La Mina is one of three sites, along with Cueva Millán and La Ermita, located in the middle course of the Arlanza river. La Mina was excavated for the first time in 2006 and three test pits were carried out. In one of them, evidence of two Palaeolithic occupations was identified and several remains of woolly rhinoceros were recovered. Amino acid racemisation dating yielded an age of 52.5 ka BP, the earliest Upper Pleistocene date for Coelodonta antiquitatis on the Iberian Peninsula. This new record may have several implications for understanding the access routes to the Castilian Plateau, together with the definition of a new migratory wave of this species at the end of the Pleistocene. The location of La Mina on the Castilian Plateau may help researchers to complete the movements of this species through the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic on the Iberian Peninsula.

Anthracotheres are generalised artiodactyls that have an extensive record in the Cenozoic of Eurasia and Africa. In North America they have been collected in middle Eocene to early Miocene localities from the California Coast, the Great Plains and the Gulf Coast of the United States, with a single record from the early Miocene of Panama. Here we report few specimens from the early Oligocene (Ar1) Iniyoo Local Fauna of north-western Oaxaca, and the earliest Miocene of Simojovel de Allende, in northern Chiapas. This material has diverse features that indicate they belonged to the bothriodontine Arretotherium, such as selenodont cristids associated with the protoconid and hypoconid, the absence of a premetacristid, and the crenulated enamel. They share with Arretotherium acridens and Arretotherium meridionale the absence of a mesiolingual metacristid, but their general morphology and size indicate a close relationship to Ar. meridionale. Nevertheless, in absence of better-preserved specimens, we decided not to assign the fossil material to this species. Specimens from Oaxaca and Chiapas are the first records of anthracotheres in Mexico. These new records link the previous ones from temperate North America and tropical Central America and indicate that Anthracotheriidae had a very wide geographical distribution in North America during the Palaeogene and the Neogene. Additionally, they represent the southern-most records of Arretotherium in North America during the Oligocene and the early Miocene.

The Naididæ are a family of small fresh-water Oligochæta, in which the usual mode of reproduction is the asexual, by fission; sexual forms are, in general, rare, and in the majority of species, and in some whole genera (e.g. Slavina), they have not so far been observed at all. Records of the genital organs are therefore of interest; and if they were available throughout the group it can hardly be doubted that we should be able to judge better of the affinities of genera and species, and consequently to improve our classification; since the diagnoses of species and genera, and the scheme of classification, depend at present to an unduly large extent on one single set of characters, the form and distribution of the setæ.

The study of sexual individuals of the genus Dero has resulted also in the discovery of the curious phenomenon of the atrophy of the alimentary canal at sexual maturity; this occurs also in Hæmonais (v. ant.); it has not hitherto been found elsewhere in the Oligochæta, though it is known to occur (apparently in a less extreme form) in a number of Polychætes.

Little has hitherto been known about the animal remains of the Old Red Sandstone of Shetland. In 1858 Sir Roderick Murchison mentioned the occurrence, in flaggy beds in the environs of Lerwick, of “the same little Crustacean (the Estheria) which occurs at Thurso and Kirkwall.” Heddle in 1878 refers to the occurrence of fish-remains in the rocks of the same region in the following terms:—“Specimens of small fishes, apparently acanthoides, were shown the writer; these were imbedded in a brown fine-grained muddy sandstone; they were stated to occur in a quarry north of Gardie in Bressay.” Again, in the same year, Sir A. Geikie, in his well-known paper on the “Old Red Sandstone of Western Europe,” states that Dr HEDDLE “informs me that he was shown some ichthyolites (Coccosteus, etc.) in Bressay, which he was assured had been found among the flagstones of that island.” Unfortunately it does not appear that any description of these specimens has ever been published, nor, so far as I am aware, is their present whereabouts known.

This is a report upon the Medusæ collected by the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition during the voyage of the Scotia in the years 1902, 1903, and 1904, under the leadership of Dr W. S. Bruce, to whom I am indebted for the opportunity of examining the specimens.

The collection is a small one containing twelve species, but five more species would have probably been added if only the specimens had been in a recognisable condition. Some of the specimens are in excellent condition, and these were mostly taken at the surface, but others are very much damaged. Unfortunately, the damaged specimens are just the ones wanted in good condition, as they mostly come from the Antarctic region and from the stations where the nets were sent down to a great depth. The damage is done in the nets, and other collections which have passed through my hands tell the same tale. It is the rubbing together of the sides of the net that tears the medusæ to pieces. All deep-sea nets should be so constructed that the sides of the nets cannot come together, and also provided with a large can at the end.

