Vertebrate fossils have been converted from natural history objects into research specimens through the act of preparation for over 200 years. All of the basic techniques applied to specimens in the 21st Century were already in use in palaeontological laboratories by the first decade of the 1900s. It behoves any worker in the field to be intimately familiar with processes for treatment of specimens, as these procedures almost always permanently alter material available for interpretation. Historic treatments also complicate attempts to re-treat or re-prepare specimens. Sometimes this results in damage to fossils and loss of information, and often in wasted resources. Most palaeontologists are unaware of the historical evolution of laboratory methods through this time; much of the documentation of this process is considered to be obscure. However, there is in fact a robust body of literature that chronicles the development of procedures for the preparation of fossils. Awareness of the past development of methods is crucial to guiding future directions in the palaeontological laboratory. Regular reporting of laboratory methods in the technical literature at a pace matching that of other analytical methods is integral to the function of palaeontology as a science.

The late Viséan anthracosauroid Eldeceeon rolfei from the East Kirkton Limestone of Scotland is re-described. Information from two originally described and two newly identified specimens broadens our knowledge of this tetrapod. A detailed account of individual skull bones and a revision of key axial and appendicular features are provided, alongside the first complete reconstructions of the skull and lower jaw and a revised reconstruction of the postcranial skeleton. In comparison to Silvanerpeton, the only other anthracosauroid from East Kirkton, Eldeceeon is characterised by a proportionally wider semi-elliptical skull, comparatively smaller nostrils set farther apart, smaller and more rounded orbits, a shorter skull table with gently convex lateral margins, and a deeper suspensorium with a straight posterior margin and a small dorsal embayment. The remarkably large hind feet and elongate toes of Eldeceeon presumably represent an adaptation for attaining high locomotory speed through increased stride length and reduced stride frequency. This would necessitate great muscle force but few muscle contractions. At the beginning of a new stride cycle, repositioning the pes anteriorly and lifting the toes off the ground would require a strong and large muscle to pull the femur upward and rotate it inward and forward. It is hypothesised that such muscle might correspond to the puboischiofemoralis internus 2, which would extend along the posterior half of the vertebral column, consistent with the occurrence of long, curved ribs in the anterior half of the trunk. Using maximum parsimony and Bayesian inference, cladistic analyses of all major groups of stem amniotes retrieve a sister group relationship between Eldeceeon and Silvanerpeton, either as the most plesiomorphic stem amniote clade or as a clade immediately crownward of anthracosauroids.

Earth has been habitable through most of its history, but the anthropogenically mediated greenhouse effect, if sufficiently strong, can threaten Earth's long-standing equability. This paper's main aim is to determine the strength of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect (the climate sensitivity) from observational data and basic physics alone, without recourse to the parameterisations of earth-system models and their inevitable uncertainties. A key finding is that the sensitivity can be constrained by harmonising historical records of land and ocean temperatures with observations of potential climate-change drivers in a non-steady state, energy-balance equation via a least-squares optimisation. The global temperature increase, for a CO2 doubling, is found to lie (95 % confidence limits) between 3.0oC and 6.3oC, with a best estimate of +4oC. Under a business-as-usual scenario, which assumes that there will be no significant change in people's attitudes and priorities, Earth's surface temperature is forecast to rise by 7.9oC over the land, and by 3.6oC over the oceans, by the year 2100. Global temperature rise has slowed in the last decade, leading some to question climate predictions of substantial 21st-Century warming. A formal runs test, however, shows that the recent slowdown is part of the normal behaviour of the climate system.

Materials collected on the territory of the southeastern White Sea area, including diversely preserved body imprints, combined body-trace fossils, specimens with signs of intravital damage and regeneration, and extended ontogenetic series, make it possible to significantly widen the data on the body plan and biology of Dickinsonia, the oldest known mobile animal, included in the Late Precambrian taxon of high rank, Proarticulata. A number of reconstructed anatomical features were added to the obvious directly observed features of Dickinsonia, such as a consistent body shape lacking lateral appendages and temporary outgrowths, transverse differentiation, and anterior–posterior polarity. These reconstructed features include dorsoventral polarity, ciliated mucus-secreting epithelium underlain by a basal lamina, two rows of blind food-gathering pockets, absence of a through-gut, nervous system of diffusive type, axial support band and muscle fibres. Such a set of features indicates the affinity of Dickinsonia and Proarticulata as a whole (the only known Ediacaran Metazoa) to Urbilateria, a hypothetical ancestor of bilaterally symmetrical animals.

