Geology and Paleontology.

IDENTITY OF ASTRONOMY AND GEOLOGY.

While the Astronomer is studying the form and condition and structure of the planets, in so far as the eye and the telescope can aid him, the Geologist is investigating the form and condition and structure of the planet to which he belongs; and it is from the analogy of the earth’s structure, as thus ascertained, that the astronomer is enabled to form any rational conjecture respecting the nature and constitution of the other planetary bodies. Astronomy and Geology, therefore, constitute the same science—the science of material or inorganic nature.

When the astronomer first surveys the concavity of the celestial vault, he finds it studded with luminous bodies differing in magnitude and lustre, some moving to the east and others to the west; while by far the greater number seem fixed in space; and it is the business of astronomers to assign to each of them its proper place and sphere, to determine their true distance from the earth, and to arrange them in systems throughout the regions of sidereal space.

In like manner, when the geologist surveys the convexity of his own globe, he finds its solid covering composed of rocks and beds of all shapes and kinds, lying at every possible angle, occupying every possible position, and all of them, generally speaking, at the same distance from the earth’s centre. Every where we see what was deep brought into visible relation with what was superficial—what is old with what is new—what preceded life with what followed it.

Thus displayed on the surface of his globe, it becomes the business of the geologist to ascertain how these rocks came into their present places, to determine their different ages, and to fix the positions which they originally occupied, and consequently their different distances from the centre or the circumference of the earth. Raised from their original bed, the geologist must study the internal forces by which they were upheaved, and the agencies by which they were indurated; and when he finds that strata of every kind, from the primitive granite to the recent tertiary marine mud, have been thus brought within his reach, and prepared for his analysis, he reads their respective ages in the organic remains which they entomb; he studies the manner in which they have perished, and he counts the cycles of time and of life which they disclose.—Abridged from the North-British Review, No. 9.

THE GEOLOGY OF ENGLAND

is more interesting than that of other countries, because our island is in a great measure an epitome of the globe; and the observer who is familiar with our strata, and the fossil remains which they include, has not only prepared himself for similar inquiries in other countries, but is already, as it were, by anticipation, acquainted with what he is to find there.—Transactions of the Geological Society.

PROBABLE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH CHANNEL.

The proposed construction of a submarine tunnel across the Straits of Dover has led M. Boué, For. Mem. Geol. Soc., to point out the probability that the English Channel has not been excavated by water-action only; but owes its origin to one of the lines of disturbance which have fissured this portion of the earth’s crust: and taking this view of the case, the fissure probably still exists, being merely filled with comparatively loose material, so as to prove a serious obstacle to any attempt made to drive through it a submarine tunnel.—Proceedings of the Geological Society.

HOW BOULDERS ARE TRANSPORTED TO GREAT HEIGHTS.

Sir Roderick Murchison has shown that in Russia, when the Dwina is at its maximum height, and penetrates into the chinks of its limestone banks, when frozen and expanded it causes disruptions of the rock, the entanglement of stony fragments in the ice. In remarkable spring floods, the stream so expands that in bursting it throws up its icy fragments to 15 or 20 feet above the stream; and the waters subsiding, these lateral ice-heaps melt away, and leave upon the bank the rifled and angular blocks as evidence of the highest ice-mark. In Lapland, M. Böhtlingk assures us that he has found large granitic boulders weighing several tons actually entangled and suspended, like birds’-nests, in the branches of pine-trees, at heights of 30 or 40 feet above the summer level of the stream!28

WHY SEA-SHELLS ARE FOUND AT GREAT HEIGHTS.

The action of subterranean forces in breaking through and elevating strata of sedimentary rocks,—of which the coast of Chili, in consequence of a great earthquake, furnishes an example,—leads to the assumption that the pelagic shells found by MM. Bonpland and Humboldt on the ridge of the Andes, at an elevation of more than 15,000 English feet, may have been conveyed to so extraordinary a position, not by a rising of the ocean, but by the agency of volcanic forces capable of elevating into ridges the softened crust of the earth.

SAND OF THE SEA AND DESERT.

That sand is an assemblage of small stones may be seen with the eye unarmed with art; yet how few are equally aware of the synonymous nature of the sand of the sea and of the land! Quartz, in the form of sand, covers almost entirely the bottom of the sea. It is spread over the banks of rivers, and forms vast plains, even at a very considerable elevation above the level of the sea, as the desert of Sahara in Africa, of Kobi in Asia, and many others. This quartz is produced, at least in part, from the disintegration of the primitive granite rocks. The currents of water carry it along, and when it is in very small, light, and rounded grains, even the wind transports it from one place to another. The hills are thus made to move like waves, and a deluge of sand frequently inundates the neighbouring countries:

To illustrate the trite axiom, that nothing is lost, let us glance at the most important use of sand:

“Quartz in the form of sand,” observes Maltebrun, “furnishes, by fusion, one of the most useful substances we have, namely glass, which, being less hard than the crystals of quartz, can be made equally transparent, and is equally serviceable to our wants and to our pleasures. There it shines in walls of crystal in the palaces of the great, reflecting the charms of a hundred assembled beauties; there, in the hand of the philosopher, it discovers to us the worlds that revolve above us in the immensity of space, and the no less astonishing wonders that we tread beneath our feet.”

PEBBLES.

The various heights and situations at which Pebbles are found have led to many erroneous conclusions as to the period of changes of the earth’s surface. All the banks of rivers and lakes, and the shores of the sea, are covered with pebbles, rounded by the waves which have rolled them against each other, and which frequently seem to have brought them from a distance. There are also similar masses of pebbles found at very great elevations, to which the sea appears never to have been able to reach. We find them in the Alps at Valorsina, more than 6000 feet above the level of the sea; and on the mountain of Bon Homme, which is more than 1000 feet higher. There are some places little elevated above the level of the sea, which, like the famous plain of Crau, in Provence, are entirely paved with pebbles; while in Norway, near Quedlia, some mountains of considerable magnitude seem to be completely formed of them, and in such a manner that the largest pebbles occupy the summit, and their thickness and size diminish as you approach the base. We may include in the number of these confused and irregular heaps most of the depositions of matter brought by the river or sea, and left on the banks, and perhaps even those immense beds of sand which cover the centre of Asia and Africa. It is this circumstance which renders so uncertain the distinction, which it is nevertheless necessary to establish, between alluvial masses created before the commencement of history, and those which we see still forming under our own eyes.

