

 to be caused by "squinting." 



A discussion followed, in which opinion was divided as to 

 whether squinting was the correct definition of the cause. It 

 was held that for true stereoscopic vision the axes of the eyes are 

 constrained to be parallel, and that the term squinting applied 

 more properly to the crossing of the axes which produces the 

 inverted stereoscopic appearance. In both cases, there is an 

 unnatural strain if that constitutes squinting. 



Mr. F. J. Faraday communicated a paper by Professor 

 SuEss, of Vienna, on " The New Gold Discoveries." 



The paper is printed in full in the Memoirs. 



Mr. \V. E. HoYLE described a bone supposed to be the 

 pelvic bone of a whale. 



Mr. H. Bolton read a paper entitled : "The Palaeontology 

 of the Slates of the Isle of Man," and exhibited several 

 specimens to illustrate it. After a critical summary of previous 

 literature, the author described the occurence of characters of 

 certain worm-burrows and castings, graptolites, and the impres- 

 sion of a trilobite. It was shown that, notwithstanding the work 

 of geologists for nearly a hundred years, not more than half-a- 

 dozen species of fossils from slate are yet known, and that these 

 are not sufficient of themselves to determine the stratigraphical 

 position of the Slates, which is, therefore, still uncertain. 



Mr. Bolton was of opinion that the specimens he exhibited 