The generic assignments of some 200 Ordovician brachiopod species in the Barr and Lower Ardmillan (upper Darriwilian–lower Katian) succession, Girvan are reviewed and, where necessary, modified. This key database on the distribution and occurrence of a Laurentian-marginal brachiopod assemblage has featured in many analyses of global biogeography for the period and has confirmed the position of Girvan at relatively low latitudes. Revision of these taxonomic assignments within a modified stratigraphical framework permits closer comparisons with coeval faunas elsewhere around the palaeocontinent of Laurentia and beyond and allows the definition of a variety of brachiopod biofacies on a fault-controlled basin founded on a dismembered ophiolite.

About three years ago, a Danish vessel was brought into Leith as a prize. Among other articles, she contained a small collection of minerals, which were purchased by Thomas Allan, Esq; and Colonel Imrie, both members of this Society. The country from which these minerals had been brought was not known for certain; but as the collection abounded in Cryolite, it was conjectured, with very considerable probability, that they had been collected in Greenland.

An argument against the hypothesis of central heat has been stated by an ingenious author as carrying with it the evidence of demonstration.

“The essential and characteristic property of the power producing heat, is its tendency to exist every where in a state of equilibrium, and it cannot hence be preserved without loss or without diffusion, in an accumulated state. In the theory of Hutton, the existence of an intense local heat, acting for a long period of time, is assumed. But it is impossible to procure caloric in an insulated state. Waving every objection to its production, and supposing it to be generated to any extent, it cannot be continued, but must be propagated to the contiguous matter. If a heat, therefore, existed in the central region of the earth, it must be diffused over the whole mass; nor can any arrangement effectually counteract this diffusion. It may take place slowly, but it must always continue progressive, and must be utterly subversive of that system of indefinitely renewed operations which is represented as the grand excellence of the Huttonian Theory. Again, he observes, in giving what he says appears to him a demonstration of the fallacy of the first principles of the Huttonian System, it will not be disputed, that the tendency of caloric is to diffuse itself over matter, till a common temperature is established. Nor will it probably be denied, that a power constantly diffusing itself from the centre of any mass of matter, cannot remain for an indefinite time locally accumulated in that mass, but must at length become equal or nearly so over the whole.

The phosphines which have been obtained as yet are not very numerous, and with one or two exceptions their properties have not been exhaustively studied, a fact which is no doubt largely due to the difficulties encountered in preparing them in any quantity.

There are consequently a great many points in their history which require examination, and the object we had in view in the present investigation was chiefly to extend our knowledge of this interesting group of substances.

In a former paper I described certain experiments on the relations of magnetism and twist in iron and nickel, the chief results of which it may be well to give briefly here. When an iron or nickel wire is under the influence of longitudinal and circular magnetisations, it twists in a direction which is definitely related to the direction of the magnetising forces. This effect in iron was discovered by Wiedemann, and for convenience I shall call it the Wiedemann Effect. It was pointed out by Clerk Maxwell that the Wiedemann effect might be explained as a consequence of the earlier discovery made by Joule, that iron lengthens in the direction of magnetisation, and contracts at right angles thereto. Led by a consideration of Barrett's discovery of the shortening of nickel wire in the direction of magnetisation, I determined to test nickel in the same way in which Wiedemann had tested iron. It was quite obvious that, if Maxwell's explanation of the Wiedemann effect were the true one, nickel wire should, ceteris paribus, twist in a sense opposite to that in which iron twists. The experiment when made completely fulfilled the expectation. Thus, when an iron wire, with one end fixed, is traversed by an electric current in the direction in which it is at the same time longitudinally magnetised, the wire is twisted so that the free end rotates right-handedly with reference to the traversing current, or the longitudinal magnetisation. In nickel, on the contrary, the corresponding rotation is left-handed. This was the chief conclusion arrived at in my earlier paper; and a little consideration will show how very readily the Wiedemann effect, whether in iron or in nickel, is explained in terms of the simpler strains studied by Joule and Barrett.