A charming monograph, entitled “Thoughts on a Pebble,” full of playful sentiment and graceful fancy, has been written by the amiable Dr. Mantell, the geologist.

ELEVATION OF MOUNTAIN-CHAINS.

Professor Ansted, in his Ancient World, thus characterises this phenomenon:

These movements, described in a few words, were doubtless going on for many thousands and tens of thousands of revolutions of our planet. They were accompanied also by vast but slow changes of other kinds. The expansive force employed in lifting up, by mighty movements, the northern portion of the continent of Asia, found partial vent; and from partial subaqueous fissures there were poured out the tabular masses of basalt occurring in Central India; while an extensive area of depression in the Indian Ocean, marked by the coral islands of the Laccadives, the Maldives, the great Chagos bank, and some others, were in the course of depression by a counteracting movement.

Hitherto the processes of denudation and of elevation have been so far balanced as to preserve a pretty steady proportion of sea and dry land during geological ages; but if the internal temperature should be so far reduced as to be no longer capable of generating forces of expansion sufficient for this elevatory action, while the denuding forces should continue to act with unabated energy, the inevitable result would be, that every mountain-top would be in time brought low. No earthly barrier could declare to the ocean that there its proud waves should be stayed. Nothing would stop its ravages till all dry land should be laid prostrate, to form the bed over which it would continue to roll an uninterrupted sea.

THE CHALK FORMATION.

Mr. Horner, F.R.S., among other things in his researches in the Delta, considers it extremely probable that every particle of Chalk in the world has at some period been circulating in the system of a living animal.

WEAR OF BUILDING-STONES.

Professor Henry, in an account of testing the marbles used in building the Capitol at Washington, states that every flash of lightning produces an appreciable amount of nitric acid, which, diffused in rain-water, acts on the carbonate of lime; and from specimens subjected to actual freezing, it was found that in ten thousand years one inch would be worn from the blocks by the action of frost.

In 1839, a report of the examination of Sandstones, Limestones, and Oolites of Britain was made to the Government, with a view to the selection of the best material for building the new Houses of Parliament. For this purpose, 103 quarries were described, 96 buildings in England referred to, many chemical analyses of the stones were given, and a great number of experiments related, showing, among other points, the cohesive power of each stone, and the amount of disintegration apparent, when subjected to Brard’s process. The magnesian limestone, or dolomite of Bolsover Moor, was recommended, and finally adopted for the Houses; but the selection does not appear to have been so successful as might have been expected from the skill and labour of the investigation. It may be interesting to add, that the publication of the above Report (for which see Year-Book of Facts, 1840, pp. 78–80) occasioned Mr. John Mallcott to remark in the Times journal, “that all stone made use of in the immediate neighbourhood of its own quarries is more likely to endure that atmosphere than if it be removed therefrom, though only thirty or forty miles:” and the lapse of comparatively few years has proved the soundness of this observation.29

PHENOMENA OF GLACIERS ILLUSTRATED.

Professor Tyndall, being desirous of investigating some of the phenomena presented by the large masses of mountain-ice,—those frozen rivers called Glaciers,—devised the plan of sending a destructive agent into the midst of a mass of ice, so as to break down its structure in the interior, in order to see if this method would reveal any thing of its internal constitution. Taking advantage of the bright weather of 1857, he concentrated a beam of sunlight by a condensing lens, so as to form the focus of the sun’s rays in the midst of a mass of ice. A portion of the ice was melted, but the surrounding parts shone out as brilliant stars, produced by the reflection of the faces of the crystalline structure. On examining these brilliant portions with a lens, Professor Tyndall discovered that the structure of the ice had been broken down in symmetrical forms of great beauty, presenting minute stars, surrounded by six petals, forming a beautiful flower, the plane being always parallel to the plane of congelation of the ice. He then prepared a piece of ice, by making both its surfaces smooth and parallel to each other. He concentrated in the centre of the ice the rays of heat from the electric light; and then, placing the piece of ice in the electric microscope, the disc revealed these beautiful ice-flowers.

A mass of ice was crushed into fragments; the small fragments were then placed in a cup of wood; a hollow wooden die, somewhat smaller than the cup, was then pressed into the cup of ice-fragments by the pressure of a hydraulic press, and the ice-fragments were immediately united into a compact cup of nearly transparent ice. This pressure of fragments of ice into a solid mass explains the formation of the glaciers and their origin. They are composed of particles of ice or snow; as they descend the sides of the mountain, the pressure of the snow becomes sufficiently great to compress the mass into solid ice, until it becomes so great as to form the beautiful blue ice of the glaciers. This compression, however, will not form the solid mass unless the temperature of the ice be near that of freezing water. To prove this, the lecturer cooled a mass of ice, by wrapping it in a piece of tinfoil and exposing it for some time to a bath of the ethereal solution of solidified carbonic-acid gas, the coldest freezing mixture known. This cooled mass of ice was crushed to fragments, and submitted to the same pressure which the other fragments had been exposed to without cohering in the slightest degree.—Lecture at the Royal Institution, 1858.

ANTIQUITY OF GLACIERS.

The importance of glacier agency in the past as well as the present condition of the earth, is undoubtedly very great. One of our most accomplished and ingenious geologists has, indeed, carried back the existence of Glaciers to an epoch of dim antiquity, even in the reckoning of that science whose chronology is counted in millions of years. Professor Ramsay has shown ground for believing that in the fragments of rock that go to make up the conglomerates of the Permian strata, intermediate between the Old and the New Red Sandstone, there is still preserved a record of the action of ice, either in glaciers or floating icebergs, before those strata were consolidated.—Saturday Review, No. 142.

