(1) The Oxford clay, the bed-rock of the district, is furrowed at the surface into wavy hollows, irregularly filled with earth containing quartz, lydian-stone, and quartzite pebbles, and bunches of unstratified gravel from the Thames basin. It is certainly a northern drift, in the writer's opinion a glacial drift. (2) At Wolvercote this drift is invaded, and for a certain distance removed by river action, which has hollowed out the clay to a depth of 17 feet, and subsequently filled up the hollow with horizontal layers of gravel, mud, and sand. (3) The junction where the river eats into the drift is clearly visible. The bank of drift, underworn by the water, overhangs the horizontal layer. (4) The lowest bed of the riverine deposits differs from the others: it consists of 2 feet of gravel and sand, in lenticular, shorn, and current-bedded layers, showing by the size of the pebbles a somewhat rapid current. At the very base, half embedded in the clay, many mammalian bones have been found, and six Palæolithic implements. The implements represent well-known types of the rivervalley period, and the mammoth is conspicuous among the animal remains, though Equus, Cervus elaphus, and Bison priscus are also present. Layers of sand are intercalated with the gravel, from which eleven species of shells have been identified. They are all recent and, generally speaking, stunted in size. (5) Above the gravel are two inches of sandy peat, marking a land surface of some duration. Nine plants were identified by Mr. Clement Reid, which are all species still to be found in the immediate neighbourhood. (6) For 14 feet sand and mud foliow in successive layers. In these no fossil has been found. They indicate quiet river action and an increase of pluvial conditions. (7) Towards the surface they are traversed by an irregular line of trail, which marks apparently the movement of a sludgy mass along the surface, punching it downwards by its weight. (8) The surface level at Wolvercote is 240 feet above Ordnance datum. The adjacent river surface is 195 feet. The gravel at Somerton and Oxford is about 218 feet. Thus between the two gravels there is a distance of 22 feet. At the present rate of erosion many thousands of years would be necessary to remove 22 feet from the general surface; but the fact that the remains of man and of animals are the same in both gravels proves that they belong to a similar age, though the gravel at Wolvercote is somewhat older than the other. We must therefore consider that the denuding agents-rain and frost-were more active at that period than they are at the present day. 5. On Prehistoric Man in the Old Alluvium of the Sabarmati River in Gujarat, Western India. By R. BRUCE FOOTE, F.G.S. Two finds of chipped (Paleolithic) implements were made in a bed of shingle occupying a definite horizon in the lower part of the old alluvium of the Sabarmati in latitudes 23° 25′ and 23° 40' N. (about 330 miles north of Bombay). The implements were found at a depth of about 70 feet below the surface of the alluvium, which is here over 100 feet thick. The alluvium is overlaid by löss and wind-blown loam, which varies from 80 to 150 feet in thickness. The river has cut itself a bed varying from 100 to 200 feet in depth in these deposits, showing that a great interval of time must have elapsed since the deposition of the old alluvium in which the implements are embedded. On the surface of the löss, and in many cases on the summits of the blown-loam hills, Neolithic remains in the form of flint flakes and cores of the Jabalpur type were found together with fragments of archaic pottery. 6. On the Shape of the Banks of Small Channels in Tidal Estuaries. By Professor H. HENNESSY, F.R.S. Many years since my attention was attracted by the peculiar shape of the soft mud banks bordering the channels through which water drains off the beds of tidal estuaries. These banks, instead of presenting sloping planes or concave surfaces, are always convex when the matter of which they are formed is soft and yielding. A section of such a pair of banks would present an approximation to a cusp in the middle portion. This peculiar outline is manifestly due to the action of water on the yielding matter. A few years since I found a result which may assist in exploring this phenomenon. The velocity of water in a channel is well known to depend on the ratio of the area of the cross-section to its perimeter. This ratio is variable in all known channels of water flowing through rigid materials such as canals and rivers. On investigating the form of section corresponding to a constant ratio of the quantities referred to, I found that it would be represented by a pair of catenaries with their ends meeting so as to form a cusp like that in the estuary channels.1 The result would be that, with every depth of water in such a channel, the flow would have nearly the same velocity. 