Within recent years several human ova in the previllous stage of development have been discovered and their study, taken in conjunction with the detailed observations of Heuser and Streeter (1941) on the development of the macaque embryo, has resulted in fundamental modifications of the views previously held concerning the early development of the human embryo.

The outlook on early human embryology comprises three phases: first, the phase when only very few specimens had been discovered and the tentative conclusions drawn from their study were to a considerable extent merely surmised by analogy with the phenomena known to occur in the development of other animals; second, the phase where sufficient material has been acquired to enable investigators to verify or deny some of these postulations and even to suspect certain possibilities—like variations in the degree of development of the various elements in embryos of approximately the same age such as is known to occur in other mammals, or early histological changes indicating pathological relations between the embryonic and maternal structures which may foreshadow the failure of continued embryono-maternal relations and impending abortion; and third, a phase when the specimens will be so numerous that the conclusions of the earlier periods can be established with certainty or definitely refuted. At present, early human embryological study is in the second phase, and the early attainment of the third phase is desirable to fill gaps in the present knowledge of the stages in the development of several structures (e.g. the yolk-sac, the amnio-embryonic vesicle, etc.) and to determine details necessary for a more precise comparison of the development of the human ovum with that of other primate and of lower vertebrate forms.

A unique specimen of an unusual elongate segmented compression fossil, Polylurida aenigmatica n. gen., n. sp., is described and illustrated. The bilaterally-symmetrical, dorsoventral structure (c. 6·5 cm long × 0·8 cm maximum width) narrows towards both ends and is subdivided into approximately 19 similar tapering segments, showing no evidence of tagmosis, appendages or an internal gut. The segments are covered with a substantial papillose organic cuticle, each segment bearing towards one end a pair of transverse calcareous bars. These bars are perforated by simple canals filled with strands of dark organic material which traverse their whole thickness and flare out superficially to form pores on both their lower and upper surfaces. Internal horizontal lamination of the bar material suggests an episodic accretionary pattern of skeletal growth. The bars appear to represent internal skeletal structures and are restricted to one side (dorsal or ventral) of the body, where the adjacent cuticle is locally thickened to form a corresponding series of discrete paired densely papillose transverse bands. Although Polyurida may be an unusual segmented worm, its singular suite of characters and lack of data prevent assignment to any higher taxon.

If no provision has been made by the Great Author of Nature, for equalising the light and heat projected upon the different bodies of our system, we may consider the earth as receiving, from the direct action of the solar rays, a degree of heat, intermediate between the condensed radiations sustained by Mercury and Venus, and the attenuated warmth which reaches the remoter planets. The heat which our Globe thus acquires from its locality in the system, is again tempered by the obliquity of its axis, and is distributed over the same parallels of latitude by its daily rotation. When the Sun is in the Equator, his rays, beating on the Earth with a vertical influence, impart to it the full measure of their action; and as his meridian altitude decreases, their intensity suffers a corresponding diminution. The burning heat at the Equator becomes moderated in higher latitudes. In passing through the temperate zone, it declines with great rapidity, and between the Arctic Circle and the Pole, the rays of the Sun are unable even to temper the piercing cold which reigns in these inhospitable regions.

I was originally attracted to the study of Quaternions by Sir W. R Hamilton's ingeniously devised and most valuable operator

to which he called special attention (Lectures on Quaternions, § 620) on account of its promise of usefulness in physical applications. But I soon found that in order that its full power may be applied, in general investigations, it is necessary that we should have processes of definite integration, of the kinds required in physics, applicable to quaternion symbols and not merely to scalar variables. I often consulted Hamilton about this want, and he promised to endeavour to supply it at some future time. I fancy that shortly before his death he must have in some way supplied it, though he certainly did not print, nor does he appear even to have written, anything on the subject. In one of the last letters I received from him, he said that he intended to conclude the final chapter of his Elements, which is devoted to physical applications, by some sections on the use of the operator mentioned above. That chapter remains unfinished, and as Hamilton rarely wrote down the steps of even a complex train of mathematical reasoning until he had mentally completed it, it is to be feared that this portion of his investigations is entirely lost. So far as the analytical aspect of Quaternions is concerned, this loss is very serious indeed, for there can be little doubt that Hamilton's solution would have been of immense value from the purely mathematical point of view.

