also in the gravel where the implements occur.

At Menchecourt, in the sub

urbs of Abbeville, a nearly entire skeleton of the Siberian Rhinoceros is said to have been taken out about forty years ago, a fact affording an answer to the question often raised, as to whether the bones of the extinct mammalia could have been washed out of an older alluvium into a newer one, and so rcdeposited and mingled with the relics of human workmanship. Far-fetched as was this hypothesis, I am informed that it would not, if granted, have seriously shaken the proof of the high antiquity of the human productions, for that proof is independent of organic evidence or fossil remains, and is based on physical data. As was stated to us last year by Sir C. Lyell, we should still have to allow time for great denudation of the chalk, and the removal from place to place, and the spreading out over the length and breadth of a large valley of heaps of chalk flints in beds from 10 to 15 feet in thickness, covered by loams and sands of equal thickness, these last often tranquilly deposited, all of which operations would require the supposition of a great lapse of time. That the mammalian fauna preserved under such circumstances should be found to diverge from the type now established in the same region, is consistent with experience; but the fact of a foreign and extinct fauna was not needed to indicate the great age of the gravel containing the worked flints.

Another independent proof of the age of the same gravel and its asso ciated fossiliferous loam is derived from the large deposits of peat above alluded to in the valley of the Somme, which contain not only monuments of the Roman, but also those of an older Stone Period, usually called Celtic. Bones also of the Bear, of the species still inhabiting the Pyrenees, and of the Beaver, and many large stumps of trees, not yet well examined by botanists, are found in the same peat, the oldest portion of which belongs to times far beyond those of tradition; yet distinguished geologists are of opinion that the growth of all the vegetable matter, and even the original scooping out of the hollows containing it, are events long posterior in date to the gravel with flint implements, nay, posterior even to the formation of the uppermost of the layers of loam with freshwater shells overlying the gravel.

The exploration of caverns, both in the British Isles and other parts of Europe, has in the last few years been prosecuted with renewed ardour and success, although the theoretical explanation of many of the phenomena brought to light seems as yet to baffle the skill of the ablest geologists. Dr. Falconer has given us an account of the remains of several hundred Hippopotami obtained from one cavern near Palermo, in a locality where there is now no running water. The same palæontologist, aided by Col. Wood of Glamorganshire, has recently extracted from a single cave in the Gower peninsula of South Wales, a vast quantity of the antlers of a reindeer (perhaps of two species of reindeer), both allied to the living one. These fossils are most of them shed horns; and there have been already no less than 1100 of them dug out of the mud filling one cave.

In the cave of Brixham in Devonshire, and in another near Palermo in

Sicily, flint implements were observed by Dr. Falconer, associated in such a manner with the bones of extinct mammalia, as to lead him to infer that Man must have coexisted with several lost species of quadrupeds; and M. de Vibraye has also this spring called attention to analogous conclusions at which he has arrived, by studying the position of a human jaw with teeth, accompanied by the remains of a mammoth, under the stalagmite of the Grotto d'Arcis near Troyes in France.

In the recent progress of Physiology, I am informed that the feature perhaps most deserving of note on this occasion is the more extended and successful application of Chemistry, Physics, and the other collateral sciences to the study of the Animal and Vegetable Economy. In proof I refer to the great and steady advances which have, within the last few years, been made in the chemical history of Nutrition, the statics and dynamics of the blood, the investigation of the physical phenomena of the senses, and the electricity of nerves and muscles. Even the velocity of the nerve-force itself has been submitted to measurement. Moreover, when it is now desired to apply the resources of Geometry or Analysis to the elucidation of the phenomena of life, or to obtain a mathematical expression of a physiological law, the first care of the investigator is to acquire precise experimental data on which to proceed, instead of setting out with vague assumptions and ending with a parade of misdirected skill, such as brought discredit on the school of the mathematical physicians of the Newtonian period.

But I cannot take leave of this department of knowledge without likewise alluding to the progress made in scrutinizing the animal and vegetable structure by means of the microscope-more particularly the intimate organization of the brain, spinal cord, and organs of the senses; also to the extension, through means of well-directed experiment, of our knowledge of the functions of the nervous system, the course followed by sensorial impressions and motorial excitement in the spinal cord, and the influence exerted by or through the nervous centres on the movements of the heart, blood-vessels and viscera, and on the activity of the secreting organs;subjects of inquiry, which, it may be observed, are closely related to the question of the organic mechanism whereby our corporeal frame is influ enced by various mental conditions.