FLOW OF THE MER DE GLACE.

Michel Devouasson of Chamouni fell into a crevasse on the Glacier of Talefre, a feeder of the Mer de Glace, on the 29th of July 1836, and after a severe struggle extricated himself, leaving his knapsack below. The identical knapsack reappeared in July 1846, at a spot on the surface of the glacier four thousand three hundred feet from the place where it was lost, as ascertained by Professor Forbes, who himself collected the fragments; thus indicating the rate of flow of the icy river in the intervening ten years.—Quarterly Review, No. 202.

THE ALLUVIAL LAND OF EGYPT: ANCIENT POTTERY.

Mr. L. Horner, in his recent researches near Cairo, with the view of throwing light upon the geological history of the alluvial land of Egypt, obtained from the lowest part of the boring of the sediment at the colossal statue of Rameses, at a depth of thirty-nine feet, this curious relic of the ancient world; the boring instrument bringing up a fragment of pottery about an inch square and a quarter of an inch in thickness—the two surfaces being of a brick-red colour, the interior dark gray. According to Mr. Horner’s deductions, this fragment, having been found at a depth of 39 feet (if there be no fallacy in his reasoning), must be held to be a record of the existence of man 13,375 years before A.D. 1858, reckoning by the calculated rate of increase of three inches and a half of alluvium in a century—11,517 years before the Christian era, and 7625 before the beginning assigned by Lepsius to the reign of Menos, the founder of Memphis. Moreover it proves in his opinion, that man had already reached a state of civilisation, so far at least as to be able to fashion clay into vessels, and to know how to harden it by the action of strong heat. This calculation is supported by the Chevalier Bunsen, who is of opinion that the first epochs of the history of the human race demand at the least a period of 20,000 years before our era as a fair starting-point in the earth’s history.—Proceedings of Royal Soc., 1858.

Upon this theory, a Correspondent, “An Old Indigo-Planter,” writes to the Athenæum, No. 1509, the following suggestive note: “Having lived many years on the banks of the Ganges, I have seen the stream encroach on a village, undermining the bank where it stood, and deposit, as a natural result, bricks, pottery, &c. in the bottom of the stream. On one occasion, I am certain that the depth of the stream where the bank was breaking was above 40 feet; yet in three years the current of the river drifted so much, that a fresh deposit of soil took place over the débris of the village, and the earth was raised to a level with the old bank. Now had our traveller then obtained a bit of pottery from where it had lain for only three years, could he reasonably draw the inference that it had been made 13,000 years before?”

SUCCESSIVE CHANGES OF THE TEMPLE OF SERAPIS.

The Temple of Serapis at Puzzuoli, near Naples, is perhaps, of all the structures raised by the hands of man, the one which affords most instruction to a geologist. It has not only undergone a wonderful succession of changes in past time, but is still undergoing changes of condition. This edifice was exhumed in 1750 from the eastern shore of the Bay of Baiæ, consisting partly of strata containing marine shells with fragments of pottery and sculpture, and partly of volcanic matter of sub-aerial origin. Various theories were proposed in the last century to explain the perforations and attached animals observed on the middle zone of the three erect marble columns until recently standing; Goethe, among the rest, suggesting that a lagoon had once existed in the vestibule of the temple, filled during a temporary incursion of the sea with salt water, and that marine mollusca and annelids flourished for years in this lagoon at twelve feet or more above the sea-level.

This hypothesis was advanced at a time when almost any amount of fluctuation in the level of the sea was thought more probable than the slightest alteration in the level of the solid land. In 1807 the architect Niccolini observed that the pavement of the temple was dry, except when a violent south wind was blowing; whereas, on revisiting the temple fifteen years later, he found the pavement covered by salt water twice every day at high tide. From measurements made from 1822 to 1838, and thence to 1845, he inferred that the sea was gaining annually upon the floor of the temple at the rate of about one-third of an inch during the first period, and about three-fourths of an inch during the second. Mr. Smith of Jordan Hill, from his visits in 1819 and 1845, found an average rise of about an inch annually, which was in accordance with visits made by Mr. Babbage in 1828, and Professor James Forbes in 1826 and 1843. In 1852 Signor Scaecchi, at the request of Sir Charles Lyell, compared the depth of water on the pavement with its level taken by him in 1839, and found that it had gained only 4½ inches in thirteen years, and was not so deep as when MM. Niccolini and Smith measured it in 1845; from which he inferred that after 1845 the downward movement of the land had ceased, and before 1852 had been converted into an upward movement.

Arago and others maintained that the surface on which the temple stands has been depressed, has remained under the sea, and has again been elevated. Russager, however, contends that there is nothing in the vicinity of the temple, or in the temple itself, to justify this bold hypothesis. Every thing leads to the belief that the temple has remained unchanged in the position in which it was originally built; but that the sea rose, surrounded it to a height of at least twelve feet, and again retired; but the elevated position of the sea continued sufficiently long to admit of the animals boring the pillars. This view can even be proved historically; for Niccolini, in a memoir published in 1840, gives the heights of the level of the sea in the Bay of Naples for a period of 1900 years, and has with much acuteness proved his assertions historically. The correctness of Russager’s opinion, he states, can be demonstrated and reduced to figures by means of the dates collected by Niccolini.—See Jameson’s Journal, No. 58.

At the present time the floor is always covered with sea-water. On the whole, there is little doubt that the ground has sunk upwards of two feet during the last half-century. This gradual subsidence confirms in a remarkable manner Mr. Babbage’s conclusions—drawn from the calcareous incrustations formed by the hot springs on the walls of the building and from the ancient lines of the water-level at the base of the three columns—that the original subsidence was not sudden, but slow and by successive movements.

