viewing the arguments on both sides as to whether these 
Patchway beds belonged to the upper carboniferous lime- 
stone, or the Permian, and stated, as his conclusion, that 
though he should be very glad to make them Permian, he 
was convinced, from the fish remains especially, that they 
were carboniferous. 
A discussion took place, in the course of which Mr, 
Stoddart suggested that this remarkable collection of fossils 
of different periods into one bed might have resulted from 
the denudation, or wearing down by the agency of water, of 
older beds, and thus organisms of different geological ages 
might have been washed together and cemented. It was 
remarked that chonetes were a very variable fossil, and that 
the real point at issue was the identification of the chono- 
donts, on which Mr. Moore said he was perfectly satisfied. 
Mr. Edward Collens, assistant in the Mining School 
Laboratory, then made a communication upon some improve- 
ments in Dr. Mohr's burette. The burette was an instru- 
ment increasingly used in analytical chemistry for delivering 
measured quantities of solutions of known strength for 
testing purposes, as, for example, the determination of the 
amount of organic matter in air or water, by a solution of 
permanganate of potash. Briefly describing Gay Lussac's 
and the English forms of burette, the author exhibited Dr. 
Mohr's, which consisted of a graduated tube, open at each 
end, to the narrow end of which was attached a piece 
of caoutchouc tubing, which was closed by a spring 
clamp, termed a pinch-cock. By pressing this, the flow 
of the test liquid was regulated. It was found, how- 
ever, that many solutions acted chemically on the india- 
rubber tubing, and it occurred to Mr. Collens that 
the pinchcock might be made to act upon the ingress of air 
as well as the egress of fluid, and he therefore transferred 
the elastic tube and pinchcock to the top of the burette 
(bringing the cock itself to nearly its old position, for con- 
venience in working, by glass tubing), and then found that 
no liquid dropped from the lower and now freely open end 
of the burette, until the pinchcock was opened to let air in at 
the top, and the test liquid, passing out through glass onl}', 
was delivered quite pure. The minor advantages of the 
arrangement were immunity from dust and from contact 
with air, and hence there was no loss by evaporation of the 
test liquid. 
Mr. Stoddart and Mr. W. L. Carpenter, as practical 
chemists, both thought the improvement highly ingenious. 
Mr. Carpenter considered it theoretically perfect if one 
practical difficulty, viz., the Ieaka£;e of air, could be over- 
come ; and he then explained the French metrical system of 
weights and measures in use by all chemists, which it had 
often been proposed to introduce into England, with modi- 
fications, in place of the numerous absurd scales in use at 
present. 
The President then called the attention of the meeting 
to some remarkably fine crystals of quartz exhibited by a 
member, and briefly explained their mode of formation (a 
six-sided pyramid on the top of a six-sided prism), as well 
as the cause of the striation on their surface; after which 
the meeting separated. 
WM. LANT CARPENTER, 
Honorary Reporting Secretary. 