And now, in conclusion, I may perhaps be permitted to express the hope that the examples I have given of some of the researches and discoveries which occupy the attention of the cultivators of science, may have tended to illustrate the sublime nature, engrossing interest and paramount utility of such pursuits, from which their beneficial influence in promoting the intellectual progress and the happiness and well-being of mankind may well be inferred. But let us assume that to any of the classical writers of antiquity, sacred or profane, a sudden revelation had been made of all the wonders involved in Creation accessible to man; that to them had been disclosed not only what we now know, but what we are to know hereafter, in some future

age of improved knowledge; would they not have delighted to celebrate the marvels of the Creator's power? They would have described the secret forces by which the wandering orbs of light are retained in their destined paths; the boundless extent of the celestial spaces in which worlds on worlds are heaped; the wonderful mechanism by which light and heat are conveyed through distances which to mortal minds seem quite unfathomable; the mysterious agency of electricity, destined at one time to awaken men's minds to an awful sense of a present Providence, but in after-times to become a patient minister of man's will, and convey his thoughts with the speed of light across the inhabited globe; the beauties and prodigies. of contrivance which the animal and vegetable world display, from mankind downwards to the lowest zoophyte, from the stately oak of the primeval forest to the humblest plant which the microscope unfolds to view; the history of every stone on the mountain brow, of every gay-coloured insect which flutters in the sun-beam;-all would have been described, and all which the discoveries of our more fortunate posterity will in due time disclose, and in language such as none but they could command. It is reserved for future ages to sing such a glorious hymn to the Creator's praise. But is there not enough now seen and heard to make indifference to the wonders around us a deep reproach, nay, almost a crime? If we have neither leisure nor inclination to track the course of the planet and comet through boundless space; to follow the wanderings of the subtle fluid in the galvanic coil or the nicely poised magnet; to read the world's history written on her ancient rocks, the sepulchres of stony relics of ages long gone past, to analyse with curious eye the wonderful combinations of the primitive elements and the secret mysteries of form and being in animal and plant; discovering everywhere connecting links and startling analogies and proofs of adaptation of means to ends;-all tending to charm the senses, to teach, to reclaim a being, who seems but a creeping worm in the presence of this great Creation -What, I repeat, if we will not or cannot do these things, or any of these things, is that any reason why these speaking marvels should be to us almost as though they were not? Marvels indeed they are, but they are also mysteries, the unravelling of some of which tasks to the utmost the highest order of human intelligence. Let us ever apply ourselves seriously to the task, feeling assured that the more we thus exercise, and by exercising improve our intellectual faculties, the more worthy shall we be, the better shall we be fitted to come nearer to our God.

REPORTS

ON

THE STATE OF SCIENCE.

Report on Observations of Luminous Meteors, 1859-60. By a Committee, consisting of JAMES GLAISHER, Esq., F.R.S., F.R.A.S., Secretary to the British Meteorological Society, &c.; J. H. GLADSTONE, Esq., Ph.D., F.R.S. &c.; R. P. GREG, Esq., F.G.S. &c.; and E. J. LOWE, Esq., F.R.A.S., M.B.M.S. &c.

In presenting a continuation of the Reports on the Observation of Luminous Meteors, it will be seen that the work is now placed in the hands of a Committee, and it is with sincere regret that in presenting their first report, they have to announce the loss of Professor Powell, who died on the 11th of June, 1860. The preceding twelve reports were carried on solely by Professor Powell, but from the further prosecution of this labour he felt compelled to retire some little time since on account of failing health, having made arrangements for the continuation of the reports. Within the past year there does not seem to have been any unusual exhibition of meteors, either in August or in November; and there is little to be added to the observations themselves; in one instance only was the same meteor seen by two different persons, viz. that observed at Wrottesley Observatory and at Baldoyle (county Dublin), on March 10, 1860: this meteor was remarkable for its form and for its variation in colour, as noticed by both observers. It is much to be regretted that the observations of this meteor yet collected are insufficient to trace its path, velocity, &c.; it is scarcely possible that so remarkable a meteor, visible from points so distant, can have passed unnoticed, and it is very desirable that if any observations may have been taken of it, that they should be forwarded to the Committee, for the purpose of being submitted to calculation.

M. Julius Schmidt, now of the Royal Athens Observatory, in a communication to M. W. Haidinger of Vienna, read by the latter at Vienna the 6th of October, 1859, before the Imperial Academy, has made some valuable observations upon some phenomena relative to the luminous tails of meteors, of which a résumé is given in the Appendix. An interesting paper has appeared in the Philosophical Magazine, April 1860, "On Luminosity of Meteors from Solar Reflexion," by R. P. Greg, Esq.; a brief analysis is given in the Appendix. In the Journal of the Franklin Institute there is a very interesting account of a large meteor seen over a large extent of country by daylight, on November 15, 1859; an abstract of this paper also appears in the Appendix.

1860.

B