Sir Charles Lyell (who, in his Principles of Geology, has given a detailed account of the several upfillings of the temple) considers that when the mosaic pavement was re-constructed, the floor of the building must have stood about twelve feet above the level of 1838 (or about 11½ feet above the level of the sea), and that it had sunk about nineteen feet below that level before it was elevated by the eruption of Monte Nuovo.

We regret to add, that the columns of the temple are no longer in the position in which they served so many years as a species of self-registering hydrometer: the materials have been newly arranged, and thus has been torn as it were from history a page which can never be replaced.

THE GROTTO DEL CANE.

This “Dog Grotto” has been so much cited for its stratum of carbonic-acid gas covering the floor, that all geological travellers who visit Naples feel an interest in seeing the wonder.

This cavern was known to Pliny. It is continually exhaling from its sides and floor volumes of steam mixed with carbonic-acid gas; but the latter, from its greater specific gravity, accumulates at the bottom, and flows over the step of the door. The upper part of the cave, therefore, is free from the gas, while the floor is completely covered by it. Addison, on his visit, made some interesting experiments. He found that a pistol could not be fired at the bottom; and that on laying a train of gunpowder and igniting it on the outside of the cavern, the carbonic-acid gas “could not intercept the train of fire when it once began flashing, nor hinder it from running to the very end.” He found that a viper was nine minutes in dying on the first trial, and ten minutes on the second; this increased vitality being, in his opinion, attributable to the stock of air which it had inhaled after the first trial. Dr. Daubeny found that phosphorus would continue lighted at about two feet above the bottom; that a sulphur-match went out in a few minutes above it, and a wax-taper at a still higher level. The keeper of the cavern has a dog, upon which he shows the effects of the gas, which, however, are quite as well, if not better, seen in a torch, a lighted candle, or a pistol.

“Unfortunately,” says Professor Silliman, “like some other grottoes, the enchantment of the ‘Dog Grotto’ disappears on a near view.” It is a little hole dug artificially in the side of a hill facing Lake Agnano: it is scarcely high enough for a person to stand upright in, and the aperture is closed by a door. Into this narrow cell a poor little dog is very unwillingly dragged and placed in a depression of the floor, where he is soon narcotised by the carbonic acid. The earth is warm to the hand, and the gas given out is very constant.

THE WATERS OF THE GLOBE GRADUALLY DECREASING.

This was maintained by M. Bory Saint Vincent, because the vast deserts of sand, mixed up with the salt and remains of marine animals, of which the surface of the globe is partly composed, were formerly inland seas, which have insensibly become dry. The Caspian, the Dead Sea, the Lake Baikal, &c. will become dry in their turn also, when their beds will be sandy deserts. The inland seas, whether they have only one outlet, as the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Baltic, &c., or whether they have several, as the Gulf of Mexico, the seas of O’Kotsk, of Japan, China, &c., will at some future time cease to communicate with the great basins of the ocean; they will become inland seas, true Caspians, and in due time will become likewise dry. On all sides the waters of rivers are seen to carry forward in their course the soil of the continent. Alluvial lands, deltas, banks of sand, form themselves near the coasts, and in the directions of the currents; madreporic animals lay the foundations of new lands; and while the straits become closed, while the depths of the sea fill up, the level of the sea, which it would seem natural should become higher, is sensibly lower. There is, therefore, an actual diminution of liquid matter.

THE SALT LAKE OF UTAH.

Lieutenant Gunnison, who has surveyed the great basin of the Salt Lake, states the water to be about one-third salt, which it yields on boiling. Its density is considerably greater than that of the Red Sea. One can hardly get the whole body below the surface: in a sitting position the head and shoulders will remain above the water, such is the strength of the brine; and on coming to the shore the body is covered with an incrustation of salt in fine crystals. During summer the lake throws on shore abundance of salt, while in winter it throws up Glauber salt plentifully. “The reason of this,” says Lieutenant Gunnison, “is left for the scientific to judge, and also what becomes of the enormous amount of fresh water poured into it by three or four large rivers,—Jordan, Bear, and Weber,—as there is no visible effect.”

FORCE OF RUNNING WATER.

It has been proved by experiment that the rapidity at the bottom of a stream is every where less than in any other part of it, and is greatest at the surface. Also, that in the middle of the stream the particles at the top move swifter than those at the sides. This slowness of the lowest and side currents is produced by friction; and when the rapidity is sufficiently great, the soil composing the sides and bottom gives way. If the water flows at the rate of three inches per second, it will tear up fine clay; six inches per second, fine sand; twelve inches per second, fine gravel; and three feet per second, stones the size of an egg.—Sir Charles Lyell.

THE ARTESIAN WELL OF GRENELLE AT PARIS.

M. Peligot has ascertained that the Water of the Artesian Well of Grenelle contains not the least trace of air. Subterranean waters ought therefore to be aerated before being used as aliment. Accordingly, at Grenelle, has been constructed a tower, from the top of which the water descends in innumerable threads, so as to present as much surface as possible to the air.

The boring of this Well by the Messrs. Mulot occupied seven years, one month, twenty-six days, to the depth of 1794½ English feet, or 194½ feet below the depth at which M. Elie de Beaumont foretold that water would be found. The sound, or borer, weighed 20,000 lb., and was treble the height of that of the dome of the Hôpital des Invalides at Paris. In May 1837, when the bore had reached 1246 feet 8 inches, the great chisel and 262 feet of rods fell to the bottom; and although these weighed five tons, M. Mulot tapped a screw on the head of the rods, and thus, connecting another length to them, after fifteen months’ labour, drew up the chisel. On another occasion, this chisel having been raised with great force, sank at one stroke 85 feet 3 inches into the chalk!

The depth of the Grenelle Well is nearly four times the height of Strasburg Cathedral; more than six times the height of the Hôpital des Invalides at Paris; more than four times the height of St. Peter’s at Rome; nearly four times and a half the height of St. Paul’s, and nine times the height of the Monument, London. Lastly, suppose all the above edifices to be piled one upon each other, from the base-line of the Well of Grenelle, and they would but reach within 11½ feet of its surface.

