206 Geology and Mineralogy. ROYAL SOCIETY MEDALS. Two bequests have fallen to the Royal Society during the year, one being the service of plate for which the coal-owners in the North subscribed 2,500l., and presented it to Sir Humphry Davy in acknowledgment of the service he had rendered to science and to humanity by his discovery of the Safety-lamp. According to the terms of Sir Humphry's will, the proceeds of the sale of this service of plate are to constitute a fund for a medal to be given once a year "for the most important discovery in chemistry in Europe or Anglo-America." The Council of the Royal Society have accepted the trust; so that henceforth a Davy Medal will appear among the honorary distinctions which they are called upon to confer. The dividend annually available will, we understand, be about 30%. For the other bequest the Society are indebted to the late Benjamin Oliveira, F.R.S., whose personal estate has been divided among five societies—the Royal, and the Royal Geographical, and three charitable institutions. The amount in this instance, after payment of expenses, is about 1,300l., for which, as may be read in Sir Edward Sabine's Anniversary Address, the Royal Society have found an excellent use. -Athenæum. ON A FRONTIER LINE OF ETHNOLOGY AND GEOLOGY, BY MR. H. H. HOWORTH. THE author in this paper correlates the pushing back of the Ugrian races by the Indo-Europeans with the synchronous disappearance of the post-pleistocene, or pre-historic, Fauna and Flora of Europe; believing that, before the twelfth century B.C. (before which we know of no occupants of Europe, except Ugrians), Europe formed one zoological and botanical province with Northern Asia, and that the Ugrian variety of man was as much a part of its differentiæ as the reindeer and musk-ox. This was accompanied by the vast alteration in climate we must deduce, from comparing the pages of Strabo, Pliny, Tacitus, and Cæsar, with the present condition of things. The climate is now such that the European isothermals are deflected from the normal course they follow, across Asia, to their abnormal one in Europe; and the author believes that, before the twelfth century B.C., when the pre-historic Fauna and Flora occupied all Europe, those isothermals traversed the whole of Europe at the same latitude they still follow in Asia. Their present flexion, he thinks, from a vast number of facts, is attributable almost solely to the Gulf Stream; so that we get an approximate date for the advent of the Gulf Stream, with its geological influences, and thus obtain a fixed point from which to calculate, at some future day, a perfect geological calendar.-Proceedings of the British Association. THE EGYPTIAN DESERT. PROFESSOR OWEN has addressed a paper to the French Academy of Sciences, of which he is a foreign associate, on the geological nature of the Egyptian Desert along the line of the Suez Canal. After stating that he has collected fossil organic remains in the environs of Cairo, at Memphis, in the plains of Kalayat-Rayan, pertaining to the Libyan desert, which is remarkable for its abundance of petrified trunks of palm-trees, &c., in the ravine of Babel-Molook leading to the tombs of the Kings, at Thebes; and lastly, along the Salt-Water Canal between Port Said and Suez; he proceeds to show that from these remains it appears highly probable that the desert formerly was the bed of a sea, the upheaval of which formed the present isthmus. The fossils collected by Mr. Owen comprise a period extending from the upper oolitic formation and cretaceous beds to the tertiary period of the old cocene and middle miocene. In the cuttings between Ismailia and Suez the strata are generally horizontal; a slight obliquity denotes a local excess of upheaving force. At the Serapeum, near the great basin of the Bitter Lakes, the strata chiefly consists of fine sand, slightly agglomerated at times, and containing much flint with occasional nodules of hardened clay. North of the lakes the layers are decidedly argillaceous. The annual deposits of the Nile could not have commenced until after the upheaval of the mountain ranges, which led to the formation of rivers. The soil of Egypt seems therefore to be of comparatively the most recent date, and yet it was inhabited by the most ancient civilised society known. The discoveries of Mariette Bey at Saggarah and Memphis seem to have proved that the period of Cephren, the founder of the second pyramid, answers to the third reign of Manetho's fourth dynasty, or to 6,000 years before the present period.-Illustrated London News. CONTRACTION OF IGNEOUS ROCKS ON COOLING. MR. DAVID FORBES, F.R.S., writes to the Athenæum:-"In the Athenæum (No. 2147), I find a letter from Mr. H. P. Malet, in which that gentleman, referring to a notice (Athenæum, No. 2,143) of my experimental investigations into the amount of Contraction undergone by Silicated Rocks when passing from the molten into the solid and cold state, requests me, through the medium of your columns, to answer eight questions which he puts with reference to my experiments. I should gladly comply with this request, did I not fear that, in order to do so, I should be obliged to trespass too much upon your valuable space, and I must therefore content myself by referring to my original com munication on this subject in the Chemical News of October 23, 1868, in which every one of these questions will be found answered in full detail. Although I have not seen 'The Circle of Light,' in which Mr. Malet has published his reasons for supposing that such rocks could not have been formed by heat, I feel quite satisfied that we have now overwhelming evidence, physical, geological, and chemical, to prove that they must have once been in a fluid condition." ORIGIN OF LAND SURFACES. Ar the Royal Institution Mr. Archibald Geikie, F.R.S., director of the geological Survey of Scotland, has lectured upon the Origin of Land Surfaces. The next Saturday he gave a second lecture on the same subject. He principally devoted his attention to denudation, or the wearing down of hills and valleys by the action of water. He said that water acts more rapidly in changing the external features of a country than is commonly supposed, and gave the best evidence to be had, tending towards the conclusion that in one million years-a very short time in geological science -the present action of rain and rivers is competent to scoop out a valley of very considerable dimensions. He narrated how the freezing of water in the cracks of cliffs gradually detaches large fragments of rock from the main body, and he explained that springs of water escaping from the middle of a cliff tend to undermine and overthrow superincumbent strata. Lastly, he called attention to the action of glaciers in the formation of undulating land surfaces, for these vast masses of ice rub down the uneven surfaces of the land over which they travel, and polish their paths to some extent by means of stones and mud. