The Express.
London, England, 1864-09-15 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 15, 1884.

TER WIZARD of the NORTH.—TO-NIGHT.
Eleventh appearance ot 11las ANDEE/lON the
skated 'I ybIL —Recurs your STALLS Led TICKETS, at 111rkne. AUS-
d-
TIN'S Tlcket-oleou SS, PlocniEly.—Open daily boo 10 Ull 6.—
THE WORLD 01 RAM*

ST. JAMES'S-HALL (entrances iu Regent-
street, and Plocadillyl —Professor ANDS/MO/PS ORAND
ENTLETAINIIF—NT, the WORLD of MAGIC, and Mies ANDER-
SON'S extraordlastp powers In SECOND SIGHT have made a
success hitherto unparalleled In the snub of the art tnagique.
The programme in it. present form will be repeated every even-
ing at & On Saturdays a fashionable juvenile day performance
at 3 p.m. Doom open at 7 and t o'clock. Stalls (dram num-
bered awl strictly reserved), 3s. ; balcony, 3a.: second seats,
body of the hall sod galleries. Is. Juvenile ticket for the stall@
and nelcony, U. Retorted stets may be secured at the Box.
office, fd. Piccadilly, under the superintendence of Mr. Austin.

THE OXFORD and CANTIGIBURY HALLO tAIMPAN Y
(Malted'.
THE OXFORD. SELECTIONS from LA
FORZA DEL DIMINO, La Travlata, I,ishaeo, and the
Two Gentlemen of Verona, by the whole of the talented corn-
Directoe—Mr. F. JONGELEANE. Comedy by Unsweeth,
iasew , W. Randall. W. Barton, and %Mlle. Cavalho, tbe oebo-
tasted amedienne and alone, MAY EVENING.

BRITISH ASSOCIATION:IEOR THE

ADVANCEMENT OF/SCIENCE.

(nom ova ows strowrzas.)
BATH, WILDSVIDAT.

The business of the thirty-fourth annual gather-
ing of the members of this association commenced in this
city to-day, with every prospect of an interesting and (in a
financial sense) a good meeting. The city is already pretty
well filled, although the general business dote not com-
mence till this evening. No doubt the liberality of the
railway company, in granting tickets to the members at
single fare, will have its effect in increasing the attendance.
The general committee met to-day io the Guildhall, Sir W.
ARMSTRONG, the president for the past year, in the chair.
There were also present the Mayor of B►th (Mr. Jerome
March), Lord Wrotteeley. Sir Roderick Murchison, Sir
Charles Lyon, Professor Phillips, Mr. John Crawford, Mr,
Tits, M.P., Mr. Francis Galion, Mr. Cayloy, Mr. Gusiott,
Mr. Deubeny, Mr. Spottiewoode,
The minutes of the meeting of the association held Let
year at Newcastle-on-Tyne baring been read and confirmed,

Sir R. MURCHISON moved that the Earl of Cork and
Ossory, u lord-lieutenant of the county, in SUCCOUIOII to
Lord Portman, who had resigned the office, be elected one of
the viosproudenta of the association. The motion was at
once agreed to, as was also one electing the Very Rev, the
Dean of Hereford and the Worshipful the Mayor of Bath
to the same honour.

The report of the camel!, to the effect, that the report of
the Kew committee would be laid before the general com-
mittee on Monday ; that the council bad added to the list of
coereepooding members the names of Dr. Torell, Dr. Boys
Ballot, M. dee Cloiseanz, and Professor Adolph Steen ;
that they bad received invitations to hold the nest meeting
of the association at Birmingham, and smother to bold it at
Nottingham ; and that an invitation had also been received
from Dundee for the year 1867 .was read and approved.
The Treasurer's report was also adopted. It stated that
the income of the emaciation during the past year was
4.5051. Os. 11d., and that there was a balance in had of
36.11. 17s. sd. _ _

