Page:The Geologist, volume 5.djvu/171

Rh The Officers elected for the ensuing year are:—President: Prof. A. C. Ramsay. Vice-Presidents: Sir P. de M. G. Egerton; Sir Charles Lyell; John Carrick Moore, Esq.; Prof John Morris. Secretaries: Prof. T. H. Huxley; Warington W. Smyth, Esq. Foreign Secretary: W. J. Hamilton, Esq. Treasurer: Joseph Prestwich, Esq. Council: John J. Bigsby, M.D.; Sir Charles Bunbury; Robert Chambers, Esq.; Sir P. de M. G. Egerton; Earl of Inniskillen; Hugh Falconer, M.D.; W. J. Hamilton, Esq.; Leonard Horner, Esq.; Prof. T. H. Huxley; John Lubbock, Esq.; Sir Charles Lyell; John Carrick Moore, Esq.; Edward Meryon, M.D.; Prof John Morris; Sir E. I. Murchison; Robert W. Mylue, Esq.; Joseph Prestwich, Esq.; Prof. A. C. Ramsay; G. P. Scrope, Esq.; Warington W. Smyth, Esq.; Alfred Tylor, Esq.; Rev. Thomas Wiltshire; S. P. Woodward, Esq.

February 26, 1862.—Prof. Ramsay, President, in the chair.

Special General Meeting.—It was resolved that the annual contribution to be paid by both Resident and Non-Resident Fellows elected after the 1st of March next shall be two pounds two shillings per annum; the composition for future annual contributions being twenty-one pounds.

Ordinary Meeting.—The following communications were read:—

1. "On the Drift containing Arctic Shells in the neighbourhood of Wolverhampton." By the Rev. W. Lister, F.G.S. In the parish of Bushbury, at the junction of the London and North-Western, the West Midland, and the Stour-Valley Railways, is a gravel, with clay, sand, and pebbles, rolled Liassic fossils, flints, pieces of coal and of wood, and more or less fragmentary shells of the following species (as determined by J. G. Jeffreys, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S.):—Astarte arctica, Cardium echinatum, C. edule, Cyprina Islandica, Modiola modiolus, Tapes virginea, Tellina solidula, Venus striatula, Litorina squalida, Nassa reticulata, Purpura lapillus, and Turritella communis. The Astarte and the Litorina are not now found living in our seas. Similar fossil shells have been also found by the author at Oxley Manor, half a mile to the N.W.; by Mr. G. E. Roberts at Acleton, eight miles to the S.W.; and by Mr. Beckett elsewhere. Liassic fossils have also been found in the gravel at Compton Holloway and at Wightwick (both in the parish of Tettenhall), and at Wolverhampton.

2. "On a Split Boulder in Little Cumbra, Western Isles." By James Smith, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S. The islands of Great and Little Cumbra have (like the west coast of Scotland) a cliff and terrace, indicating an elevation of about 40 feet above the present level of the sea, and the removal of at least 100 feet of rock (sandstone and trap); the sea at its present level having worn away the rock to the extent of only a small fraction of an inch. The terrace on the Little Cumbra has been moreover ground down and scratched by ice-action, the striæ passing unobliterated under the present sea; and on the terrace lies a split boulder, such as are known to fall from glaciers, and which the author thinks must also in this case have fallen from an escarpment of ice.

3. "On the Ice-worn Rocks of Scotland." By T. F. Jamieson, F.G.S. The author, first referring to the eroded surface of the rocks beneath the Drift-beds in Scotland, proceeded to show that the action of ice, and not that of torrents, could produce such markings, as he had observed in the bed of a mountain-stream in Argyllshire, down which had poured the torrent caused by the bursting of the reservoirs of the Crinan Canal. He then advanced reasons for considering that the erosion of the rocks in Scotland was due chiefly to land-ice and not to water-borne ice, bringing forward remarkable instances of ice-action on the glens and on the hill-sides at Loch Treig and Glen Spean, where moraines, blocs perchés, striæ, roches