Geological Society. 305 



that it is unnecessary to dwell upon this phase of Mendeleerfs 

 teaching. It will be of interest to call attention to the fact that it 

 was in the preparation of the early editions of this work that the 

 law in question was first discovered and elaborated by the great 

 chemist whose name is generally associated with it. At the same 

 time it must not be forgotten that our own countryman Newlands 

 was the first to point out the periodicity in the atomic weights of 

 the elements at a time when chemical thought was in this country 

 at least quite unprepared for the doctrine. 



The second volume concludes with two appendixes, one being 

 Mendeleeff's Royal Institution lecture given in 1889 ("An at- 

 tempt to apply to Chemistry one of the principles of Newton's 

 Natural Philosophy "), and the other his Faraday Lecture on " The 

 Periodic Law of the Chemical Elements," given the same year before 

 the Chemical Society. These form valuable additions to the work. 



It has been impossible to do full justice in this notice to the 

 present important contribution to our chemical literature, but our 

 readers will perceive that we have at length a text-book in English 

 which presents Chemistry as a living science. It is a book w 7 ritten 

 by one of the great masters of the subject, and no chemist who 

 has the advancement of his science at heart can afford to be 

 without it. 



XXXIII. Proceedings of Learned Societies, 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 

 [Continued from p. 140.] 



June 8th, 1892.— W. H. Hudleston, Esq., M.A., F.R.S., 

 President, in the Chair. 

 r pUE following communications were read : — 

 J- 1. "The Tertiary Mierozoic Formations of Trinidad, West 

 Indies." By E. J. Lechmere Guppy, Esq. 



After giving an account of the general geology of the island, and 

 noticing previous memoirs devoted to that geology, the Author de- 

 scribes in detail the characters of the Kaparima Beds, to which he 

 assigns an Eocene and Miocene age. He considers that the Nariva 

 Marls are not inferior to but above the Naparima Eocene Marls, and 

 are actually of Miocene date. 



Details are given of the composition and characters of the ' argi- 

 line," the foraminiferal marls occasionally containing gypsum, and 

 the diatomaceous and radiolarian deposits of Naparima. 



The Pointapier section is then described, and its Cretaceous beds 

 considered, reasons being given for inferring that there was no 

 break between the Cretaceous and Eocene rocks of the Parian area. 



Detailed lists of the foraminiferal faunas of the marls are given, 

 with notes. 



The Author observes that the Eocene molluscan fauna of Trinidad 

 shows no near alliances with other known faunas, thus differing 

 from the well-known Miocene fauna of Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba, Trin- 

 idad, and other localities. Only one mollusc is common to the 

 Eocene and Miocene of the West Indies. The shallow-watt r fora- 