Lord %torn:Bur then read the report of the Parhamm-
ier, Committee, as follows :—" The Dukes of Devonshire
and Argyll, the Earls of Harrowby and Enniskillen, and Sir
John Pakisgton, have vacated their seats, bat your commit-
tee reoommeod their reelection. Ycor committee recom-
mead that the vacancy in the House of Commons hat be
supplied by the election of Mr. Catches. Your committee
suggest that they should be permitted to pompom for election
members of either House of Parliament, is addition to the
13 members now constituting their committee, whenever
such addition may appear desirable. These additional
members might be considered as supernumerary, and soy
vacancy in the supernumerary list supplied, or not,
as may be thought expedient, when the vacancy occurs.
Your committee also recommend that a resolution parsed
at Liverpool in 18S4 be rescinded, and the following sub-
stituted : That any member of the parliamentary com-
mittee who shall not attend any one of four consecutive
meetings of that committee shall be considered as having
resigned, but shell be eligible for re-election. No subject
was referred to your committee at Newcastle, but several
of ita members have supported, or signified their intension
to support, the valuable seggesaioa of the Royal Commis-
sioners, that the study of natural science should be intro-
duced into certain public schools, and likewise the bill for
legalising the use of the metric system of weights and mea-
sures. I o thus acting, the committee conceive that they
are properly fulfilling the important duty imposed upon
them of .watchkite over the interests of science.' "

