1876 .] Geology . 283 
for his investigations upon the Tertiary beds of Italy and Sicily. The 
Murchison Medal was handed to Prof. Ramsay, for transmission to Mr. A. R. 
C. Selwyn, F.R.S., F.G.S., in recognition of his services to Silurian geology ; 
the balance of the Murchison Geological Fund being also handed to Prof. 
Ramsay, for transmission to Mr. James Croll, in recognition of his valuable 
past labours, and in the hope that his enquiries would be still further prose- 
cuted. The first Lyell Medal and the entire proceeds of the Fund were pre- 
sented to Prof. Morris. The President prefaced his Anniversary Address by 
some obituary notices of Fellows and Foreign Members deceased during the 
past year, including Sir Charles Lyell, Mr. Poulett Scrope, Sir Wm. Logan, 
M. G. P. Deshayes, Mr. W. J. Henwood, Mr. W. Sanders, Archdeacon Hony, 
Sir Edward Ryan, and others. 
In the “ Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society,” published in February 
last, is a paper by Mr. Thomas Belt, in which he describes the drift of Devon 
and Cornwall, and correlates it with that of the South-east of England. He 
divides the beds into two series, namely, Upland and Lowland deposits, and 
discusses their relation and origin. He shows that the gravels and transported 
boulders require the presence of water up to the highest level at which they 
are found, or about 1200 feet above the sea. He considers that this water was 
that of a great lake, formed by the bed of the Atlantic Ocean being filled with 
ice down to about lat. 39° on the American side and at 49 0 on the European 
side. This ice blocked up the English Channel, and with it all the drainage 
of Northern Europe, which was pounded back, and formed a great lake over 
which icebergs floated. The breaking away of the icy barrier caused the 
sudden and tumultuous discharge of the great lake, and the outspread of the 
Lowland gravels over the lower grounds. The author cites the known facts 
respecting the glaciation of Iceland, the Shetland Isles, the Hebrides, the 
North of Scotland, and the West of Ireland, as evidence in favour of his 
theory that ice did flow down the bed of the Atlantic from the direction of 
Greenland. He also argues that palaeolithic man, the mammoth, and other 
large mammals, lived before the glaciation of the country, and not afterwards. 
They occupied, he thinks, the banks of a large river and its tributaries that 
flowed to the south-west, through what are now the Straits of Dover, before 
the advance of the Great Atlantic glacier. The theory of the pre-glacial age 
of palaeolithic man, and also that of the bed of the Atlantic, having been 
occupied by ice, were brought forward by the author, in his paper on “ Niagara,” 
published in this Journal, in April, 1875. 
Mr. J. Clifton Ward has recently communicated to the Geological Society the 
results of his investigation of the points of theoretic importance connected with 
the Granitic, Granitoid, and Associated Metamorphic Rocks of the Lake District. 
The paper is divided into five parts, the first four relating to the origin of the 
Plutonic rocks of the district, and the degree of alteration to which the sur- 
rounding rocks have been subjected. In Part I. the evidence of the liquid- 
cavities in the quartz of the granitic and granitoid rocks was considered, the 
general conclusion being that the granites, syenitic granites, and quartz felsites 
were all consolidated at very considerable depths, under great pressure, this 
pressure being much greater than could be due to the thickness of overlying 
rocks, and therefore exerted mainly from below and laterally, and resulting in 
the work of upheaval and contortion of the overlying strata. The period at 
which the principal formation of these granitic and granitoid rocks took place 
was considered to be that of the Old Red ; and the work of elevation, conse- 
quent on the great surplus of upward and lateral pressure, was accompanied 
by an enormous denudation of rocks at the surface during the greater part of 
Old Red times. In the subsequent divisions of this memoir the mode of 
origin of these various masses was discussed. In Part II. the granites of 
Eskdale and Shap were dealt with, and it was shown to be at least probable, 
from evidence gathered in the field, and by microscopic and chemical examina- 
tion, that these granites had been formed by the extreme metamorphism of 
rocks of the volcanic series, while at the same time the partially intrusive 
character of the Shap granite was suggested by various considerations- 