We welcome the views of A. D. Stewart (1990) on our interpretation of the unusual lithology and contact relations of the Stac Fada Member at Stoer. Stewart contends that our lower breccia body is a down-faulted outlier of the main breccia body and is therefore not a feeder. He thus rejects our notion that the Member is a peperitic extrusion: he also rejects the previously published view that the Member is a volcanic mudflow. Instead he suggests that the Stac Fada Member is one of several muddy volcanic horizons in the Stoer Group, all of which underwent post-depositional disturbance.

Present-day organisms have colonised two distinct high pressure environments: the deep sea and oil well and other crustal fluids. In the former, pressures attain 100 MPa and temperatures are generally less than 4°C. In the latter, the temperatures are high, up to 150°C, and occur in combination with pressures of up to 50 MPa. The high temperature is close to the limit of thermal stability of the macromolecules essential for life. The adaptation of present-day marine organisms to high pressure is known to involve modifications to their cell membrane lipids and subtle changes in both structural proteins and enzymes. There is no reason to suppose that they are close to the maximum pressure to which they could adapt and higher pressures could have been colonised in the geological past. The existence of “marker” compounds, characteristic of high pressure organisms, is discussed, and the possibility that isotope ratios are distorted by metabolic processes at high pressure is raised.

There are few questions in geology which have given rise to so many theories, and so much speculation, as the origin of the parallel roads in the valleys of Lochaber.

In the year 1817, the late Dr MacCulloch gave an elaborate description of them, in a paper read before the Geological Society of London. In the year 1818, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh a paper, full of equally interesting details. Both of these observers suggested, in explanation of the shelves which mark the mountain sides of these valleys, that they had been occupied by lakes, which, by earthquakes or other violent convulsions, had been drained. This theory was generally received, until, in the year 1839, Mr Darwin, so justly celebrated as a geologist, and an accurate observer, published his views, and pronounced the shelves to have been formed by the sea; an opinion which, besides being rested on proofs derived from the locality, he enforced, also by his observation of similar appearances in South America.

In the year 1861 the ferns collected by Vieillard in the island of New Caledonia were described by Mettenius in a paper entitled “Filices Novæ Caledoniæ” (Ann. Sc. Nat., iv, 15). Among the organisms described was a new and remarkable fern for the reception of which a new Gleicheniaceous genus Stromatopteris was founded. Having noted in particular the absence of roots, and the hairy and sclerotic character of the axis, Mettenius figured the latter as obliquely ascending at its base, but as upright and closely and repeatedly branched more distally. The simply pinnate unbranched leaf was described as a direct continuation of a branch of the axis, with nodular base, slender rachis, and many small leathery pinnæ with sympodial dichotomous venation. With regard to the sori, attention was directed in particular to their development singly on the pinnæ and towards the base of the upper margins, and to the mound-like hairy receptacle which lodged the forking of the basal acroscopic vein. The sporangia, numbering from two to six, were stated to be distributed on the back and towards the periphery of the receptacle; their stalks were short and massive, the annulus complete and transverse, and dehiscence longitudinal and extrorse.

1. I Divide cubic equations into two varieties or species: the one, comprehending all cubic equations with three real roots; the other, all those with only one real root.

2. Let φ denote any angle whatever, and let τ = tan φ, the radius being unity: let also : then from the doctrine of angular sections we have

which being reduced to the form of an equation, is

Z3-3τZ2-3Z+τ=0.

A disease of Chinese Rhododendrons associated with a Lophodermium sp. was found by one of us in April 1933 (Wilson, 1937). The fungus was first noticed as apparently causing the production of large irregular spots on the leaves of the hybrid Rhododendron Souliei × R. Thomsonii. Later, fructifications were observed on the stems of this hybrid and of many other species, and were found also on the fallen leaves. In 1934 the fungus was discovered on the stems of several species growing at the Forestry Commission Estate at Benmore, Argyllshire. Plants sent to the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, from Cumberland in February 1935 were also found to bear similar fructifications on the stems. As a number of species of Lophodermium have been described on the Ericaceae and one on Rhododendron, it was desirable to ascertain the systematic relationships of the fungus especially to L. Rhododendri Ces., which has been recorded from Britain (Smith and Ramsbottom, 1914; Wilson, 1924) and which is not uncommon on R. ponticum in the vicinity of Edinburgh. It was also desirable to study the effects of the fungus upon the host plant since it is difficult in some cases to decide the degree of its pathogenicity.

The Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh contains a valuable collection of the skulls of the aborigines of Tasmania, which has not as yet been described. As the skulls of this now extinct people are limited in number in museums, and as the opportunity of collecting additional specimens no longer exists, I have thought that an account of their characters, a detailed statement of their measurements on lines similar to those pursued in my previous craniological memoirs, and a comparison of their conformation with that of the Tasmanian skulls in other collections, as described by previous writers, would be of interest to anthropologists, and might assist in the preparation of a summary of their most constant features. Consideration of the affinities and possible descent of the Tasmanians may also be appropriately included in the Memoir.

