66 



Anniversary Meeting. 



[Nov. 30, 



A somewhat novel and extremely useful employment has been 

 given to part of the fund by deciding to defray the expenses of 

 adequately-skilled persons who have undertaken to visit distant coun- 

 tries for the purpose of investigating certain interesting biological 

 questions on the spot, and of procuring and transmitting to observers 

 at home, specimens prepared and preserved by those refined modern 

 methods which can be satisfactorily carried out only by persons who 

 are well versed in the practice of such methods. 



Mr. Adam Sedgwick has thus been enabled to proceed to the Cape 

 of Good Hope for the purpose of completing our knowledge of the 

 singular genus Peripatus, so well studied by Professor Moseley and 

 afterwards by our lamented Fellow, Balfour ; and Mr. Caldwell, 

 similarly aided, is now in Australia, devoting himself to the elucida- 

 tion of the embryology of the marsupial quadrupeds of that region, a 

 subject of which, at present, we know little more that was made 

 known in the Transactions of this Society half a century ago by 

 Professor Owen. 



It certainly was high time that British science should deal with a 

 problem of the profoundest zoological interest, the materials for the 

 solution of which abound in, and are at the same time almost con- 

 fined to, those territories of the j Greater Britain, which lie on the other 

 side of the globe. 



Many years ago, the late Mr. Leonard Horner communicated to the 

 Society the results of a series of borings which he had caused to be 

 made in the upper part of the delta of the Nile, with a view of 

 ascertaining the antiquity of the civilisation of Egypt. Since that 

 time, Figari Bey, an Italian geologist in the service of the Egyptian 

 Government, made and published the results of a large series of 

 borings effected in different parts of the delta, but his work is hardly 

 on a level with the requirements of modern science. 



It has been thought advisable, therefore, to take advantage of the 

 presence of our troops in Egypt, in order to carry out a series of 

 borings across the niddle of the delta, in the full expectation that 

 such borings, if made with proper care and carried down to the solid 

 rock, will afford information of the most important character, and 

 will throw a new light upon the natural and civil history of this 

 unique country. I am glad to say that the representations which the 

 President and Council made to the War Office on this subject were 

 most favourably received, and that instructions were at once sent to 

 the officer commanding the Engineers to undertake the operations 

 which they recommended. I trust that, before long, information 

 will reach us which will be of no less interest to the archaeologist than 

 to the geologist. 



While I am speaking of Egypt, I may, perhaps, be permitted 



