Societies and Academies

Abstract

LONDON. Geological Society, January 6.—Sir Archibald Geikie, Sec.R.S., vice-president, in the chair.—On a Palaeolithic floor at Prah Sands, in Cornwall: Clement Reid, F.R.S., and Eleanor M. Reid. Prah Sands lie about 7 miles east of. Penzance, and have long been known as exhibiting a good section of “head” or rubble-drift, over raised beach, which rests on a wave-worn rocky platform. Recent storms have cleared away the talus at the foot of the cliff, and have exposed, between the “head”and the raised beach, a Palaeolithic land-surface, consisting of loamy soil penetrated by small roots. In and above this occur black seams, full of small fragments of charcoal and bone; these are particularly abundant round groups of large flat stones, which seem to have formed ancient hearths. The black seams contain implements made of vein-quartz. For a few feet above this land-surface the angular “head” consists-mainly of loam with fragments of vein-quartz, some of which are worked. This seems to be the first record of Palaeolithic man in Cornwall.—Implementiferous sections at Wolvercote (Oxfordshire): A. M. Bell. This section shows the following beds:—(1) Oxford Clay; (2) old surface, in which are pits or troughs chiefly filled with gravel and enveloped in weathered clay; (3) a large river-bed, containing gravel at the base, and layers of clay above; (4) Neolithic surface-layer, 2 feet thick. The gravel of the river-bed contains quartzite-pebbles, some of exceptional size, and is covered by a thin lenticular layer of peat and sand, yielding thirty flowering plants and many mosses; the clays over this have probably been formed in a lake, possibly due to a beaver-dam. In the gravel-bed are found implements formed of flint quarried from the Chalk, or of quartzite from pebbles of the Northern Drift, all remarkable for,their size, beauty, and freshness, together with the remains of large mammals, including the mammoth. The old surface, from which the river-bed has been eroded, has also yielded implements associated with quartzites, quartz-pebbles, and lydianstone, gravel from the Thames Valley, limestone-pebbles, Oolitic fossils, and sand.