156 Geological Society: — . 



of knowledge. Some of these results have been called in ques- 

 tion, more particularly those concerning Flame. The recent re- 

 searches of Heumann have, we think, shown that Frankland was 

 much too sweeping in many of his assertions regarding the lumi- 

 nosity of hydrocarbon flames, and have proved that those flames do 

 indeed owe their luminosity to the presence of solid matter. N ever- 

 theless Frankland's experimental work on Flame remains a monu- 

 ment of what may be done even in the time given to recreation by 

 a determined and loving student of Nature. 



The papers on Muscular Power embody the results of much 

 accurate and exceedingly valuable work ; they are of interest both 

 to the chemist and to the physiologist. 



The publication of these collected researches cannot but increase 

 the fame which their author has already earned ; it cannot but aid 

 in the advance of scientific chemistry by setting before the student 

 an example of what may be accomplished by steady honest work, 

 and by instructing him, both by precept and example, in the path 

 of true scientific research. The best return which can be made to 

 Dr. Frankland is that every worker in the field of chemistry should 

 determine that he too will prove himself not unworthy of that 

 studv to which he has devoted himself. 



XXII. Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



[Continued from p. 74.] 



December 5, 1877.— Prof. P. Martin Duncan, M.B., E.R.S., 

 President, in the Chair. 



THE following communications were read : — 

 1. " On the Building-up of the White Sinter Terraces of Roto- 

 Mahana, New Zealand." By the Rev. Richard Abbay, M.A., F.G.S. 

 The author described the structure and mode of formation of the 

 so-called " White Terrace " of Roto-Mahana, which is produced by 

 a deposit of silica from the water of a geyser situated on the side of 

 a small hill of rotten rhyolitic rock, about 100 feet above the 

 surface of the warm lake (Roto-mahana), into which the water from 

 the geyser finally flows, and the foot of the siliceous terrace projects. 

 The geyser-basin, which is between 300 and 400 feet in circum- 

 ference, has steep walls, broken through only on the side towards 

 the lake, where the water pours down to form a succession of 

 terraces, which are really shallow basins, over the outwardly in- 

 clined edges of which the water flows, depositing the dissolved silica 

 in a white subflocculent form on the edges and bottoms of the 

 basins in proportion as the water cools. The author showed how 

 this arrangement produced the peculiarly formed siliceous deposit of 

 the terraces, and that, as the growth of the latter is evidently up- 

 wards as well as outwards, it seems probable that the geyser-pipe 

 has slowly worked its way up the hill by the solvent action of the 

 heated water, from the level of the lake to its present elevation. 



