It has been thought advisable to place the following qualitative results on record owing mainly to their general interest and to the unavoidable interruption of the experiments.

The experiments were carried out in order to determine the effect of transverse pressure on the magnetic induction in a piece of iron or steel.

In the course of some experiments, designed to prepare methylene nitrate, an interesting reaction between methylene iodide and silver nitrate in alcoholic solution was observed. When approximately an equimolecular quantity of methylene iodide is added to a saturated solution of silver nitrate in methyl or ethyl alcohol, glistening white crystals quickly begin to appear and soon form a bulky precipitate.

The self-amputation of limbs, or autotomy, as it has been called, is a remarkable example of one of the provisions which marine animals have for their survival in the struggle for existence. Many species, especially members of the decapod crustacea, have the power of leaving a leg in the grasp of an enemy and escaping to the shelter of a kindly rock. Autotomy also occurs very markedly in some echinoderms.

In December 1908 I received from Mr A. Earland a fragment of a rock, believed to be chalk, which had been dredged from the bottom of the North Sea. Mr Earland also informed me that he believed boulders of a similar rock occurred in some profusion near what is known as the Kinnaird Deep, off the northern coast of Aberdeenshire. As a result of our correspondence a little later, Professor D'Arcy Thompson asked me to investigate such boulders as might presumably be chalk, dredged from the northern parts of the North Sea during the operations of the s.s. Goldseeker, a vessel employed by the North Sea Fisheries Commission, and he has kindly permitted me to include a description of the boulders found by the Goldseeker in the details of this paper.

The general succession of the Cretaceous rocks discovered by Professor Judd on Morvern, along the shores of Loch Aline, Argyllshire, and in the Isle of Mull may be briefly summarised:—