The earlier mineralogists laboured under two great disadvantages. They could not readily, on account of the small number of students of chemistry, call in the aid of that science: and at the time when mineralogy was becoming a distinct branch of science chemistry was in itself crude as well as cumbrous. They were thus forced to rely chiefly upon external properties; and, where crystalline form was absent, they were confined to what may be called physical properties alone.

Their knowledge of the composition of bodies being thus limited and uncertain, the old nomenclature was to a considerable extent founded upon external features alone.

Drumlins are mounds of boulder clay and are characteristic features of the minor topography of Southern Scotland. The word drum or drumlin as the name of these drift hills is indigenous both in Scotland and Ireland. It is common in Scottish place-names as in Drymen, Tyndrum, and Drumadoon. J. Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1880, vol. ii, p. 116) defines a drum as a knoll or ridge, and refers to its use in the Statistical Account of Scotland as early as 1797. Joseph Wright, English Dialect Dictionary (1900, vol. ii, p. 190), attributes drum to Scotland, but quotes drumlin from Ireland in Antrim and Down. Its first use as a technical term in geology appears to have been in Ireland by Scouler in 1833, who applied it to eskers and to mounds of boulder clay; its restriction to the latter is due first to Maxwell Close (Journ. Roy. Geol. Soc. Ireland, i, 1866, pp. 212, 213.)

If no provision has been made by the Great Author of Nature, for equalising the light and heat projected upon the different bodies of our system, we may consider the earth as receiving, from the direct action of the solar rays, a degree of heat, intermediate between the condensed radiations sustained by Mercury and Venus, and the attenuated warmth which reaches the remoter planets. The heat which our Globe thus acquires from its locality in the system, is again tempered by the obliquity of its axis, and is distributed over the same parallels of latitude by its daily rotation. When the Sun is in the Equator, his rays, beating on the Earth with a vertical influence, impart to it the full measure of their action; and as his meridian altitude decreases, their intensity suffers a corresponding diminution. The burning heat at the Equator becomes moderated in higher latitudes. In passing through the temperate zone, it declines with great rapidity, and between the Arctic Circle and the Pole, the rays of the Sun are unable even to temper the piercing cold which reigns in these inhospitable regions.

In June 1906 there was published an account of the Rotifers collected in the Scottish lochs up to that date (7). Many Rotifers had been observed during the survey of the lakes which are not referred to in that paper, as they were not collected actually in lakes. It is with the object of recording these species, and especially of giving an account of some interesting forms previously unknown or imperfectly known, that this supplementary paper is written. These Rotifers were, almost without exception, collected from moss, and, as is always the case in these circumstances, the Bdelloida greatly preponderated over the other orders.

Tables have been prepared of the average temperature at the Ben Nevis and Fort-William Observatories on each day of the year, using the records of the twenty years 1884 to 1903 inclusive. Table I. gives the average daily temperature at Ben Nevis, Table II. that at Fort-William, and Table III. the differences between them. These tables have been prepared as follows :—

Ben Nevis Observatory.—In summer the dry- and wet-bulb thermometers were exposed in an ordinary Stevenson screen 4 feet above ground, and in winter in a smaller-sized double-louvred screen, placed on a ladder-like stand, and moved up or down so as to be always about 4 feet above the surface of the snow. These thermometers were read hourly, and the average of the dry-bulb readings for the 24 hours of each day is taken as the temperature of that day. Table I. is the arithmetical mean of the values so computed on each day of the year.

This monster, of which the mother was delivered by Mr Thomas Anderson, surgeon in Leith, after the birth of a complete child at the full time, had its proper membranes and a placenta, with a short umbilical cord.

The following parts were wanting in it; to wit, the bones of the head; the brain, with the organs of sight, hearing, smell and taste; the neck; about one half of the ribs; the larynx, trachea and lungs; the heart; the pharynx, œsophagus and stomach, with all the small intestines, except the end of the ilium; the anus; the liver, spleen, pancreas and omenta; the renal glands; terminations of the ureters; the middle part of the urethra; the right testicle; both arms; both patellæ; with several of the bones of the feet and toes.

The Memoir which I am about to submit to the consideration of the Royal Society, relates to the melancholy history of a boy who was born blind and deaf; and who, of consequence, has derived all his knowledge of things external from the senses of Touch, of Taste, and of Smell.

About three years ago, a Danish vessel was brought into Leith as a prize. Among other articles, she contained a small collection of minerals, which were purchased by Thomas Allan, Esq; and Colonel Imrie, both members of this Society. The country from which these minerals had been brought was not known for certain; but as the collection abounded in Cryolite, it was conjectured, with very considerable probability, that they had been collected in Greenland.