The chert of the Muir of Rhynie, containing plant-remains, was discovered by Dr W. MACKIE of Elgin while investigating the sedimentary and volcanic rocks of Craigbeg and Ord Hill which occur in that area. The original discovery was made on loose specimens, built into the dykes or scattered over the fields, especially those lying to the north of the road which runs from Rhynie to Cabrach, and east and west of the right-of-way that here connects Windyfield Farm with the public road.

In a former communication to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, I gave an account of an unusual fall of rain in the Lake District in the month of January last year. That occurrence was followed by its opposite in May, June, and July; not for a long period, not since 1826, has the district suffered more from want of water than in those months.

This drought is best shown by the following table, in which will be found the rain-fall for the several months of the year at five different places, only a few miles remote from each other. The table will also show the remarkable contrast as to excess and deficiency of rain during the period. It may be premised, that at Ambleside, where the drought appears to have been felt as much as anywhere, the ordinary fall of rain for the months in question is about three times as great; thus for May (our driest month of the twelve), taking the average of the preceding eleven years, it is 2·37 inches, for June 4·22 inches, for July 5·27 inches, making a total of 12·36 inches, against 4·54 inches of the months of drought.

In the present communication I have applied the results of my first paper to the question of the transference of momentum, of energy, and of matter, in a gas or gaseous mixture; still, however, on the hypothesis of hard spherical particles, exerting no mutual forces except those of impact. The conclusions of §§ 23, 24 of that paper form the indispensable preliminary to the majority of the following investigations. For, except in extreme cases, in which the causes tending to disturb the “special” state are at least nearly as rapid and persistent in their action as is the process of recovery, we are entitled to assume, from the result of § 24, that in every part of a gas or gaseous mixture a local special state is maintained.

Nitroglycerine is commonly described as the tri-nitric ether of glyceryl, and the formula C3H5(O.NO2)3 is accorded to it. This theory of its composition is based (1) upon its mode of formation; (2) upon the statement, made by Railton, Williamson, and others, that it is decomposed by potash into potassium nitrate and glycerine; (3) upon several estimations of the nitrogen which it contains, and one comparative estimation of its carbon. The second argument cannot be accepted, as it has been shown by one of us that the decomposition does not take place in the way stated; and the analytical results which have been obtained by the various investigators are so incomplete and mostly so imperfect, and differ so greatly among themselves, that they cannot be taken as affording any proof of the composition of the substance. It seemed to us, therefore, desirable that some accurate estimations should be obtained, not only of the nitrogen but of the carbon and hydrogen. A brief résume of previous analytical results will show that this is the case.

In my paper on “The Meteorology of the Weddell Quadrant and Adjacent Areas”(Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xlvii. p. 103) data referring to temperature, pressure, cloud, and wind force were given for the stations of Ancud and Point Gallera on the coast of Chili. Since the above paper was communicated to the Society the reduction of the observations taken thrice daily at the Chilian coastal stations has been proceeded with, the observations utilised being published in extenso in the annual volumes issued since 1899 by the Maritime Department of the Republic of Chili. On the completion of the analysis of the tri-daily wind observations at Ancud and Point Gallera some features of considerable interest presented themselves, the most marked being the pronounced monsoonal character of the winds at the latter station—a condition which, as we will see later, holds good between the parallels of 33° and 40° of south latitude along the Chilian littoral. Table I. shows the monthly percentage frequency of the winds at Point Gallera. a lighthouse situated in lat. 40° 01' S. and long. 73° 44' W., for the seven years 1899–1905.

Although some of the phenomena of Muscæ volitantes may be seen by persons of all ages, and with the best eyes; and though those which are more peculiarly entitled to the name are exceedingly common beyond the middle period of life; yet no account has been given of them that has even the slightest pretension to accuracy. M. De La Hire, in his Differens accidens de la Vue, describes these Muscæ as of two kinds; some permanent and fixed, which he ascribes to small drops of extravasated blood upon the retina; and others, as flying about, and changing their place, even though the eye be fixed. The first kind, he describes as like a dark spot upon a white ground; and the second, as like the knots of a deal board. Some parts of them, he says, are very clear, and surrounded with dark threads, and are accompanied with long fillets of irregular shapes, which are bright in the middle, and terminated on each side by parallel black threads.

The Stor Fjord is the great bight which is situated on the eastern side of the mainland of Spitsbergen, and separates it from the large Barents and Edge Islands which lie farther east (see map, fig. 1). It is widest towards the south, the distance between the South Cape of Spitsbergen and Negro Point on Edge Island being 107 miles. At its northern end the Stor Fjord narrows considerably and terminates in Heley (or Helis) Sound, which connects it with the Barents Sea by way of Olga Strait.