'496 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [June 17, 



the surface of the sea ; while the amount of all known elevations is 

 ii'regular, and increases towards some axis of elevation. 



Mr. Murray believes the true explanation to be that the sea is 

 gradually diminishing in volume; and he regards the Coral islets as 

 a proof that it is so ; at any rate, he remarks that if we apply this 

 condition of things to an area of coral reefs, all as near the surface 

 of the sea as the polyps can make them, we should have a result 

 exactly in accordance vrith the state of things now existing in Poly- 

 nesia. 



The author then states that the fossils of the older formations 

 being whoUy marine, and the thickness of those formations largely 

 exceeding those of later periods, afford evidence in support of the 

 view that the globe was then enveloped in water. In opposition to 

 Sir Charles Lyell's view, that the proportion of dry land to sea was 

 always the same, and the volume of the land above the sea a con- 

 stant quantity, he maintains that the latter is constantly increasing, 

 and that both the mean and the extreme depth of the sea are con- 

 stantly diminishing ; and he believes the cause of this constant dimi- 

 nution to be the extreme affinity which water has for the constituent 

 elements of minerals. 



Mr. Murray is careful to state his admission that whether there 

 be more or less free water now than at the beginning, there can be 

 neither more nor less of the elementary constituents out of which 

 it is composed. He then refers to volcanic action as showing that 

 the process of the cooling of the earth's crust, and the attendant 

 abstraction of water from the surface are still going on ; and he re- 

 marks that although not a particle of water can be present in the 

 molten mineral core of the earth, yet every particle of that core will, 

 when cool, be largely composed of water — and that therefore the 

 amount of water on the sui'face of the earth must continue to di- 

 minish until the earth is cool or the water wholly absorbed. In 

 conclusion, he quotes' the case of the Moon as one in which this 

 process of absorption of not only its water, but of its atmosphere 

 also, has been brought to a conclusion. 



4. Has tfie Asiatic Elephant heen found m a Fossil State? By 

 A. Leith AuAiis, M.B., F.G.S. With some Additioxal Remarks ; 

 by G. Busk, Esq., E.E.S., F.G.S. 



In December 1867 my attention was directed by a Mend resi- 

 ding in St. John, Xew Brunswick, to a tooth in his possession, and 

 which had been presented to him by the discoverer with the follow- 

 ing note : — " A fossil tooth found by Dr. Duggan, in company vdth 

 Mr. Hodgson, one of H.M. Consuls in Japan, in 1859. At a distance 

 of over forty miles from the sea-shore between Kanagawa and Jeddo, 

 and at the base of a surface coal-bed (80 feet, or thereabouts, from 