An argument against the hypothesis of central heat has been stated by an ingenious author as carrying with it the evidence of demonstration.

“The essential and characteristic property of the power producing heat, is its tendency to exist every where in a state of equilibrium, and it cannot hence be preserved without loss or without diffusion, in an accumulated state. In the theory of Hutton, the existence of an intense local heat, acting for a long period of time, is assumed. But it is impossible to procure caloric in an insulated state. Waving every objection to its production, and supposing it to be generated to any extent, it cannot be continued, but must be propagated to the contiguous matter. If a heat, therefore, existed in the central region of the earth, it must be diffused over the whole mass; nor can any arrangement effectually counteract this diffusion. It may take place slowly, but it must always continue progressive, and must be utterly subversive of that system of indefinitely renewed operations which is represented as the grand excellence of the Huttonian Theory. Again, he observes, in giving what he says appears to him a demonstration of the fallacy of the first principles of the Huttonian System, it will not be disputed, that the tendency of caloric is to diffuse itself over matter, till a common temperature is established. Nor will it probably be denied, that a power constantly diffusing itself from the centre of any mass of matter, cannot remain for an indefinite time locally accumulated in that mass, but must at length become equal or nearly so over the whole.

The study of lakes has received more attention on the Continent than it has in our own country. The inland waters of France and Switzerland have been most carefully surveyed, and in America accurate soundings of many of the lakes have been made by the Geological Surveys. But until recent years this work has been almost altogether neglected in Britain; the Government had considered it to be outside the function of the Ordnance Survey, and though of importance to geological research, it has not been undertaken by the Geological Survey. The absence of adequate knowledge concerning the forms of the basins occupied by the lakes has been a serious obstacle to the geological inquiry as to the mode of origin of these basins. But recently, in the English Lake District and in Scotland, this obstacle has been removed to a great extent through the work of geographers, who have carried out a very complete bathymetrical survey of many of the lakes of those regions; and the importance of this work has been recognised by geologists. But in North Wales not only had no attempt been made to ascertain the configuration of the lake-beds, but in many cases even the depths of the lakes remained unknown.

A unique specimen of an unusual elongate segmented compression fossil, Polylurida aenigmatica n. gen., n. sp., is described and illustrated. The bilaterally-symmetrical, dorsoventral structure (c. 6·5 cm long × 0·8 cm maximum width) narrows towards both ends and is subdivided into approximately 19 similar tapering segments, showing no evidence of tagmosis, appendages or an internal gut. The segments are covered with a substantial papillose organic cuticle, each segment bearing towards one end a pair of transverse calcareous bars. These bars are perforated by simple canals filled with strands of dark organic material which traverse their whole thickness and flare out superficially to form pores on both their lower and upper surfaces. Internal horizontal lamination of the bar material suggests an episodic accretionary pattern of skeletal growth. The bars appear to represent internal skeletal structures and are restricted to one side (dorsal or ventral) of the body, where the adjacent cuticle is locally thickened to form a corresponding series of discrete paired densely papillose transverse bands. Although Polyurida may be an unusual segmented worm, its singular suite of characters and lack of data prevent assignment to any higher taxon.

It has always appeared to me that the difficulties which present themselves in investigations concerning the Frequency of Error, and the deduction of the most probable result from a large number of observations by the Method of Least Squares (which is an immediate consequence of the ordinary “Law of Error”), are difficulties of reasoning, or logic, rather than of analysis. Hence I conceive that the elaborate analytical investigations of Laplace, Poisson, and others, do not in anywise present the question in its intrinsic simplicity. They seem to me to be necessitated by the unnatural point of view from which their authors have contemplated the question. It is, undoubtedly, a difficult one; but this is a strong reason for abstaining from the use of unnecessarily elaborate analysis, which, however beautiful in itself, does harm when it masks the real nature of the difficulty it is employed to overcome. I believe that, so far at least as mathematics is concerned, the subject ought to be found extremely simple, if we only approach it in a natural manner.

Conodont elements from Scottish Carboniferous rocks have been reviewed for Colour Alteration Index(CAI) data, and most values range between 1 and 1·5. Assuming a local average geothermal gradient similar to that of today, the observed and predicted CAI values generally fit well. Only a few of the samples analysed were influenced by local igneous intrusives. The CAI range shown lies within the immature (early dry gas) to mature (perhapsmid-oil window) stages of hydrocarbon generation, and this suggests that burial maturation (where CAI values are 1-5) could account for locally generated oil, where this occurred away from igneous intrusions. Alkali-dolerite and tholeiitic intrusives are, however, widespread in the Midland Valley of Scotland, and an understanding of their thermal effects has implications for both coal and petroleum exploration. The insensitivity of conodonts to low temperatures is noted, and the relevance, application and potential of various other palaeothermometers is discussed. Locally, the qualitative study of spore colour (SCI) appears useful.

