i88o.] 
( 667 ) 
NOTES. 
The Swansea meeting of the British Association, from whatever 
causes, has been one of the least numerously attended of these 
annual gatherings since many years. A distinguished American 
scientist informed us that he had had the pleasure of reading a 
paper before the Chemical Secftion to an audience of eight per- 
sons ! The Inaugural Address of the President, Dr. A. C. 
Ramsay, F.R.S., was naturally devoted to geology. He upheld 
the multiplicity of glacial epochs, with the inferences necessarily 
following, and gave in his decided adhesion to the do&rine of 
Uniformity, as will appear from the conclusion of his Address 
“ If the nebular hypothesis of astronomers be true (and I know 
of no reason why it should be doubted), the earth was at one 
time in a purely gaseous state, and afterwards in a fluid condi 
tion, attended by intense heat. By-and-bye consolidation, due 
to partial cooling, took place on the surface, and as radiation of 
heat went on the outer shell thickened. Radiation still going 
on, the interior fluid matter decreased in bulk, and, by force of 
gravitation, the outer shell being drawn towards the interior, 
gave way, and, in parts, got crinkled up, and this, according to 
cosmogonists, was the origin of the earliest mountain-chains. 
I make no objection to the hypothesis, which, to say the least, 
seems to be the best that can be offered, and looks highly pro- 
bable. But, assuming that it is true, these hypothetical events 
took place so long before authentic geological history began, as 
written in the rocks, that the earliest of the physical events to 
which I have drawn your attention in this address was, to all 
human apprehension of time, so enormously removed from these 
early assumed cosmical phenomena that they appear to me to 
have been of comparatively quite modern occurrence, and to in- 
dicate that from the Laurentian epoch down to the present day, 
all the physical events in the history of the earth have varied 
neither in kind nor in intensity from those of which we now 
have experience. Perhaps many of our British geologists hold 
similar opinions, but, if it be so, it may not be altogether useless 
to have considered the various subjects separately on which I 
depend to prove the point I had in view.” 
Prof. F. M. Balfour, as President of the Anatomical and Phy- 
siological Department of the Biological Sedtion, took for the 
subject of his opening address the recent progress in Embry- 
ology. 
Mr. F. Galton, during his discourse on “Mental Imagery,” 
exhibited the photograph of a “generalised ” Welsh Dissenting 
