Reports op Societies. 



77 



always, perhaps not even generally, that the ovule is fertilised by pollen 

 from its own anthers, and that as a rule it is found that cross-fertilisation 

 produces finer plants in the next generation than seK-fertilisation, in 

 illustration of which he quoted a number of instances from Mr. Alfred 

 W. Bennett's lecture at Manchester. — J. W. W. Brook, Hon. Sec. 



GooLB Scientific Society. — A meeting of this Society was held at 

 the Board Schools, Goole, on Wednesday, November 8th, when a paper 

 was read by Dr. Parsons, giving a brief account of the general arrange- 

 ment of the British strata, and a summary of the principal geological 

 observations made by the Society and its members during the past 

 season. The lecture was illustrated by diagrams, and by a number of 

 fossils exhibited by Mr. J. T. Atkinson, president of the Selby 

 Naturalists' Society, Messrs. Pease and Bunker, and Dr. Parsons. A 

 short discussion followed, in which Messrs. J. Tindall (of Huddersfield), 

 Savage, and others took part. The president, Mr. Hunter, announced 

 that he had received from the Plymouth Institution two of that 

 Institution's annual volumes of transactions, as a donation to the 

 Society's library. — H. Franklin Parsons, Sec. 



Heckmondwike Naturalists' Society. — Monthly meeting, November 

 11th, Dr. Oldfield, president, in the chair. — The principal part of the 

 evening was spent in discussing the resolutions passed at the annual 

 meeting of the West Riding Consolidated Naturalists' Society, and on 

 being put to the meeting it was decided to elect a delegate to represent 

 the society on the Council. — J. Dearden, Hon. Sec. 



The Leeds Naturalists' Club and Scientific Association. — 230th 

 meeting, October 24th, Mr. Samuel Jefferson, F.C.S., president, in the 

 chair. — Mr. Edward Atkinson, F.L.S., F.Z.S., read a paper on ''The 

 Fauna and Flora of Lebanon and Lower Syria, in connection with their 

 climatal conditions." He pointed out the great influence exercised by 

 the physical configuration of the country upon its fauna and flora. 

 Broadly speaking, the country was composed of two nearly parallel 

 ranges of mountains running from north to south — Lebanon and Anti- 

 Lebanon — separated by a vast fissure or cleft, known as the valley of the 

 Jordan, the deepest depression in the world — the surface of the Dead Sea 

 being 1292 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. The great 

 diflerence in climate produced thereby re-acted on the fauna and flora, 

 which, being Palsearctic in its afiinities with some admixture of Ethiopian 

 and Oriental forms, was tropical on the coast and in the Jordan valley, 

 temperate in the hill country of Palestine, and in one or two places in the 

 mountains of a boreal or alpine type. The existence of the latter showed 

 in conjunction with the existence of undoubted ice-markings, that the 

 country had once partaken of the influence of a glacial period. A large 

 amount of detailed information was given by Mr. Atkinson, whose 

 former residence at Jerusalem entitles him to speak on the subject. 