Within recent years several human ova in the previllous stage of development have been discovered and their study, taken in conjunction with the detailed observations of Heuser and Streeter (1941) on the development of the macaque embryo, has resulted in fundamental modifications of the views previously held concerning the early development of the human embryo.

The outlook on early human embryology comprises three phases: first, the phase when only very few specimens had been discovered and the tentative conclusions drawn from their study were to a considerable extent merely surmised by analogy with the phenomena known to occur in the development of other animals; second, the phase where sufficient material has been acquired to enable investigators to verify or deny some of these postulations and even to suspect certain possibilities—like variations in the degree of development of the various elements in embryos of approximately the same age such as is known to occur in other mammals, or early histological changes indicating pathological relations between the embryonic and maternal structures which may foreshadow the failure of continued embryono-maternal relations and impending abortion; and third, a phase when the specimens will be so numerous that the conclusions of the earlier periods can be established with certainty or definitely refuted. At present, early human embryological study is in the second phase, and the early attainment of the third phase is desirable to fill gaps in the present knowledge of the stages in the development of several structures (e.g. the yolk-sac, the amnio-embryonic vesicle, etc.) and to determine details necessary for a more precise comparison of the development of the human ovum with that of other primate and of lower vertebrate forms.

I was originally attracted to the study of Quaternions by Sir W. R Hamilton's ingeniously devised and most valuable operator

to which he called special attention (Lectures on Quaternions, § 620) on account of its promise of usefulness in physical applications. But I soon found that in order that its full power may be applied, in general investigations, it is necessary that we should have processes of definite integration, of the kinds required in physics, applicable to quaternion symbols and not merely to scalar variables. I often consulted Hamilton about this want, and he promised to endeavour to supply it at some future time. I fancy that shortly before his death he must have in some way supplied it, though he certainly did not print, nor does he appear even to have written, anything on the subject. In one of the last letters I received from him, he said that he intended to conclude the final chapter of his Elements, which is devoted to physical applications, by some sections on the use of the operator mentioned above. That chapter remains unfinished, and as Hamilton rarely wrote down the steps of even a complex train of mathematical reasoning until he had mentally completed it, it is to be feared that this portion of his investigations is entirely lost. So far as the analytical aspect of Quaternions is concerned, this loss is very serious indeed, for there can be little doubt that Hamilton's solution would have been of immense value from the purely mathematical point of view.

The phosphines which have been obtained as yet are not very numerous, and with one or two exceptions their properties have not been exhaustively studied, a fact which is no doubt largely due to the difficulties encountered in preparing them in any quantity.

There are consequently a great many points in their history which require examination, and the object we had in view in the present investigation was chiefly to extend our knowledge of this interesting group of substances.

The generic assignments of some 200 Ordovician brachiopod species in the Barr and Lower Ardmillan (upper Darriwilian–lower Katian) succession, Girvan are reviewed and, where necessary, modified. This key database on the distribution and occurrence of a Laurentian-marginal brachiopod assemblage has featured in many analyses of global biogeography for the period and has confirmed the position of Girvan at relatively low latitudes. Revision of these taxonomic assignments within a modified stratigraphical framework permits closer comparisons with coeval faunas elsewhere around the palaeocontinent of Laurentia and beyond and allows the definition of a variety of brachiopod biofacies on a fault-controlled basin founded on a dismembered ophiolite.

The dynamics of natural labour have been the field of very little successful study or investigation. The object of the present paper is to make a contribution to this subject. I purpose to show what amount of pressure per square inch is sustained by the ovum in the easiest class of natural labours, and thence to estimate the propelling power exerted in such cases.

It is well known that natural births are ever and anon occurring, in which the ovum is expelled whole, the membranes containing the liquor amnii continuing entire. Into this category many more cases would enter, were it not a generally-followed rule for the attendant to rupture the bag should it advance entire as far as the external parts. Again, as Dr Poppel has pointed out, the attentive observer of a series of easy natural labours has no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion, that in not a few cases the same force which ruptures the bag of membranes is able to, and actually does, complete the delivery.

The crustacean fauna of the Insect Bed (late Eocene), Isle of Wight is reviewed. The fauna comprises the branchiopod Branchipodites vectensis Woodward, 1879, ostracod Potamocypris brodiei Jones and Sherborn, 1889, and isopod Eosphaeroma margarum (Desmarest, 1822). In addition a new clam shrimp (Crustacea: Diplostraca: Spinicaudata) is described and named Paraleptestheria mitchelli sp. nov. This is the first record of the genus outside China and the first ‘conchostracan' to be described from the European Cenozoic.