96
NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
that the implement belonging to her was a stone Hammer-head,
and although it was found in the neighbourhood she was not
certain that it came from the Skitts Hill pits. As I was so lucky
as to be able to borrow the hammer-head in order to photograph
it, I am able to give the accompanying illustration (Fig. 1.)
The length is three inches and the largest diameter two inches,
while the perforation measures three-quarters of an inch across.
A transverse section at any point would practically yield a circle.
The material is red crystalline quartzite, characteristic of the
Thames Basin.—Wilfred Mark Webb, F.L.S., Hanwell.
MISCELLANEA.
Personal.—His Majesty has honoured Mr. F, W. Rudler
by conferring upon him the decoration of Companion of the
Imperial Service Order "For Faithful Service." The I.S.O.
was created at the Coronation to mark the Sovereign's appre-
ciation of long and meritorious work on the part of members of
the Imperial Civil Service. All members of the Club will
rejoice that our President's valuable services to the State and to
Science, as Curator of the Museum of Practical Geology, and in
many other ways, should have received recognition by the King.
We are also pleased to note that Mr. Worthington Smith
has received a Civil List Pension of £50 for his services to
Botany and Archaeology; and that Dr. M. C. Cooke has been
awarded the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society. Both these
gentlemen have long been highly esteemed Honorary Members
of the Club.
Influence of Environment.—The Irish Naturalist is
responsible for the following, concerning a "Multinucleate
Syncytium" well-known and valued by our members:—
" Professor Poulton, in opening the discussion on natural selection and
mimicry in Section D (Brit. Association Meeting, Belfast), gave an excellent
practical illustration of the rapidity with which response of the organism to its
environment may take place. The learned speaker had not been a week amid
Hibernian surroundings when, in discussing the relative numbers of mimickers
and mimicked in a particular case, he stated that 'only one out of every thousand
ants was a spider.' "