of Paris, and was announced by him to a meeting of the Academy just five 
minutes before a letter from M. Janssen to that learned body was read, con- 
taining an account of his investigations. 
The fact that the observations of the two savans do not exactly correspond 
in minor details is of little moment. The great thing is the discovery of the 
possibility of observing and investigating the composition of the sun and the 
prominences without the necessity of waiting for an eclipse. 
Mr. F. C. Ravis then read a Paper entitled Supplementary Notes on 
some of the late movements on the Somersetshire Coast." He said : — 
"About three years ago I read a paper before the Society on the move- 
ments of the coast of Somersetshire in geologic times, chiefly with reference 
to two raised beaches, one at Woodspring Hill and the other in BirnbeckCove, 
both in the neighbourhood of Weston-super-mare. I observed in this com- 
munication that the land in these localities had risen some twenty or thirty 
feet above the sea-level since the period began, during which the present 
marine fauna had been in existance, and I hinted at the probability that this 
movement would be found to have extended over a much more considerable 
range of coast than that included between these two £)oints. I propose now 
to bring before you a few particulars supplementary to that paper : the result 
of further research in the same direction. 
My first note Las reference to the relative ages of the mountain limestone, 
and the trap at Woodspring Hill. — That at least some of the beds of limestone 
which rest upon the trap were deposited before the injection of the latter is 
pretty evident, for some of the limestone is greatly altered by contact with 
the trap, and many of the limestone beds which appear from their position 
to be superior to the trap, though out of the line of any visible portion of it? 
are traversed in all directions by veins of the igneous matter. At the same 
time there can be I think as little doubt that the injection of the trap was 
prior to the movement that caused the inclination of the beds, for in general 
outline it appears to conform itself to that inclination, and the superincumbent 
strata though somewhat shattered do not seem to be thrown out of the normal 
dip of the entire group of rocks. Tn short the trap was injected probably 
during the deposition but before the elevation of the limestone. It is further 
evident that it was intruded under the water of a sea highly charged with 
carbonate of lime, from its being permeated by veins of that mineral. As it 
flowed over the surface of the sea-bottom it must have included within its 
surface, quantities of the water into which it was discharged from below, and 
on the cooling of the mass the carbonate of lime would crystalize in veins 
ramifying through the intruded rock. 
Encroachment oj the sea. — Notwithstanding the evidences of upheaval of 
