RECENT EXPLORATION AND SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2194, 31 July 1886, Page 3

RECENT EXPLORATION AND SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION.

The director of the Geological Survey of Ireland, Professor Hull, F.R.S., delivered the annual address of the Victoria (Philosophical) Institute in London, on the 28th of May, on which occasion the Institute's new President, Professor Stokes, President of the Royal Society, took the chair. The report was read by Captain F. Petrio, the honorary secretary, and showed that the Institute's home, colonial, and foreign members were upwards of eleven hundred, including many who joined from a desire to avail themselves of the Institutes' privileges. An increasing number of leading scientific men now contributed papers and aided in the work of bringing about a truer appreciation of the result of scientific inquiry, especially in cases where scientific discovery was alleged by the opponents of religious beliefs to be subversive thereof. The author of the Address then gavo an account of the work, discoveries, and general results of the recent Geological and Geographical Expedition to Egypt, Arabia, and Western Palestine, of which he had charge. Sketching the course taken by him (which to a considerable extent took the route ascribed to the Israelites), he gave an account of the physical features of the country, evidences of old sea margins 200 feet above the pre«ent sea margins, and showed tiiat at one time an arm of the Mediterranean had occupied the Valley of the Nile as far as the First Cataract, at which time Africa wAs an island (an opinion also arrived at by another of the Institute's members, Sir W . Dawson), and that, at the time of the Exodus, the Red Sea ran up into the Bitter Lakes, and must have formed a barrier to the traveller's progress at that period. He then alluded to the great charges of elevation in the land eastward of these lakes, mentioning that the waters of the Jordon valley once stood 1,292 feet above their present height, and that the waters of the Dead Sea, which he found 1,050 feet deep, were once on a level with the present Mediterranean sea margin, or 1,292 feet above their present height. The great physical changes which had taken place in geological times were evidenced by the fact that whilst the rocks in Western Palestine were generally limestone, those of the mountains of Sinai were amongst the most ancient in the world. The various geological and geographical features of the country were so described as to make the address a condensed report of all that i* now known of them in Egypt, Palestine, and Arabia Petnea. Sir Henry Barkly, G.C.M.G., F.R.S., moved a vote of thanks to Professor Hull, and to those who had contributed to the ' work of tho institute during the year, which included Assyrioloeicsu investigations by Professor Sayce, Mr Boscawen, and others ; M. Maspero's and Captain Conder'n Egyptian papers ; Professor Porter's Eastern researches ; also a review of the question of Evolution by Professor Virchow, and the results of investigations in regard to the subject of the origin of man, as to which it had been shown by Sir William Dawson, that geology divided the chronology of animal life into four "great periods"; in the first— or Eozoic— in the Geological as in the Bible records, were found the great reptile-; and the last, or Tertiary, was again sulidmded intp five " periods,' 1 and it was only in the last of these, the " modern " period, that the evidences of man's presence had been found. Aeain, as regards his ape descent, the formation and proportions of tho skull and bones of the ape considered most like man were found to be so different from those of man as to place insuperable difficulties in the way of the theory. In the gorilla, the high crest on the skull, which was always found in the hyena, was absent in man. Also, among other points, if the capacity of the brain of the anthropoid ape were taken at ten, that of man even in his savage state was twenty-six, or nearly thrice as much, a very important fact when, as it was known any appreciable diminution in the brain of man was at once accompanied by idiocy. As recrards the trant>mutability wf species, Barrande's arguments against the theory, founded on the results of a life of research among the fossil strata, had not yet been overthrown ; and modern research clearly pointed to the fact that one great bar to the transmutability of species lay in the refined and minute differences in the molecular arrangements In their organs. The proceedings were concluded by a vote of thanks to Professor Stokes, under whose presidency it was remarked that the work of the Institute would be carried out with the increased help and guidance of men of the highest scientific attaimuents and in a manner to tend %n acjvanee Truth. A conversazione was then held in the Museum.

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