BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 



453 



ture in the room, transported a very heavy piano from one side of it to the 

 other, and then departed, taking with them most of the articles of fnrnitnre of 

 a light character. 



Facts of this kind forcibly show how great the encroachments of the sea 

 must have been within a comparatively short time. Men do not usually build 

 houses in situations thus exposed; the encroachment of the sea has rendered 

 their sites perilous. And though it is happily true that such storms are not of 

 very frequent occurrence, nevertheless many of us can remember so many of 

 them that we cannot but look for them in the future ; that is to say, we recog- 

 nise them as part of the system of nature, not necessarily destructive on every 

 coast, but by no means of very limited range, and certainly an important part 

 of the machinery now modifying the crust of the earth. 



ON THE EXCESS OF WATER IN THE REGION OF THE EARTH 

 ABOUT NEW ZEALAND ; ITS CAUSES AND ITS EFFECTS. 



By James Yates, M.A., F.R.S. and G.S. 

 (Member of the Geological Society of Manchester.) 



The author, adopting from Professor Guyot (" Earth and Man," translated 

 by Mr. Clarke, of Battersea) the terms " land-hemisphere" and " water-hemi- 

 sphere" to distinguish the portion of the earth which includes " the four quar- 

 ters of the globe" from that portion which consists mainly of water, observed 

 that instead of the old distinction between the northern and southern hemi- 

 spheres, the cultivators of physical geography have now made a much more 

 accurate statement of the facts by assuming a point in the South Pacific Ocean, 

 not far from New Zealand, as a centre, around which the entire waters of the 

 globe appear to be collected. He referred to the Physical Atlas of Berghaus, 

 published in Berlin, as containing the most accurate representation of this view 

 of the subject, and thought that this has the highest authority, because, in 

 constructing it Berghaus was assisted and directed by two of the most eminent 

 of his fellow-citizens in this department of science, Alexander von Humboldt 

 and Professor Karl Hitter. The author mentioned that English geographers 

 have prepared maps which give the same general -view, but take London and 

 the antipodes of London as the two centres, in order to accommodate English 

 conceptions. He exhibited the beautiful Training-school Atlas, just published 

 by the Messrs. Philip, of London and Liverpool, as containing the largest and 

 best examples of representation. It appeared necessary, however, instead of 

 regarding the waters as ramified in every possible way by their distribution 

 into oceans, seas, bays, and straits, to collect them in imagination into one ; 

 hence, preserving Berghaus' centre, which is situated in the meridian of a 

 hundred and seventy degrees east longitude from Paris, and in about four hun- 

 dred and thirty south latitude, the author presented on a diagram " an Ideal 

 Section of the Earth in the Meridian of New Zealand." Two points in the 

 circumference of this section, named A and B, represented the division between 

 the collected land and the collected water, and the author produced statements 

 from Professor Bigaud of Oxford, Professor Link of Berlin, Alexander von 

 Humboldt, and Sir" John Herschell, all tending to show that the entire amount 

 of land on the surface of the globe being taken as a hundred, the entire amount 

 of water will be two hundred and eighty-nine, or nearly so. He took the exact 

 number, two hundred and eighty-nine, because it is the square of seventeen, 

 one hundred being the square of ten. He thought that by the adoption of 

 these numbers, the points A, B in the diagram might be exactly fixed, and that 

 the chord joining them would divide the land (in the section) from the water 



