366 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
WARWICKSHIRE NATURALISTS’ FIELD CLUB. 
The winter meeting of the Warwickshire Naturalists’ Field Club was held 
at the Museum, Warwick, on Thursday, the 13th instant. This was a joint 
meeting of the Malvern Club with the Warwickshire, and was tolerably well 
a ttended, though not so numerously as the occasion merited. 
In the absence of the president, the Rev. P. B. Brodie, F.G.S., the Vice- 
president, took the chair. He opened the business of the day by welcoming 
the members of the Malvern Club, and then reviewed briefly the proceeding ; 
of the Warwickshire Field Club during the past year. He then called upon 
the Rev. St. John Parry, president of Leamington College, to describe a por- 
tion of an antler of the Red-deer, which had been found in certain beds of 
clay, supposed to be London clay, near Gosport. It exhibited marks of a 
knife or halbert; and a short discussion followed as to the true nature of the 
deposit in which it occurred ; and the geologists present were unanimously 
of opinion that the clay would be found rather to belong to a drift than so 
old a formation as an eocene tertia ry stratum. The Vice-president called upon 
t he Rev. W. Symonds, president of the Malvern Field Club, to deliver his 
address on geological facts and theories. He commenced by giving an astro- 
nomical view of the history of the earth, combated the idea of an original 
universal molten condition of our planet, alluding to the early and first traces of 
life in the lowest or Cambrian rocks ; and gave a brief review of Darwin’s theory 
of the origin of species by natural selection, to which he expressed himself 
decidedly opposed, and so passed on to other interesting geological facts and 
theories. 
The Rev. P. B. Brodie then gave a lecture “ On the succession of 
life on the ancient earth.” It occupied an hour and a half, and it is impos- 
sible, in a brief sketch, to enter into all the interesting subjects of which it 
treated. It was an extempore discourse largely illustrated by numerous 
drawings, diagrams, &c., which fully illustrated the topics discussed. The 
lecturer pointed out the influence of climate on land, and depth in the ocean, 
on the distribution of life. All the great types of life, he said, began simulta- 
neously and independently. The life of the Palaeozoic rocks was shown to be 
entirely marine, which was fullest in the Wenlock and Ludlow groups. Fishes 
and land plants first appear in the uppermost Ludlow zone. Ere the close of 
this epoch many forms of mollusks disappear, and are succeeded by other 
new and representative forms, to which ample allusion was made, in the suc- 
ceeding formations up to the newest tertiary. The structure of the singular 
Placoid and Ganoid fish was pointed out, especially those of the old red sand- 
stone, also of the Cycloid and Ctenoid orders, commencing with the chalk. 
The thirteen orders of reptiles, five of which are both recent and fossil, were 
largely dwelt upon and traced upwards from their first appearance in the 
Carboniferous series to their gradual extinction upwards. The structure and 
nature of the Salamander, like Labyrinthodon, was especially referred to, as 
the Warwick Museum contains the finest collection of the remains of this 
extinct reptile in the kingdom ; and a fine suite of footsteps was exhibited to 
the meeting. The rev. lecturer thus traced the gradual development of life, 
from the lowest strata upwards, referring to the successive appearance of 
insects, myriapoda, reptiles, birds (some extinct), and, lastly, of mammals ; 