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF WESTERN EUROPE. A PAPER has been read to the Geological Society "On the Physical Geography of Western Europe during the Mesozoic and Cainozoic periods, elucidated by their Coral-faunas," by Mr. P. Martin Duncan. The author noticed the typical species of the coral-fauna of the deep seas which bound continents remote from coral-reefs. He pointed out that a correspondence of physical conditions during the deposition of certain strata was indicated by their containing analogous forms, the presence of compound cœnenchymal species indicating neighbouring reefs, and their absence in places where simple or non-conenchymal Madreporaria are found being characteristic of deep sea areas remote from the Coral-seas. By applying the principles thus elaborated to the evidence as to the condition of the seas of the European area from the Triassic period to the present time, the author then showed what must probably have been the physical condition of this part of the world at different periods. Prof. Agassiz accounted for the circumscribed area of many corals in the Atlantic from the young of many coral species attaching themselves within a few hours of their becoming pelagic. He traced to the great equatorial current which must have traversed the Isthmus of Panama and the Sahara in a præcretaceous period, the distribution of certain forms, which the rising of the Isthmus of Panama eventually checked. Mr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys objected to the term "deep sea" being applied to a depth of 10 fathoms only, when the tide in some places rose to that extent, and the laminarian zone extended to 15 fathoms. Dr. Duncan remarked that the term "deep sea" had been given by Prof. Forbes to depths of 10 fathoms and upwards. For such depths as those explored at the present day no term short of "abyssal" was appropriate. THE DEVONIAN PERIOD. MR. GODWIN-AUSTEN has read to the British Association a paper on the Probable Distribution of Land and Water during the Devonian Period, its fossil zoology and botany, and the physical changes which have taken place subsequently. He briefly sketched the order of successive sea-beds, and showed that these represented geological time. Of these, the Devonian group were among the earlier. Our rocks, sandstone or otherwise, were simply sea-bottoms, and the geologist only referred them to their original condition in order that he might deduce their physical and zoological history. The Devonian rocks had a wide geographical extent in Europe, Asia, and America. In the latter country there was a broad band of old Silurian rocks which existed as dry land during the Devonian epoch. In Great Britain the Devonian rocks had a general direction from northeast to south-west. From the nature of the fossil fishes of these rocks, Mr. Austen came to the conclusion that the old red sandstone was of fresh-water origin, as all these were of fresh-water habits. The dry land was covered with a series of great freshwater lakes, like those of North America. Besides the strata deposited along the bottoms of these lakes, there was a series of vast marine deposits, which are termed Devonian. The old red sandstone group was a very perplexing one, and passed down into the Silurians at its base, and into the Carboniferous towards its upper portion. The most northern portion of this country where rocks containing true Devonian fossils came up was Lynton. The author then traced the easterly direction of the Devonian group, showing how they cropped up beyond the chalk of Boulogne, and thence across Belgium and Prussia into Bohemia and Russia. A discussion ensued, in which Professor Phillips, Mr. Pengelly, and several others took part; but some of Mr. Austen's opinions did not obtain general assent. THE WATER-BEARING STRATA NEAR NORWICH. MR. J. E. TAYLOR has read to the British Association a paper on the Origin of Sandpipes in Chalk, showing them to be natural drains, and advocating their origin from a chemical point of view. These sandpipes were most abundant in the disturbed chalk, and less so in the solid strata. The latter allowed the water to get away by means of joints and flint bands. The age of some of the sandpipes could be told by the material filling them, and by the unchanged contour of the country. In the excavations attending the sewage works at Norwich, much trouble was given by their having to work through strata thoroughly saturated with water. The same sort of strata standing above the water-level gave no trouble whatever. The deduction was drawn that if so much trouble ensued while working only 20 ft. below the water-level, the excavation of the proposed Channel tunnel, under so much more pressure, must necessarily be attended with great difficulties. Mr. Taylor gave an interesting statement of the manner in which the wells were drained by the pumping in the neighbourhood of Norwich, and showed they were affected according to the different nature of the strata in which they were sunk. Mr. Godwin-Austen mentioned several localities in Devonshire where sandpipes occurred in the sandstone rocks, and thought that the chemical theory could not hold in cases like these, although they might do so in chalk districts. It Sir Willoughby Jones expressed his gratification at the papers which had been read, and, as a Norfolk man, said he could thoroughly bear out the correctness of Mr. Taylor's views. was a very common thing for holes to be suddenly formed by the caving in of gravel and sand into the sandpipes. Mr. Taylor, in reply to Professor Harkness, said that the upper and lower boulder clays in Norfolk were very distinct. The former were derived principally from the wreck of the lias beds, and the latter from the lower chalk and oolite. One was of a dark blue colour, and the other of an ochreous white. ON CERTAIN PHENOMENA IN THE DRIFT, NEAR NORWICH. In this communication to the British Association, Mr. Taylor said that, although there was the finest series of the Drift Beds in Norfolk to be found in Great Britain, still in the upper boulder clay certain anomalies occur which frequently puzzle the geologist. The paper was an attempt to explain these by referring them to the agency of icebergs. Sometimes there were found beds of upper boulder clay lying at lower levels than the middle drift beds. In fact, such phenomena occurred through icebergs having ploughed up the sands, and deposited beds of clay in the furrows. This accounted for the out-of-the-way character of what had been termed "Third, or Valley Boulder Clay." The sand beds on each side these linear extensions of clay were frequently dragged out of their place and contorted. The chalk also was disturbed, and the flint bands thrown into almost |