39 
Ordinary Meeting, November 29th, 1870. 
R. Angus Smith, Ph.D., F.R.S., Vice-President, in the Chair. 
Sir Eustace Fitzmaurice Piers, Bart., and Edward John 
Syson, M.D., Medical Officer of Health for Salford, were 
elected Ordinary Members of the Society. 
Mr. R. D. Darbishire, F.G.S., exhibited a series of palaeo- 
lithic instruments from the valley of the Little Ouse, and 
explained (after Mr. J. W. Flower, Q. J. Geolog. Soc. xxv. 
419) the general features of the district and the deposit 
of the beds and the implements. 
Mr. W. Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S., indicated the age of these 
deposits as related to the period of the existence of Elephas 
primigenius in the district of the south east of England 
and the adjoining portions of the bed of the German ocean 
and the north west portions of France. 
“ The Tails of Comets, the Solar Corona, and the Aurora 
considered as Electric Phenomena,” by Professor Osborne 
Reynolds, M.A. 
Although the tails of comets are usually assumed to be 
material appendages which accompany these bodies in their 
flight through the heavens — and the appearance they present 
certainly warrants such an assumption — yet this is not the 
only way in which these tails may be accounted for. They 
may be simply an effect produced by the comet on the 
material through which it is passing; an effect analogous 
to that which we sometimes see produced by a very small 
insect on the surface of still water. We see a dark spot, 
and on looking closer we find a small fly or moth flapping 
Pboobbdin&s— ■ Lit. & Phii. Soc. — Vol. X. — No. 5. — Session 1870-71. 
