397 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



VOLCANOES. 



Few who attended the meetings of Section C. of the British 

 Association, Dublin, will readity forget the extremely lucid and 

 valuable account of the changes that have recenth' taken place 

 in the Soufriere in St. Vincent, given by Dr. Tempest Anderson, 

 of York. By the aid of several remarkable photographs, Dr. 

 Anderson was able to indicate the extraordinary amount of 

 denudation that had taken place there during the past five 

 years. The magnitude of this appeared to be almost equalled 

 by the way in which the vegetation had gained a footing on the 

 new plateaux of volcanic material. An admirably illustrated 

 report on the subject has been printed by the Royal Society, 

 in its Philosophical Transactions,* and ^^ith it is published 

 ' Petrographical Notes,' by Dr. J. S. Flett. 



VESUVIUS AND GUATEMALA. 



Equally interesting and instructive are two further reports 

 recently issued by Dr. Anderson. The first deals with the 

 \'olcanoes of Guatemala, and is published by the Royal Geogra- 

 phical Society ; and the second gives an account of ' The Erup- 

 tion of Vesuvius,' and is printed in the volume issued by the 

 International Geological Congress (Mexico). The value of 

 these reports is very great, whether viewed from the point of 

 view of geography, geology, or botany ; and we sincerely hope 

 that Dr. Anderson may long be spared to carry on his valuable 

 researches. 



MALACOLOGY veVSllS PAL.EOCONXHOLOGY. 



With the above title, Mr. B. B. Woodward recently gave a 

 presidential address to the Malacological Society, f In this he 

 referred to the state of affairs which he regretted to say existed 

 between the students of the recent and fossil forms of Mollusca. 

 ' Each goes too much his own way without taking account of 

 the work of his fellow, and at the same time complaining, and 

 often wiiYi justice, that the other pays no heed to his discoveries 

 or conclusions. Surely it is not asking too much of the morph- 

 ologist that, though apparently endowed with a plethora 

 of recent material to work on, he should, nevertheless, check 

 the results of his investigations as to the phylogenetic relation- 

 ships of the groups with which he may be dealing by the cor- 

 responding work of his palaeontological brethren so far as they 

 wiU serve him.' 



* Series A, VoL 208, 1909. pp. 273-332. 

 t Proc. Malac. Soc, Vol. VIII., Pt. 2, 1908. 



1908 November i. 



C 2 