Conodont elements from Scottish Carboniferous rocks have been reviewed for Colour Alteration Index(CAI) data, and most values range between 1 and 1·5. Assuming a local average geothermal gradient similar to that of today, the observed and predicted CAI values generally fit well. Only a few of the samples analysed were influenced by local igneous intrusives. The CAI range shown lies within the immature (early dry gas) to mature (perhapsmid-oil window) stages of hydrocarbon generation, and this suggests that burial maturation (where CAI values are 1-5) could account for locally generated oil, where this occurred away from igneous intrusions. Alkali-dolerite and tholeiitic intrusives are, however, widespread in the Midland Valley of Scotland, and an understanding of their thermal effects has implications for both coal and petroleum exploration. The insensitivity of conodonts to low temperatures is noted, and the relevance, application and potential of various other palaeothermometers is discussed. Locally, the qualitative study of spore colour (SCI) appears useful.

The dynamics of natural labour have been the field of very little successful study or investigation. The object of the present paper is to make a contribution to this subject. I purpose to show what amount of pressure per square inch is sustained by the ovum in the easiest class of natural labours, and thence to estimate the propelling power exerted in such cases.

It is well known that natural births are ever and anon occurring, in which the ovum is expelled whole, the membranes containing the liquor amnii continuing entire. Into this category many more cases would enter, were it not a generally-followed rule for the attendant to rupture the bag should it advance entire as far as the external parts. Again, as Dr Poppel has pointed out, the attentive observer of a series of easy natural labours has no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion, that in not a few cases the same force which ruptures the bag of membranes is able to, and actually does, complete the delivery.

Drumlins are mounds of boulder clay and are characteristic features of the minor topography of Southern Scotland. The word drum or drumlin as the name of these drift hills is indigenous both in Scotland and Ireland. It is common in Scottish place-names as in Drymen, Tyndrum, and Drumadoon. J. Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1880, vol. ii, p. 116) defines a drum as a knoll or ridge, and refers to its use in the Statistical Account of Scotland as early as 1797. Joseph Wright, English Dialect Dictionary (1900, vol. ii, p. 190), attributes drum to Scotland, but quotes drumlin from Ireland in Antrim and Down. Its first use as a technical term in geology appears to have been in Ireland by Scouler in 1833, who applied it to eskers and to mounds of boulder clay; its restriction to the latter is due first to Maxwell Close (Journ. Roy. Geol. Soc. Ireland, i, 1866, pp. 212, 213.)

In the course of researches on the reproductive system of Cavia attention was drawn to certain variations in the rapidity of the repair of the endometrium after parturition. It was shown by Loeb (1914) and by Stockard and Papanicolaou (1917) that in the guinea-pig there is a close correlation during the œstrous cycle between the changes in the uterus and the events in the ovaries. It happens that in practically all the animals used for embryological researches in this department the ovaries were preserved and have been serially sectioned. It seemed worth while, therefore, to work out in the material available the relations of the post-partum changes in the uterus with the conditions in the ovaries. Recent researches have brought to light further interesting correlations between the anterior pituitary and the ovaries, and indirectly with the uterus, but in the present communication no attempt will be made to deal with this larger question.

In June 1906 there was published an account of the Rotifers collected in the Scottish lochs up to that date (7). Many Rotifers had been observed during the survey of the lakes which are not referred to in that paper, as they were not collected actually in lakes. It is with the object of recording these species, and especially of giving an account of some interesting forms previously unknown or imperfectly known, that this supplementary paper is written. These Rotifers were, almost without exception, collected from moss, and, as is always the case in these circumstances, the Bdelloida greatly preponderated over the other orders.

The earlier mineralogists laboured under two great disadvantages. They could not readily, on account of the small number of students of chemistry, call in the aid of that science: and at the time when mineralogy was becoming a distinct branch of science chemistry was in itself crude as well as cumbrous. They were thus forced to rely chiefly upon external properties; and, where crystalline form was absent, they were confined to what may be called physical properties alone.

Their knowledge of the composition of bodies being thus limited and uncertain, the old nomenclature was to a considerable extent founded upon external features alone.