wee brief, if estimated by the ordinary roles of geological
classilleation. The glacial period was, in fact, a mere epi-
sode in one of the greet epochs of the earth's history ; for
the inhabitants of the land, and SW, before and after the
greed development of snow sad ice, were nearly the same.
As yet we have no satisfactory proof that man existed in
Europe or elsewhere during the period of extreme cold ; but
oar investigations on this head are still in their infancy. In
as early portion of the postglacial period it bee been miser-
tabled that man flourished in Europe ; and in tracing the
signs of his existence, from the historical ages to throe im-
mediately anteoedeat, and so backward into more ancient
times, we gradually approach a diesimila. r geographical state
of things, when the climate was colder, and when the
configuration of the surface departed considerably
from that which now prevails. Archaeologists are
satiated that in central Europe the age of bronze
weapons preceded the Boman invasion of Switzer-
land; and prior to the Swim-lake dwellings of the bronze
age were those is which stone weapons alone were used.
The Danish kitchen-middens seem to have been of about
the same date ; but what M. Lartet has called the reindeer
pitied of the South of France was probably anterior, and
ooneected with a somewhat colder climate. Of still higher
antiquity was that age of ruder implements of stone such
as were buried in the thivisaile drift of Amiens and Abbe-
, vine, and which were mingled in the name gravel with the
bones of extinct quadruped*, sub en the elephant, rid-
, noceros, bear, tiger, and hyena. Between the present era
and that of thine earliest votive yet discovered of our race,
' valleys have been deepened and widened, the course of sub-
tumbril rivers which one flowed through caverns has been
changed, and many species of wild quadrupeds have dis-
appeared. The bed of the sea, moreover, has in the same
ages been lifted up, in many places hundreds of feet, above
its former level, and the outlines of many • coast entirely
altered. MM. de Verneuil and Louis Lartet have recently
found near Madrid fossil teeth of the African elephant, in
old valley-drift, containing dint implements of the same
antique type as those of Amines and Abbeville. Proof of
the same elephant having inhabited Sicily in the l'astpliocene
land probably within the Human period had previously been
brought to light by Boren Alice, during his exploration of
the bone-caves of Palermo. We have now, therefore, evi-
dence of man having omexisted in Europe with three spe-
cies of elephant, two of them extinct (namely, the mam-
moth and the "Isola@ antiques), and the third the same
as that which still survives in Africa. As to
the first of these—the mammoth—l am aware that some
writers contend that it could not have died out many tens
of thousands of years before our time, because its flesh his
been found preserved in ice, in Siberia, in so fresh a state
as to serve as food for dogs, bears, and solve.; bat this ar-
gument seems to me fallacious. Middendorf, in 1843, after
digging through some thickness of frozen soil in Siberia.
came down upon an icy mass, in which the carcase of •
mammoth was imbedded, so perfect that, among other parts.
the pupil of its eye was taken out, and ia now preserved in
the Museum of Moscow. No one will deny that this ele-
phant had lain for several thousand years is its icy envelope;
and if it had been left undisturbed, and the cold had gone
en increasing, for myriads of centuries, we might res.
suably expect that the frozen flesh might cootioue
undecayed until • second glacial period had passed away.
When speculations on the loos series of events which
occurred in the glacial and postglacial periods are indulged
in, the imagination is apt to take alarm at the immensity of
the time required to interpret the monuments of these ages.
all referable to the era of existing species. In order to
abridge the number of centuries which would otherwise be
indispensable, a disposition is shown by many to magnify
I the rate of change in prehistoric times, by investing the
roses which have modified the animate and inani-
mate workl with extraordinary and excessive energy.
It is related of • great Irish orator of our day, that
when he was about to contribute somewhat pmeimo-
, Moody towards • public charity, he was persuaded by
a friend to make • more Ebert' donation. In doing so
he apologized for his first apparent want of generosity,
by saying that his early life had been • content struggle
with scanty means, and that " they who are born to afilo-
eau cannot easily imagine how long • time it takes to get
the chill of poverty out of one's bones." la like manner,
we of the living generation, when called upon to Luke
grants of thousands of centuries in order to explain the
events of what bi called the modern period, shrink natu-
rally at first from making what seems so lavish an expeodi-
titre of past time. Throughout our early ednoation we have
been accustomed to such strict economy in all that relates
to the chronology of the earth and its inhabitants in remote
ages, so fettered have we been by old traditional beliefs,
that even when our reason is convinced, and we are per-
suaded that we ought to make more liberal grants of time
to the geologist, we feel how bard it is to get the chill
of poverty out of our Woes. I will now briefly allude,
in conclusion, to two points on which • gradual
change of opinion has been taking place among geologists of
late years. First, as to whether there has been a continu-
ous succession of events in the organic and inorganic worlds,
uninterrupted by violent and general catastrophes ; and
secondly, whether clear evidence can be obtained of a period
antecedent to the creation of organic beings on the earth. I
am old enough to remember when geologists dogmatised on
both these questions in • manner very different from that
in which they would now venture to indulge. I believe that
by far the greater number now incline to opposite views
from those which were once most commonly entertained.
On the first point it is worthy of remark that although a
belief in sudden and general °mandato= has been losing
ground, as also the doctrine of abrupt transitions from one
set of species of animals and plants to soother of • very
different type, yet the whole series of the recorda which
have boon handed down to us are now more than ever re-
garded as fragmentary. They ought to be looked upon as
more perfect, because) numerous pipaniave bees filled up,
and in the formations newly intercalated in the series we
have found many miming links and venous intermediate
gradations between the nearest allied forms previously
known in the animal and vegetable worlds. Yet the whole
body of monuments which we are endeavouring to decipher
appears more defective than before. For my own part, I
agree with Mr. Darwin in considering them as • mere frac
the of those which have once existed, while no approach to
perfect series was ever formed originally, it having never
been part of the plan of Nature to leave • complete record
of all her works and operations for the enlightenment of
rational beings who might study them in at tor-ages. In refs.
TODOI to the other great question, or the earliest data of vital
phenomena on this planet, the late discoveries is Canada
have at least demonstrated that certain theories founded in
Europe on mere negative seldom* were altogether delusive.
In the course of • geological survey, carried on render the
able direction of Sir William E. Logan, it has been shown
that northward of the river St. Lemmas there is • vast
scrim of stratified and crystalline rocks of gneiss, mire-
schist, quartzite, and limestone, about 40,000 feet in thick-
PPM, which have been called Laurentian. They are more
ancient than the eldest fossiliferous strata of Europe, or
those to which the term primordial had been rashly
assigned. In the first pleas, the newest part of this great
crystalline aeries is uncoeforemble to the ancient (*Noah-
' fermi or so-called primordial rocks which overlie it ; so
that it mat have undergone disturbing movements before
the latter or primordial set were formed. Then
again the older half of the Laureutian series is vermiform.-
ble to the newer portion of the mine. It is in this lowest
and most ancient system of crystalline strata that a lime•
stone, about • thousand feet thick, has bees observed,
containing organic remains. These fossils have been era-
' mined by Dr. Dawson, of Montreal, and he has detected
in them, by aid of the microscope. the distinct structure Of
• large swim of rhizopod. Fine specimens al this
fossil, called mown Canada's', have bees brought to Bath
by Sir Willie= Logan, to be exhibited to the members of
the associatioo. We have every reason to nontose that the
rocks in which these animal remains are iocloded are of as
old • date as any of the formations named azoic in Europe,
if not older, so that they preceded in date rooks once sup-
posed to have been formed before any organic Wimp had
been created. But J will not venture on speeralatioss sans
epeoting "the signs of • begieniug," or "the prospects of
as end," of our terrestrial system—that wide ocean of
scientific conjecture on which so many theorists before my
time have suffered shipwreck. Without trespassing longer
on your time, I will conclude by expressiag to you any
thanks for the hamar you have dime me in eking me to
pro ids over this meeting. I have every memos to hope,
from the many members mad dietiagnimbed stemless when
I already see assembled here, that It will not be Werke ia
Utmost to any at the ptherhip which have preceded tit

The noble lord am moved the adoption of the report,
which was unanimously approved of.
The appointment of the presidents, vice-presidents, and
*oersteds§ of the several sections and sub-sections was then
wade.