MM. Elie de Beaumont and Arago never for a moment doubted the final success of the work; their confidence being based on analogy, and on a complete acquaintance with the geological structure of the Paris basin, which is identical with that of the London basin beneath the London clay.

In the duchy of Luxembourg is a well the depth of which surpasses all others of the kind. It is upwards of 1000 feet more than that of Grenelle near Paris.

HOW THE GULF-STREAM REGULATES THE TEMPERATURE OF LONDON.

Great Britain is almost exactly under the same latitude as Labrador, a region of ice and snow. Apparently, the chief cause of the remarkable difference between the two climates arises from the action of the great oceanic Gulf-Stream, whereby this country is kept constantly encircled with waters warmed by a West-Indian sun.

Were it not for this unceasing current from tropical seas, London, instead of its present moderate average winter temperature of 6° above the freezing-point, might for many months annually be ice-bound by a settled cold of 10° to 30° below that point, and have its pleasant summer months replaced by a season so short as not to allow corn to ripen, or only an alpine vegetation to flourish.

Nor are we without evidence afforded by animal life of a greater cold having prevailed in this country at a late geological period. One case in particular occurs within eighty miles of London, at the village of Chillesford, near Woodbridge, where, in a bed of clayey sand of an age but little (geologically speaking) anterior to the London gravel, Mr. Prestwich has found a group of fossil shells in greater part identical with species now living in the seas of Greenland and of similar latitudes, and which must evidently, from their perfect condition and natural position, have existed in the place where they are now met with.—Lectures on the Geology of Clapham, &c. by Joseph Prestwich, A.R.S., F.G.S.

SOLVENT ACTION OF COMMON SALT AT HIGH TEMPERATURES.

Forchhammer, after a long series of experiments, has come to the conclusion that Common Salt at high temperatures, such as prevailed at earlier periods of the earth’s history, acted as a general solvent, similarly to water at common temperatures. The amount of common salt in the earth would suffice to cover its whole surface with a crust ten feet in thickness.

FREEZING CAVERN IN RUSSIA.

This famous Cavern, at Ithetz Kaya-Zastchita, in the Steppes of the Kirghis, is employed by the inhabitants as a cellar. It has the very remarkable property of being so intensely cold during the hottest summers as to be then filled with ice, which disappearing with cold weather, is entirely gone in winter, when all the country is clad in snow. The roof is hung with ever-dripping solid icicles, and the floor may be called a stalagmite of ice and frozen earth. “If,” says Sir R. Murchison, “as we were assured, the cold is greatest when the external air is hottest and driest, that the fall of rain and a moist atmosphere produce some diminution of the cold in the cave, and that upon the setting-in of winter the ice disappears entirely,—then indeed the problem is very curious.” The peasants assert that in winter they could sleep in the cave without their sheepskins.

INTERIOR TEMPERATURE OF THE EARTH: CENTRAL HEAT.

By the observed temperature of mines, and that at the bottom of artesian wells, it has been established that the rate at which such temperature increases as we descend varies considerably in different localities, where the depths are comparatively small; but where the depths are great, we find a much nearer approximation to a common rate of increase, which, as determined by the best observation in the deepest mines, shafts, and artesian wells in Western Europe, is very nearly 1° F. for an increase in depth of fifty feet.—W. Hopkins, M.A., F.R.S.

Humboldt states that, according to tolerably coincident experiments in artesian wells, it has been shown that the heat increases on an average about 1° for every 54·5 feet. If this increase can be reduced to arithmetical relations, it will follow that a stratum of granite would be in a state of fusion at a depth of nearly twenty-one geographical miles, or between four and five times the elevation of the highest summit of the Himalaya.

The following is the opinion of Professor Silliman:

That the whole interior portion of the earth, or at least a great part of it, is an ocean of melted rock, agitated by violent winds, though I dare not affirm it, is still rendered highly probable by the phenomena of volcanoes. The facts connected with their eruption have been ascertained and placed beyond a doubt. How, then, are they to be accounted for? The theory prevalent some years since, that they are caused by the combustion of immense coal-beds, is puerile and now entirely abandoned. All the coal in the world could not afford fuel enough for one of the tremendous eruptions of Vesuvius.

This observed increase of temperature in descending beneath the earth’s surface suggested the notion of a central incandescent nucleus still remaining in a state of fluidity from its elevated temperature. Hence the theory that the whole mass of the earth was formerly a molten fluid mass, the exterior portion of which, to some unknown depth, has assumed its present solidity by the radiation of heat into surrounding space, and its consequent refrigeration.

The mathematical solution of this problem of Central Heat, assuming such heat to exist, tells us that though the central portion of the earth may consist of a mass of molten matter, the temperature of its surface is not thereby increased by more than the small fraction of a degree. Poisson has calculated that it would require a thousand millions of centuries to reduce this fraction to a degree by half its present amount, supposing always the external conditions to remain unaltered. In such cases, the superficial temperature of the earth may, in fact, be considered to have approximated so near to its ultimate limit that it can be subject to no further sensible change.

DISAPPEARANCE OF VOLCANIC ISLANDS.

Many of the Volcanic Islands thrown up above the sea-level soon disappear, because the lavas and conglomerates of which they are formed spread over flatter surfaces, through the weight of the incumbent fluid; and the constant levelling process goes on below the sea by the action of tides and currents. Such islands as have effectually resisted this action are found to possess a solid framework of lava, supporting or defending the loose fragmentary materials.

Among the most celebrated of these phenomena in our times may be mentioned the Isle of Sabrina, which rose off the coast of St. Michael’s in 1811, attained a circumference of one mile and a height of 300 feet, and disappeared in less than eight months; in the following year there were eighty fathoms of water in its place. In July 1831 appeared Graham’s Island off the coast of Sicily, which attained a mile in circumference and 150 or 160 feet in height; its formation much resembled that of Sabrina.

