beaches. The Initial Stage (Ozarkian uplift) was probably coincident with the great elevation of the lands and ocean-bed, during which the submerged river channels were eroded down through the continental platform both in Europe and America.

Professor J. LOGAN LOBLEY, F.G.S.-The thanks of the Members of the Institute are, I am sure, due to Mr. Warren Upham for his interesting and suggestive paper, and we are also much indebted to Professor Hull for his very lucid additional exposition of the subject of the paper.

Although I can make no claim to be any authority on the great glacial question, I may perhaps be allowed to say a few words on some of the important points raised by Mr. Upham.

With Professor Hull's opinion that the Somme Valley has been cut since the glaciation of Northern France I am quite inclined to agree. The well-known Bedfordshire valley of the Ouse has been cited as evidence of an important valley formed subsequently to the age of the boulder clay, and of the advent of man not being pre-glacial. But may I not ask, have we not in the Thames Valley similar evidence? There is boulder clay at Finchley, but none in the lower levels of the great Thames Valley. No human implements have been found anywhere in this valley in beds older than the Pleistocene gravels and brick-earths which contain abundant mammalian remains, as at Acton, where human implements in considerable numbers occur, as shown by Mr. Allen Brown. The important discoveries of implements in the Somme Valley by Boucher de Perthes and Prestwich were in similar flint river gravels, indicating, I think, a similar period for the formation of that valley. The Miocene beds of the Alps, 5,000 feet above sea-level, and the Pliocenes of East Anglia, indicate a submergence of this part of the earth's surface in Pliocene times when instead of erosion there would be a deposition, but subsequently at the close of the Glacial epoch the conditions, from the great melting of ice and snow on higher ground, would be favourable to the rapid cutting of chalk valleys consequent upon the combined erosive and solvent action of water. Thus the evidence appears to be in favour of the view that man was not pre-glacial; that is, not before the glaciation of Mid-Europe; for a "Glacial period" may be said to be still in existence in Greenland and the Polar Regions, due to high latitudes, while the glaciation of regions further from the poles was due, I believe, to greater elevation of land

areas as indicated, among other things, by the sub-oceanic rivervalleys.

With respect to the astronomical explanation of a presumed glacial recession to which reference is made in this paper, I may remark that the Southern Hemisphere is towards the sun, when the earth is in perihelion, and yet the climate of the Antarctic is quite as rigorous as that of the Arctic Regions. There is reason therefore to think that if the northern summers were brought into perihelion the climate of the Northern Hemisphere would be scarcely, if at all, affected.

Neither can I agrec with the attribution of depression of land areas to the weight of accumulated ice, referred to as "burdened land," since I ascribe auy such depression to contraction of vast thicknesses of terrestrial matter consequent upon a lowering of temperature, and elevation to expansion of similar enormous masses from a rise in temperature.

The paleontological evidence certainly seems to me to be strongly against the pre-glacial age of the Somme gravels. In addition to Lyell's statement of it I may mention that that interesting little fresh-water Lamellibranch the Cyrena fluminalis, is to be found in abundance as a fossil in the brick-earths of the Lower Thames Valley, as at Grays, Crayford, and Ilford, and that though not now living in European rivers, but abundant in the waters of the Nile. I have also found it in the gravels of the Orange River of South Africa.

The CHAIRMAN.I would just say that from my own point of view there is one important matter in this paper, and that is, the date of the ending of the Ice age, which the author sets down at about 5,000 years ago.

Now in Babylonia, civilization, such as it was, extends back certainly 5,000 years; and if in that country the estimates of the American excavators of Niffer may be accepted, it ought to go back 10,000 years from now.

That means, I suppose (I am speaking under correction of course), that the temperature of Babylonia must have been in those times, 5,000 to 10,000 years ago (and the farther back you go the more so), greatly affected by the presence of ice in other parts of the world, and that is a matter of some interest to people who consider the civilization and state of the country in ancient times and especially in connection with the products. The tempera

ture, it seems to me, must have been lower in consequence of the extra nearness of the ice, and therefore the same plants and animals could not have existed there as in later days. One hardly likes to regard the temperature of the country as having been, such a short time ago, different from what it is now, and therefore one has to receive a statement of this kind with, I should say, a certain amount of caution.

I desire, as I am sure we all do, to return a very hearty vote of thanks to the author of the paper, which is exceedingly interesting, and to Professors Hull and Logan Lobley, who have added such important comments upon it.

Rev. JOHN TUCKWELL.-May I say with regard to that point that has just been raised, that in Professor Tyndall's volume, published some years ago on Heat and Motion, he makes reference to the Glacial period, and says the enormous accumulation of ice and snow in the northern regions would point to a very high temperature with an enormous amount of evaporation in some other parts of the world, otherwise we could not have the enormous accumulations of ice and snow in the northern regions. If so, that might, it seems to me, to some extent meet the difficulty which the Chairman referred to that there must have been as high a temperature in Babylonia as exists now. There are references on many of the Babylonian and Assyrian tablets to various forms of grain which may indicate what the temperature was, and would point to a temperature similar to that which it is now.

I notice in the paper that the author speaks of this-that there seems to be a break somewhere between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic periods. I should have liked to call attention to the fact that Professor Prestwich, in a paper he read here some years ago, referred to the deluge and to the extinction of a large number of those animals mentioned here, as if their extinction were occasioned, in some way, by a deluge,* and it may have occurred to the author that the enormous number of mammoths buried in Siberia must have lost their lives very suddenly and by a very sudden and excessive fall of temperature. They were, apparently, buried alive under many feet of ice, and have continued in such a condition to the present day that their flesh remains as sound as when they died, which would point to a

* Journ. Trans. Vict. Inst., vol. xxvii, p. 263 (1893-4).

sudden fall of temperature and might possibly, therefore, in some way be connected with the event Sir Joseph Prestwich referred to in his paper here, and throw some light on the occurrence of the deluge.

The SECRETARY announced that arrangements had been made for the Annual Meeting to be held in the rooms of the Society of Arts, when the address would be delivered by Professor Sir Robert S. Ball, LL.D., F.R.S., of Cambridge University.

The meeting then adjourned.

ORDINARY MEETING.*

CAPTAIN HEATH, R.N., IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed, and the following paper was read by the Author :

THE SUB-OCEANIC

DEPRESSION KNOWN AS "LA FOSSE DE CAP BRETON," AND THE ADJACENT RIVER VALLEYS OF FRANCE AND SPAIN. By Professor J. LOGAN LOBLEY, F.G.S., F.R.G.S.

THE

(Read Monday, January 1, 1900.)

HE sub-oceanic teatures off the western coasts of Europe have been prominently brought before the Members of the Victoria Institute by Professor Hull, in highly interesting and well illustrated papers, while the importance of the facts and the gravity of the conclusions that may be drawn from them have been recognized by the Royal Geographical Society and the British Association, before which bodies discussions of the subject have taken place. Communications on this important investigation have also been published in the Geological Magazine, from several geological authorities, including an important contribution to the discussion of the question in a paper on "The Eastern Margin of the North Atlantic Basin," by Mr. W. H. Hudleston, F.R.S., published in the Geological Magazine for March and April, 1899, which is accompanied by a bathygraphical map extending through fifty-five degrees of latitude.

Monday, January 1st, 1900.