BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING AT NEWCASTLE. 391 



sliowed changing conditions during the period of their deposition, and 

 concluded with the remark that the facts appeared to show a change of 

 conditions while the beds were in course of formation. At first the condi- 

 tions were unquestionably marine, but, from some unknown cause, pro- 

 bably from a gradual alteration of level and an influx of freshwater, these 

 conditions became estuarine, and probably even entirely freshwater. 



The Weardale Iron Ores. By Mr. Charles Attwood. — In Weardale, 

 iron ores, occurring as they do under the two different forms of spathose 

 or sparry carbonate and of hydrated peroxides, have certainly been all at 

 first deposited as carbonates, and have passed into the state of oxides and 

 of hydrates by the joint effects of atmospheric and of aqueous action. 

 Examples of every stage of the transition present themselves in all direc- 

 tions, and there are also met with, from time to time, abundant proofs 

 that, whilst the carbonates deposited are more or less rapidly passing into 

 the hydrated condition, a fresh deposit of carbonates is continually going 

 on in the mines in cavernous interstices, and on the roofs and sides of an- 

 cient workings, very much in the same way as stalactites and stalagmites 

 are deposited. Upon one occasion he found protruding, for 5 or 6 inches, 

 from a block of pure and large-grained sparry carbonate of iron, a rod of 

 malleable iron, of about a quarter of an inch in diameter, of which the 

 other end was firmly embedded to about the same depth in the block, 

 which had just before been broken from a mass of it, which was incrust- 

 ing the walls and roof of an ancient drift, but which block must have been 

 formed within one or two centuries. The author then suggests the im- 

 portance, in geological considerations, of the solvent power of water con* 

 taining alkalis, and the resulting deposition of silica and siliceous minerals. 



Section of the Strata from Hownes Gill to Cross Fell. By 

 Mr. Sopwith. — At the last meeting of the British Association in this town 

 it was proposed that a section should be made from sea to sea, crossing 

 the coal- and lead-measures of Northumberland and Durham, the great 

 Pennine fault, the Red Sandstones of Cumberland, the Skiddaw group of 

 mountains, and the coalfields at Whitehaven. The late Mr. Buddie un- 

 dertook the portion from the German Ocean to Hownes Gill, including 

 the entire strata of the Durham coal-field ; but it was uncompleted at the 

 time of his death, and the section now exhibited was the only part which 

 was executed. It is upwards of 30 feet in length, and represents in great 

 detail the strata of more than twenty-eight miles of the lead-mining dis- 

 tricts. Mr. Sopwith especially mentioned his obligations to Mr. Joseph 

 Dickinson for the care and accuracy with which he made the several mea- 

 surements on which this section is based. 



On the Neanderthal Skull. By Professor W. King. — The author 

 gave his reasons for believing it to belong to the Clydian period and to be 

 specifically distinct from man. He contended that the Neanderthal man was 

 living in the terminal division of the glacial or Clydian period. In con- 

 cluding, he adverted to a question involved in the present subject, and on 

 which a preconceived prejudice is generally entertained. Agassiz, Latham, 

 and a few others, including Huxley, would have no hesitation in admitting 

 that the genus Homo has been represented by more than the one species now 

 living ; but there is unquestionably prevailing a deep-rooted conviction that 

 the psychical and speech endowments of Homo sapiens are generic, although 

 there is nothing to warrant such a belief, and much to oppose it. For his 

 part, he saw no reason to doubt that there have been species of the human 

 genus in existence unpossessed of those gifts which so eminently place the 

 existing races, but in different degrees, above the highest anthropoid apes. 

 Why may there not have been a Pliocene or a Clydian species, possessed 