7. Report of the Committee on Earth Tremors.-See Reports, p. 145. 8. Interim Report of the Committee on the Investigation of a Coral Reef. 9. Report of the Committee on Underground Waters.-See Reports, p. 283. 10. Report of the Committee on the Marine Zoology of the Irish Sea. See Reports, p. 318. 11. On a Keuper Sandstone cemented by Barium Sulphate from the Peakstones Rock, Alton, Staffordshire. By W. W. WATTS, M.A., F.G.S. Professor F. Clowes has described a sandstone from the Himlack Stone, near Nottingham, in which the grains are cemented with crystalline barytes, the amount of this material varying from 28 to 50 per cent. in different specimens. This rock occurs at the base of the Keuper Sandstone of that locality. A somewhat similar rock, occurring at about the same horizon, is described by Mr. A. Strahan,3 from Beeston Castle in Cheshire, and the same author refers to the frequent occurrence of barytes in the Keuper breccias. Bearing these facts in mind, the writer visited a curious isolated stack of rock, called the Peakstones Rock,' near the village of Alton in Staffordshire, which is figured in Professor Hull's memoir on The Triassic and Permian Rocks of the Midland Counties of England.' This stack is made of the lower beds of Keuper Sandstone, but its outer portion has lost whatever cement it may once have contained. It is, however, situated at the end of a spur which projects into a valley, and exposes a good deal of bare rock. This rock contains what at first look like several veins of barytes two or three inches thick, striking along the spur and straight through the place occupied by the Peakstones Rock. On examination of Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. xliv. p. 108. 2 Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1885, p. 1038; 1889, p. 594; 1893, p. 732; and Proc. Roy. Soc., vol. xlvi. pp. 363–369. 3 Mem. Geol. Survey. Exp. Quarter Sheet, 80, S.W., p. 7. specimens the veins are seen to be planes along which the sandstone is cemented by barytes. The specific gravity of the rock is 309, and, as the grains are chiefly subangular fragments of quartz and felspar, it must contain about 28 per cent. of barytes. This almost insoluble cement has undoubtedly given rise to the spur above alluded to, and almost as certainly has caused the survival of the Peakstones Rock, which now, however, is so much exposed to the weather on all sides, and both to mechanical and chemical disintegration, that if any cement is still left it can only be in the inner part of the mass which cannot be reached by ordinary means. Another specimen from West of Kent Green, near Congleton,' containing barytes, and with a structure very like that described by Mr. Strahan, was also referred to. The paper was illustrated by a set of photographs which the author owed to the kindness of Mr. A. A. Armstrong and Mr. P. Simpson. 12. Report of the Committee on the Volcanic Phenomena of Vesuvius. See Reports, p. 315. SECTION D.-BIOLOGY. PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.-Professor I. BAYLEY BALFOUR, THURSDAY, AUGUST 9. [For the President's Address see below.] The following Reports were read : 1. Report on Investigations made at the Zoological Station, Naples. See Reports, p. 335. 2. Report on Investigations made at the Laboratory of the Marine 3. Report on the Zoology of the Sandwich Islands.-See Reports, p. 343. 4. Report on the Fauna and Flora of the West India Islands. 5. Report on the Index Generum et Specierum.-See Reports, p. 347. The President delivered the following Address: THE prospect of visiting Oxford to-day has, I am sure, been to all of us a pleasant one, and we who are specially interested in biology have looked forward to our meeting at this time with the distinguished members of the Oxford Biological School. But as we gather here there will, I think, be present to the minds of all of us a thought of one member of that school, whom we had hoped to meet, who is recently gone from it in the prime of his intellectual life. By the death of George John Romanes biological science is bereft of one of its foremost expositors, Oxford is deprived too soon of one whose mental power was yet in its zenith, and each one of us who knew him cannot but feel a deep sense of personal loss; and we shall in our meeting here sadly miss the man brimming with a geniality which robbed differences of their difficulty and charmed away bitterness from those controversies in which he revelled. This is not the occasion upon which to dwell on his character, his merits, or his work. We must all, I think, have appreciated the graceful accuracy with