BETTISH ASSOCIATION MEETING AT NEWCASTLE. 
391 
showed changing conditions during the period of their deposition, and 
concluded with the remark that the facts ap'peared 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 fresliwater, these 
conditions became estuarine, and probably even entirely freshwater. 
The Weardale Iron Ores. By Mr. Charles Attwood. — In Weardale, 
iron ores, occurring as thej' 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 arc 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. Tlie 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 Hov/nes 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 !Xorthumberland and Durham, the great 
Pennine fault, the Red Sandstones of Cumberland, the Skiddaw group of 
mountains, and the coalfields at Whitehaven. Tlie late Mr. Buddie un- 
dertook the portion from the German Ocean to Hownea 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. Sopuith 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 ^N^eanderthal 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 unciuestionably prevailing a deep-rooted conviction that 
the psychical and speech endowments of JIo7?io sajoiens 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, posse? sed 
