740 Meeting of the British Association. [Oct., 



adopted by the late Mr. Taylor, and that the cubical contents are 

 precisely the measure of four English quarters of wheat. Professor 

 Smyth seems to have found great difficulty in ensuring the continuous 

 combustion of the magnesium wire, due partly to the deficient supply 

 of oxygen in the interior of the Pyramid, for the ventilating passages 

 opened by Colonel Howard Vyse in 1837 were found to have been 

 completely stopped up with sand and stones by the Arabs ; and 

 further, the cloud of magnesium smoke required so long a time to 

 deposit, that it was found impossible to make more than one experi- 

 ment in the space of twenty-four hours. A very remarkable photo- 

 graphic effect resulted from the trial as an illuminating agent of a 

 pyrotechnic mixture composed of magnesium filings and mealed 

 gunpowder; and the before-mentioned views of the interior were 

 supplemented by some excellent photographic representations of the 

 principal external features of the Great Pyramid. 



J. S. 



Geology. (Section C.) 



The business of this Section was opened by the address of the Presi- 

 dent, Sir E. I. Murchison. He specially enlarged on the discovery 

 of organic remains in rocks of higher antiquity than those in which 

 they were known to occur at the time of the last meeting at Birming- 

 ham, and yet he argued that the discoveries, instead of interfering 

 with, sustain the truth of that doctrine that the lowest animals alone 

 occur in the earliest zone of life, and that this beginning was followed 

 through long periods by creations of higher and higher animals 

 successively. As a striking example of the existence of a well-marked 

 period beyond which no trace of a great group of animals has ever 

 been found, he appealed to the existence of the remains of fish in the 

 Upper Silurian rocks, and their entire absence in all of higher 

 antiquity ; years of careful investigation having made the negative 

 evidence very strong, and leading us to conclude that there was a 

 beginning as well as a progress of creation. Another point specially 

 brought before the Section was the inadequacy of the modern intensity 

 of existing causes to produce some of the phenomena of excavation 

 and denudation, the author arguing that we cannot apply to flat regions, 

 in which water has no abrading power, the same influence which it 

 exerts in mountainous countries ; and that we are compelled to admit 

 that the convulsive dislocations of former periods produced many of 

 those gorges in which our present streams flow. 



The Association may well congratulate itself this year on the 

 satisfactory results of explorations undertaken at its request, and aided 

 by grants from its funds. None of them excited more general interest 

 than the report of the committee on the explorations of Kent's Hole, 

 Torquay, carried on under the superintendence of Mr. Pengelly and 

 Mr. Vivian. Much still remains to be done, and no doubt will be 

 accomplished by means of the additional grant made at this meeting. 

 However, so far the results are of the greatest interest and eminently 

 satisfactory. The inquiry has been conducted with the utmost care ; 