which these were sketched in the pages of 'Nature' by one of his colleagues; but under the shadow, as we are here, of his recent death, I believe I give utterance to feelings every one of you would wish expressed in paying this passing tribute to his memory from the chair of the Section of the Association devoted to the subject of his life-work. I cannot open the business of the Section without referring to the fact that its organisation appears to be variable, like the objects of its study. It has changed its constitution more than any other Section of the Association, under influences partly from within in the strength of its elements, partly from without in the local circumstances of its meetings. At its origin it was the Section of Botany, Zoology, Anatomy, and Physiology; in the following year anatomy and physiology became a new Section, E, only after some years to merge again in the original one. Then a partition was tried-a physiology department and an anthropology department were formed within Section D; but the Montreal meeting saw anthropology as Section H of the Association and physiology again an integral portion of Section D. This year, as you are aware, physiology-I must be careful to say animal physiology has again become a definite Section-I. Whether or no the habit thus acquired through the environment of Oxford will be so permanent as to be transmitted and appear at future meetings of the Association is a problem upon which I refrain from speculating; my reason for mentioning this matter at all is to point out that, as in previous devolutions of subjects from Section D, animal physiology is the only physiology which is concerned. It was part of the original proposal that plant physiology should form a portion of the province of Section I. To this the botanical members of Section D are unable to assent. We all readily admit that the development within recent years of our knowledge of plant-life is entirely in the direction of bringing to light fundamental similarities between the vital processes in plants and in animals. To no one do we owe more in this sphere of investigation than to two of the distinguished botanists from Germany whom we are glad to welcome at this meeting-Professors Pfeffer and Strasburger. And we fully reciprocate the desire for mutual comment and criticism implied in the suggestion of combination. But allowing these as grounds for the conjoint treatment of the physiology of plants and animals in one section, what we botanists feel is that we are a compact body of workers in a science the boundaries of which it is at present not difficult to define, and that to divorce physiology from morphology and other branches of botany would tend to loosen our cohesion, would be to go against the current of our progress, and would take all the vitality from our discussions. To have papers on plant physiology dealt with in Section I, whilst those on other botanical subjects were dealt with in Section D, would be not merely an extremely inconvenient arrangement, from causes inherent in the subjects themselves, but would strike at that fraternity and spirit of camaraderie amongst those treading the same path of science, the promotion of which is the chief, if not the only, function the British Association now fulfils. At the outset, therefore, of our meetings, I wish to make it known that papers and discussions on all botanical subjects will take place in Section D. And now I pass to the special topic upon which I am to address you. In selecting it I have followed the lead of those of my predecessors in this chair who have used the opportunity to discuss a practical subject. Forestry, about which I purpose to speak, is a branch of applied science to which, in this country, but little attention has been given by any class of the community. By scientific men it has been practically ignored. Yet it is a division of Rural Economy which ought to be the basis of a large national industry. There are no intrinsic circumstances in the country to prevent our growing trees as a profitable crop for timber as well as our neighbours. On the contrary, Great Britain is specially well adapted for tree-growing. We have woodlands of fine trees, grown after traditional rule-of-thumb methods, abundant in many districts. The beauty of an English landscape lies in its trees and its pastures. Nowhere in the world, probably, are to be found finer specimens of tree-growth. As arboriculturists we are unrivalled. But the growing of trees for effect and in plantations is a very different matter from their cultivation on scientific principles, for the purpose of yielding profitable crops. This is sylviculture. The guiding lines of the two methods of culture are by no means the same-nay, they may be |