THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



timber famine, that Swedish and Russian forests were becoming 

 exhausted, and that the Forest Department of the United States asserts 

 that their supply could not last more than 100 years unless steps are 

 taken to meet the difficulty boldly. 



Sir William Flower, of the British Museum, had a grand audience in 

 the Sheldonian Theatre to listen to his exposition of the present 

 position of anthropological science. But perhaps the most interesting 

 methods for enlightening now adopted by the Association are the 

 discussions held between two somewhat antagonistic sections. For 

 instance, I recollect in recent years those on coral islands and the age 

 of coral rocks, and in the year before a very interesting discussion 

 between the botanists and zoologists as to whether some low forms of 

 life (euglena, volvox globator, &c.) were plants or animals. Well, we 

 have had two or three such discussions. I was able to attend the one 

 between sections C and E, where the geologists on the one hand, and 

 the anthropologists on the other, argued the always interesting topic of 

 " The Antiquity of Man." Section E fought bravely for the human 

 making and fashioning of the various arrow-heads, hammers, and tools 

 of flint which have been found under the gravels left at the glacial 

 epoch, and had the support of such eminent authorities as Professor 

 Boyd Dawkins and Sir John Evans, while the geologists supplied the 

 destructive . criticism to many of the theories. 



One thing comes out more clearly year by year — that it is becoming 

 more and more unscientific to dogmatise on slight bases of fact ; the 

 geologists now, of all persons, crying out for full proof of the facts and 

 theories enunciated. 



NOTES. 



DIPTERA. 



Two New British Diptera. — On the 20th July last, whilst collecting 

 in the New Forest, near Lyndhurst, I took a single specimen of 

 Mallota eristaloides. I did not at the time know what a prize I had 

 found ; but thought it was an Eristalis or Criorrhina. The insect, how- 

 ever, was new to me, so I kept a good look out for more, but without 

 success, the weather being unfavourable for diptera during the few 

 remaining days of my stay. I recently took the specimen, with various 

 other diptera, to the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, for 

 identification, and it at once- attracted the attention of Mr. Austin, who 

 kindly named it for me. About the middle of May I also took in the 

 same locality a Pipunculida, about which Mr. Austin was doubtful at 