The evening meeting was held in the Theatre, which was
crowded. Sir W. Armstrong briefl► introduced Sir C.
Lysli, the new president, and vacated the chair. Sir C,
Lyell thee took the chair, and delivered the inaugural ad-
dress. The greater part of this env referred to the Bath
waters. After touching very briefly on the history of theme
renowned springs, the hon. baronet launched at ones into
the geological theories of their origin, and the geological
phenomena to which such agencies are believed to contri-
bute. He said that the yearly discharge of solid matter
t►rough the springs at Bath. which are not remarkable for
the quantity of their mineral contents, would form a amass
column nine feet in diameter and 140 feet io height. These
ingredients Sr Charles supposes to have bees ab-
sorbed, originally, by rain water, highly charged
with atmospheric sir, filtering downwards through
rents or porous rocks "till it encounter some mans of
heated matter, by which it is converted into steam, sad
then driven upwards through a fissure." The immense
quantity of nitrogen gas evolved by most hot springs as well
as from volcanoes during eruption is attributed to the de.
composition of the atmospheric air. Their locality must, of
course, be determined, like that of other springs, by faults
or fractures in the earth's crust ; but assuming them to
spout from a depth great enough to account for their tempe-
rature, the shaft which now envoys them to the upper air
may have required whole ages to construct Rad. Not that Sir
Charles is disposed to credit the Rich springs with any very
high antiquity. Though they are among the most ancient, his-
torically speaking, of which we have any mooed, and may almost
rank with Caftan, Arethusa, and Thermopylae, though
their discovery is traced to a period prior to that in which
the Romans surrounded them with temples. and beautified
the new city with the imperishable monuments of their
domisios during as many centuries as have elapsed nom
the discovery of America, Sr Charles pronounces them, on
the whole, to be modern in the extreme—mere things of
yesterday, compared with the vast cycles of the geological
calendar. In tracing the effects of such bodies of hot water
permeating the bowels of the earth, Sir Charles borrows
illustrations from a spring discovered 2, ►ears ago, but
never before described, near Redruth, in Cornwall. This
spring, which rime through a lode in Wheal Clifford Cop-
per Mine, is hardly less copious and somewhat hotter
than those at Bath, though it differs materially in its
analysis, and particularly in the proportions of those subtle
elements, recentl► identified by means of the solar spectrum,
to which the efficacy of mineral waters may, for aught we
know, he partly due. Is spite of some facts which seem to
point the other way, Sir Cherie* believes in a " relatiooship
between the action of thermal water sod the filling of rents
with metallic ores"—between hot springs and mines. The
arguments by which he defends this conclusion Sr. too
elaborate to be stated summarily ; but the doctrine seems to
be that although the springs are generally barren of mitellic
bodies, it is because they have parted with them in the
course of their swept, and precipitated them in veins ou
the walls of their &anode. Another function ascribed to
"hydro-thermal" processes is the metamorphism of midi-
meetaryrocks. The favourite ratio° of geologists used to be
that such rocks had been crystallised after fusion by the appli-
cation of beat so fierce and intense as to stagger even the
scientific imagination. Sir Charles states that the "re- I
arrangemeot of particles need not have been brought
about thus "in the dry way," bat may have beim pro-
duced "in the wet way," b► • less raging subterranean
furnace, aided by water. This opinion is supported by
observations on the Homan aqueducts at Pleenbieres, which
show that hot mioersl springs constantly dropping cie
various kinds of stone may affect chemical changes never
before suspected. After referring at some length to the
prolable causes of the refrigeration of Central Europa
during the glacial epoch, Sir Charles connived :—The more
we study and comprehend the geographical changes of the
glacial period, and the migrations of animals and plants to
which it gave rise, the higher our conceptions are raised of
the duration of that subdivision of time, which, though vest
when awasweivi by the sacamica of mall anapdsed la*