The line of ancient subterranean fire which we trace on the Mediterranean coasts has had a strange attestation in Graham’s Island, which is also described as a volcano suddenly bursting forth in the mid sea between Sicily and Africa; burning for several weeks, and throwing up an isle, or crater-cone of scoriæ and ashes, which had scarcely been named before it was again lost by subsidence beneath the sea, leaving only a shoal-bank to attest this strange submarine breach in the earth’s crust, which thus mingled fire and water in one common action.

Floating islands are not very rare: in 1827, one was seen twenty leagues to the east of the Azores; it was three leagues in width, and covered with volcanic products, sugar-canes, straw, and pieces of wood.

PERPETUAL FIRE.

Not far from the Deliktash, on the side of a mountain in Lycia, is the Perpetual Fire described some forty years since by Captain Beaufort. It was found by Lieutenant Spratt and Professor Forbes, thirty years later, as brilliant as ever, and somewhat increased; for besides the large flame in the corner of the ruins described by Beaufort, there were small jets issuing from crevices in the side of the crater-like cavity five or six feet deep. At the bottom was a shallow pool of sulphureous and turbid water, regarded by the Turks as a sovereign remedy for all skin complaints. The soot deposited from the flames was held to be efficacious for sore eyelids, and valued as a dye for the eyebrows. This phenomenon is described by Pliny as the flame of the Lycian Chimera.

ARTESIAN FIRE-SPRINGS IN CHINA.

According to the statement of the missionary Imbert, the Fire-Springs, “Ho-tsing” of the Chinese, which are sunk to obtain a carburetted-hydrogen gas for salt-boiling, far exceed our artesian springs in depth. These springs are very commonly more than 2000 feet deep; and a spring of continued flow was found to be 3197 feet deep. This natural gas has been used in the Chinese province Tse-tschuan for several thousand years; and “portable gas” (in bamboo-canes) has for ages been used in the city of Khiung-tscheu. More recently, in the village of Fredonia, in the United States, such gas has been used both for cooking and for illumination.

VOLCANIC ACTION THE GREAT AGENT OF GEOLOGICAL CHANGE.

Mr. James Nasmyth observes, that “the floods of molten lava which volcanoes eject are nothing less than remaining portions of what was once the condition of the entire globe when in the igneous state of its early physical history,—no one knows how many years ago!

“When we behold the glow and feel the heat of molten lava, how vastly does it add to the interest of the sight when we consider that the heat we feel and the light we see are the residue of the once universal condition of our entire globe, on whose cooled surface we now live and have our being! But so it is; for if there be one great fact which geological research has established beyond all doubt, it is that we reside on the cooled surface of what was once a molten globe, and that all the phenomena which geology has brought to light can be most satisfactorily traced to the successive changes incidental to its gradual cooling and contraction.

“That the influx of the sea into the yet hot and molten interior of the globe may occasionally occur, and enhance and vary the violence of the phenomenon of volcanic action, there can be little doubt; but the action of water in such cases is only secondary. But for the pre-existing high temperature of the interior of the earth, the influx of water would produce no such discharges of molten lava as generally characterise volcanic eruptions. Molten lava is therefore a true vestige of the Natural History of the Creation.”

THE SNOW-CAPPED VOLCANO.

It is but rarely that the elastic forces at work within the interior of our globe have succeeded in breaking through the spiral domes which, resplendent in the brightness of eternal snow, crown the summits of the Cordilleras; and even where these subterranean forces have opened a permanent communication with the atmosphere, through circular craters or long fissures, they rarely send forth currents of lava, but merely eject ignited scoriæ, steam, sulphuretted hydrogen gas, and jets of carbonic acid.—Humboldt’s Cosmos, vol. i.

TRAVELS OF VOLCANIC DUST.

On the 2d of September 1845, a quantity of Volcanic Dust fell in the Orkney Islands, which was supposed to have originated in an eruption of Hecla, in Iceland. It was subsequently ascertained that an eruption of that volcano took place on the morning of the above day (September 2), so as to leave no doubt of the accuracy of the conclusion. The dust had thus travelled about 600 miles!

GREAT ERUPTIONS OF VESUVIUS.

In the great eruption of Vesuvius, in August 1779, which Sir William Hamilton witnessed from his villa at Pausilippo in the bay of Naples, the volcano sent up white sulphureous smoke resembling bales of cotton, exceeding the height and size of the mountain itself at least four times; and in the midst of this vast pile of smoke, stones, scoriæ, and ashes were thrown up not less than 2000 feet. Next day a fountain of fire shot up with such height and brilliancy that the smallest objects could be clearly distinguished at any place within six miles or more of Vesuvius. But on the following day a more stupendous column of fire rose three times the height of Vesuvius (3700 feet), or more than two miles high. Among the huge fragments of lava thrown out during this eruption was a block 108 feet in circumference and 17 feet high, another block 66 feet in circumference and 19 feet high, and another 16 feet high and 92 feet in circumference, besides thousands of smaller fragments. Sir William Hamilton suggests that from a scene of the above kind the ancient poets took their ideas of the giants waging war with Jupiter.

The eruption of June 1794, which destroyed the greater part of the town of Torre del Greco, was, however, the most violent that has been recorded after the two great eruptions of 79 and 1631.

EARTH-WAVES.

The waves of an earthquake have been represented in their progress, and their propagation, through rocks of different density and elasticity; and the causes of the rapidity of propagation, and its diminution by the refraction, reflection, and interference of the oscillations have been mathematically investigated. Air, water, and earth waves follow the same laws which are recognised by the theory of motion, at all events in space; but the earth-waves are accompanied in their destructive action by discharges of elastic vapours, and of gases, and mixtures of pyroxene crystals, carbon, and infusorial animalcules with silicious shields. The more terrific effects are, however, when the earth-waves are accompanied by cleavage; and, as in the earthquake of Riobamba, when fissures alternately opened and closed again, so that men saved themselves by extending both arms, in order to prevent their sinking.

