96 
Correspondence — Mr. Scarles V. Wood,jun. 
seams. and the whole of the Hampshire Eocene is connected with 
the delta of a great river which persisted throughout the accumula- 
tion of the various beds, which aggregate to upwards of 200 feet in 
thickness. This river evidently flowed from the west, through a 
district of which the low ground had a tropical climate ; but like 
some tropical rivers of the present day, such as the Brahmaputra, 
the Megna, the Ganges, etc., it was probably fed by tributaries 
flowing from a mountain region supporting zones of Vegetation of 
all kinds from the tropical to the Arctic, if during the Eocene period 
Vegetation such as the present Arctic had come into existence, of 
which we have as yet no evidence. Torrential floods may have 
swept the remains of Vegetation from the temperate zones of this 
region into tributaries that conveyed it into the main river before it 
was decayed or water-logged, wliere it became intermingled with 
the remains of Vegetation which grew in the tropical low ground 
skirting the main stream, so that both sank together into the same 
mud and silt. 
Assuming, therefore, that the determinations of these extra-tropical 
forms of Vegetation are well founded, we have in the case in 
question no difficulty in discovering those elevated regions from 
which, in the way snggested, such forms may have come, for Mr. 
Judd, in describing (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xxx. p. 220) the * 
ancient volcano of Mull, which lies about 400 miles N.N.W. of 
Hampshire, has shown that it was in full activity during the 
Eocene and Miocene periods, and possessed a dimension much 
exceeding that of Etna at the present day ; and that, though from 
denudation and collapses, the greatest elevation to which any of its 
remnants now reaeh is only 3172 feet, yet that in Eocene and 
Miocene times its elevation must in all probability have greatly 
exceeded that of Etna, which is nearly 11,000 feet. 
Nearer, however, than this, and between 100 and 200 miles only 
KW. from Hampshire, we have in Wales a mountain region, the 
summits and upper zones of which (if we take into consideration the 
considerable depression which the Western side of the British Isles 
must have undergone coincidently with the upheaval of the Eocene 
sea-bed in the south-east of them, and make some allowance for the 
action of subaerial denudation) would have had an elevation suffi- 
cient. to support a temperate and extra-tropical Vegetation during 
the Eocene period synchronously with the growth of tropical forms 
in the low ground, and have furnished to the Sediment of the 
principal river the remains of various forms of Vegetation, which, 
according to the elevation of their source, departed more or less from 
those of tropical character which clothed the banks of the streams 
flowing through that low ground. Searles V. Wood, jun. 
Medals and Funds to be Awarded by the Council of the 
Geological Society, February 16th. — Four Medals will be 
awarded at the ensuing Anniversary Meeting of the Geological 
Society: the “Wollaston” (Gold Medal), the “Lyell,” the “ Mur- 
chison,” and the “Bigsby” Bronze Medals; and £116 18s. Id. 
in funds. 
