86 THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
biography of the boulder :—"It was originally one of the rounded and smoothed
roches moutounees, or projecting masses of rock ground down by the passage of a
glacier over its bed, so familiar to all Alpine travellers, and so commonly met
with in the valleys and ravines not merely of the Lake District alone, but of
Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Next it was split off from its base, and started
forth on its slow path downwards in the body of a glacier, grinding in its turn
against the rocky bed, and losing the sharp angles of its fractured surfaces in the
process. Ultimately the ice in which it was imbedded, and which had by this
time passed over the site of the city of Manchester, melted, and the block was
dropped on the bed of gravel on which it was found in the sewer, and surrounded
by the sandy mud which had travelled along with it in the ice, and now forms
the Boulder Clay. How much of its journey was carried on in the ice moving
on the land, and how much in an iceberg floating in the sea, is an open question.
It is even possible that all its journey may have been in ice moving on the land,
which at that time was depressed beneath a sea too shallow to float the enormous
thickness of ice. On these points we may remark that there are hardly any
two geologists of the same opinion. No one can, however, dispute the fact
that the presence of the boulder in the Oxford Road implies the presence of moving
ice over the area of Manchester, and a climate which was Arctic in its severity in
what are now the temperate regions of North-western Europe."
Mr. Fitch remarked that he recently saw the remains of a large boulder near
Prestead Hall, Feering, which had come out of the clay pit there.
Votes of thanks for their communications were passed to Mr. Christy and the
Rev. A. W. Rowe, and the meeting concluded with the usual service of tea and
coffee and light refreshments.
Visit to New Insect Galleries, British Museum of Natural History,
Saturday, May 5th, 1888.
On Saturday afternoon, May 5th, an assembly of the club was held in the British
Museum of Natural History, Cromwell Road, South Kensington, for the purpose
of viewing the newly-arranged Insect Galleries, under the guidance of Mr. C. O.
Waterhouse, of the Entomological Department of the Museum, and Mr. W.
White, F.E.S.
Commencing with the section of the Index Museum which has been set apart
for the methodical treatment of insect structure, and which is still in the course of
arrangement by Mr. Waterhouse, the conductor explained the bearing of the
various details which are being for the first time in the history of the Museum
elaborated in connective relation, and all admirably displayed with the greatest
skill. The homologies in the structure and external form of insects of different
orders ; the variations in the neuration of the wings as an aid to classification,
and also from the point of view of comparative anatomy ; examples of extreme
sexual dimorphism; of protective resemblance ; of the development of special
sense organs and mechanical contrivances for the protection or welfare of the
insects possessing them—all have due consideration and illustration in this
excellent section. A considerable time must elapse before the cases are all filled,
as the selection and preparation of such specimens is a work requiring great
care and judgment; but already much material for earnest study has been
brought together, giving promise in the future of a truly marvellous epitome, in
actual specimens and preparations, of insect anatomy and biology.