As a remarkable example of the closing of a fissure, Humboldt mentions that, during the celebrated earthquake in 1851, in the Neapolitan province of Basilicata, a hen was found caught by both feet in the street-pavement of Barile, near Melfi.

Mr. Hopkins has very correctly shown theoretically that the fissures produced by earthquakes are very instructive as regards the formation of veins and the phenomenon of dislocation, the more recent vein displacing the older formation.

RUMBLINGS OF EARTHQUAKES.

When the great earthquake of Coseguina, in Nicaragua, took place, January 23, 1835, the subterranean noise—the sonorous waves in the earth—was heard at the same time on the island of Jamaica and on the plateau of Bogota, 8740 feet above the sea, at a greater distance than from Algiers to London. In the eruptions of the volcano on the island of St. Vincent, April 30, 1812, at 2 A.M., a noise like the report of cannons was heard, without any sensible concussion of the earth, over a space of 160,000 geographical square miles. There have also been heard subterranean thunderings for two years without earthquakes.

HOW TO MEASURE AN EARTHQUAKE-SHOCK.

A new instrument (the Seismometer) invented for this purpose by M. Kreil, of Vienna, consists of a pendulum oscillating in every direction, but unable to turn round on its point of suspension; and bearing at its extremity a cylinder, which, by means of mechanism within it, turns on its vertical axis once in twenty-four hours. Next to the pendulum stands a rod bearing a narrow elastic arm, which slightly presses the extremity of a lead-pencil against the surface of the cylinder. As long as the pendulum is quiet, the pencil traces an uninterrupted line on the surface of the cylinder; but as soon as it oscillates, this line becomes interrupted and irregular, and these irregularities indicate the time of the commencement of an earthquake, together with its duration and intensity.30

Elastic fluids are doubtless the cause of the slight and perfectly harmless trembling of the earth’s surface, which has often continued for several days. The focus of this destructive agent, the seat of the moving force, lies far below the earth’s surface; but we know as little of the extent of this depth as we know of the chemical nature of these vapours that are so highly compressed. At the edges of two craters,—Vesuvius and the towering rock which projects beyond the great abyss of Pichincha, near Quito,—Humboldt has felt periodic and very regular shocks of earthquakes, on each occasion from twenty to thirty seconds before the burning scoriæ or gases were erupted. The intensity of the shocks was increased in proportion to the time intervening between them, and consequently to the length of time in which the vapours were accumulating. This simple fact, which has been attested by the evidence of so many travellers, furnishes us with a general solution of the phenomenon, in showing that active volcanoes are to be considered as safety-valves for the immediate neighbourhood. There are instances in which the earth has been shaken for many successive days in the chain of the Andes, in South America. In certain districts, the inhabitants take no more notice of the number of earthquakes than we in Europe take of showers of rain; yet in such a district Bonpland and Humboldt were compelled to dismount, from the restiveness of their mules, because the earth shook in a forest for fifteen to eighteen minutes without intermission.

EARTHQUAKES AND THE MOON.

From a careful discussion of several thousand earthquakes which have been recorded between 1801 and 1850, and a comparison of the periods at which they occurred with the position of the moon in relation to the earth, M. Perry, of Dijon, infers that earthquakes may possibly be the result of attraction exerted by that body on the supposed fluid centre of our globe, somewhat similar to that which she exercises on the waters of the ocean; and the Committee of the Institute of France have reported favourably upon this theory.

THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF LISBON.

The eloquent Humboldt remarks, that the activity of an igneous mountain, however terrific and picturesque the spectacle may be which it presents to our contemplation, is always limited to a very small space. It is far otherwise with earthquakes, which, although scarcely perceptible to the eye, nevertheless simultaneously propagate their waves to a distance of many thousand miles. The great earthquake which destroyed the city of Lisbon, November 1st, 1755, was felt in the Alps, on the coast of Sweden, into the Antilles, Antigua, Barbadoes, and Martinique; in the great Canadian lakes, in Thuringia, in the flat country of northern Germany, and in the small inland lakes on the shores of the Baltic. Remote springs were interrupted in their flow,—a phenomenon attending earthquakes which had been noticed among the ancients by Demetrius the Callatian. The hot springs of Töplitz dried up and returned, inundating every thing around, and having their waters coloured with iron ochre. At Cadiz, the sea rose to an elevation of sixty-four feet; while in the Antilles, where the tide usually rises only from twenty-six to twenty-eight inches, it suddenly rose about twenty feet, the water being of an inky blackness. It has been computed that, on November 1st, 1755, a portion of the earth’s surface four times greater than that of Europe was simultaneously shaken.31 As yet there is no manifestation of force known to us (says the vivid denunciation of the philosopher), including even the murderous invention of our own race, by which a greater number of people have been killed in the short space of a few minutes: 60,000 were destroyed in Sicily in 1693, from 30,000 to 40,000 in the earthquake of Riobamba in 1797, and probably five times as many in Asia Minor and Syria under Tiberius and Justinian the elder, about the years 19 and 526.

GEOLOGICAL AGE OF THE DIAMOND.

The discovery of Diamonds in Russia, far from the tropical zone, has excited much interest among geologists. In the detritus on the banks of the Adolfskoi, no fewer than forty diamonds have been found in the gold alluvium, only twenty feet above the stratum in which the remains of mammoths and rhinoceroses are found. Hence Humboldt has concluded that the formation of gold-veins, and consequently of diamonds, is comparatively of recent date, and scarcely anterior to the destruction of the mammoths. Sir Roderick Murchison and M. Verneuil have been led to the same result by different arguments.32

WHAT WAS ADAMANT?

Professor Tennant replies, that the Adamant described by Pliny was a sapphire, as proved by its form, and by the fact that when struck on an anvil by a hammer it would make an indentation in the metal. A true diamond, under such circumstances, would fly into a thousand pieces.

