698 Geological Society : — 



are : J. Clerk Maxwell, W. J. M. Eankine, P. G-. Taifc, Lord Kelvin, 



Charles Babbage, William "Whewell, Sir George Gabriel Stokes, 

 Sir George Biddell Airy, J. C. Adams, and Sir John Herschel, 

 The list does not, of course, include some of the most distinguished 

 physicists of the nineteenth century, which is the period referred 

 to on the title-page, and of those admitted most people would, 

 perhaps, scarcely count Whewell, Babbage, Adams, or even 

 Herschel, though he carried out Avell-known experiments on 

 fluorescence, as physicists. This is, howe\er, a mere matter of 

 title, and the lives of the thinkers just mentioned are by no means 

 the least interesting in the volume. Babbage, in particular, has 

 sunk into ill-deserved oblivion : although his unfortunate tem- 

 perament prevented him turning to full advantage his boundless 

 ingenuity and great mathematical powers, his work on calculating 

 machines was fundamental and has been of the utmost value to 

 his successors. Probably, too, our present notation in the calculus 

 owes something for its establishment to Babbage's " Analytical 

 Society," which advocated " the principles of pure d-ism hi oppo- 

 sition to the dot-&ge of the University/'' Dr. Macfarlane's short 

 and sympathetic study tells us something of a stormy life, which 

 is interesting to most readers. In the account of Eankine we 

 are reminded of the hypothesis of molecular vortices which the 

 great engineer, so well-known for his work in thermodynamics, 

 put forward with so much confidence, and of his poetical abilities. 

 It is noteworthy that Whewell, Clerk Maxwell, and John 

 Herschel were also accomplished versifiers. On the whole, these 

 lines make very pleasant reading. They are, of course, short, and, 

 being founded on lectures given to a mixed audience, do not 

 devote much space to attempting to estimate in detail the value 

 of the scientific achievements of the various men, or their precise 

 place in scientific thought. The man who has read, for instance, 

 Campbell's ' Life of Maxwell ' will not find here anything new 

 about that physicist. But the essays give a very readable im- 

 pression of the life and personal character of the selected ten, and 

 of the class of problems which they were engaged in solving. 

 There is plenty of room for brief biographies of this kind, and the 

 book should appeal to a large circle of readers. 



LXXIV. Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 

 [Continued from p. 384.] 



November 19th, 1919.— Mr. G. W. Lamplugh, P.E.S., President, 



in the Chair. 

 r I^HE following communication was read :— 



' The Pleistocene Deposits around Cambridge.' By Prof. John 

 Edward Marr, Sc.D., F.R.S., V.P.G.S. 



This paper deals with the dejDOsits in the immediate vicinity of 

 Cambridge, and contains new records of sections, fossils, and imple- 

 ments. It is pointed out that, owing to alternating periods of 

 erosion and aggradation, relative height above sea-level is not a 