WHAT IS COAL?

The whole evidence we possess as to the nature of Coal proves it to have been originally a mass of vegetable matter. Its microscopical characters point to its having been formed on the spot in which we find it, to its being composed of vegetable tissues of various kinds, separated and changed by maceration, pressure, and chemical action, and to the introduction of its earthy matter, in a large number of instances, in a state of solution or fine molecular subdivision. Dr. Redfern, from whose communication to the British Association we quote, knows nothing to countenance the supposition that our coal-beds are mainly formed of coniferous wood, because the structures found in mother-coal, or the charcoal layer, have not the character of the glandular tissue of such wood, as has been asserted.

Geological research has shown that the immense forests from which our coal is formed teemed with life. A frog as large as an ox existed in the swamps, and the existence of insects proves that the higher order of organic creation flourished at this epoch.

It has been calculated that the available coal-beds in Lancashire amount in weight to the enormous sum of 8,400,000,000 tons. The total annual consumption of this coal, it has been estimated, amounts to 3,400,120 tons; hence it is inferred that the coal-beds of Lancashire, at the present rate of consumption, will last 2470 years. Making similar calculations for the coal-fields of South Wales, the north of England, and Scotland, it will readily be perceived how ridiculous were the forebodings which lecturing geologists delighted to indulge in a few years ago.

TORBANE-HILL COAL.

The coal of Torbane Hill, Scotland, is so highly inflammable, that it has been disputed at law whether it be true coal, or only asphaltum, or bitumen. Dr. Redfern describes it as laminated, splitting with great ease horizontally, like many cannel coals, and like them it may be lighted at a candle. In all parts of the bed stigmaria and other fossil plants occur in greater numbers than in most other coals; their distinct vascular tissue may be easily recognised by a common pocket lens, and 65½ of the mass consists of carbon.

Dr. Redfern considers that all our coals may be arranged in a scale having the Torbane-Hill coal at the top and anthracite at the bottom. Anthracite is almost pure carbon; Torbane Hill contains less fixed carbon than most other cannels: anthracite is very difficult to ignite, and gives out scarcely any gas; Torbane-Hill burns like a candle, and yields 3000 cubic feet of gas per ton, more than any other known coal, its gas being also of greatly superior illuminating power to any other. The only differences which the Torbane-Hill coal presents from others are differences of degree, not of kind. It differs from other coals in being the best gas-coal, and from other cannels in being the best cannel.

HOW MALACHITE IS FORMED.

The rich copper-ore of the Ural, which occurs in veins or masses, amid metamorphic strata associated with igneous rocks, and even in the hollows between the eruptive rocks, is worked in shafts. At the bottom of one of these, 280 feet deep, has been found an enormous irregularly-shaped botryoidal mass of Malachite (Greek malache, mountain-green), sending off strings of green copper-ore. The upper surface of it is about 18 feet long and 9 wide; and it was estimated to contain 15,000 poods, or half a million pounds, of pure and compact malachite. Sir Roderick Murchison is of opinion that this wonderful subterraneous incrustation has been produced in the stalagmitic form, during a series of ages, by copper solutions emanating from the surrounding loose and sporous mass, and trickling through it to the lowest cavity upon the subjacent solid rock. Malachite is brought chiefly from one mine in Siberia; its value as raw material is nearly one-fourth that of the same weight of pure silver, or in a manufactured state three guineas per pound avoirdupois.33

LUMPS OF GOLD IN SIBERIA.

The gold mines south of Miask are chiefly remarkable for the large lumps or pepites of gold which are found around the Zavod of Zarevo-Alexandroisk. Previous to 1841 were discovered here lumps of native gold; in that year a lump of twenty-four pounds was met with; and in 1843 a lump weighing about seventy-eight pounds English was found, and is now deposited with others in the Museum of the Imperial School of Mines at St. Petersburg.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON UPON BURNET’S THEORY OF THE EARTH.

In 1668, Dr. Thomas Burnet printed his Theoria Telluris Sacra, “an eloquent physico-theological romance,” says Sir David Brewster, “which was to a certain extent adopted even by Newton, Burnet’s friend. Abandoning, as some of the fathers had done, the hexaëmeron, or six days of Moses, as a physical reality, and having no knowledge of geological phenomena, he gives loose reins to his imagination, combining passages of Scripture with those of ancient authors, and presumptuously describing the future catastrophes to which the earth is to be exposed.” Previous to its publication, Burnet presented a copy of his book to Newton, and requested his opinion of the theory which it propounded. Newton took “exceptions to particular passages,” and a correspondence ensued. In one of Newton’s letters he treats of the formation of the earth, and the other planets, out of a general chaos of the figure assumed by the earth,—of the length of the primitive days,—of the formation of hills and seas, and of the creation of the two ruling lights as the result of the clearing up of the atmosphere. He considers the account of the creation in Genesis as adapted to the judgment of the vulgar. “Had Moses,” he says, “described the processes of creation as distinctly as they were in themselves, he would have made the narrative tedious and confused amongst the vulgar, and become a philosopher more than a prophet.” After referring to several “causes of meteors, such as the breaking out of vapours from below, before the earth was well hardened, the settling and shrinking of the whole globe after the upper regions or surface began to be hard,” Newton closes his letter with an apology for being tedious, which, he says, “he has the more reason to do, as he has not set down any thing he has well considered, or will undertake to defend.”—See the Letter in the Appendix to Sir D. Brewster’s Life of Newton, vol. ii.

The primitive condition of the earth, and its preparation for man, was a subject of general speculation at the close of the seventeenth century. Leibnitz, like his great rival (Newton), attempted to explain the formation of the earth, and of the different substances which composed it; and he had the advantage of possessing some knowledge of geological phenomena: the earth he regarded as having been originally a burning mass, whose temperature gradually diminished till the vapours were condensed into a universal ocean, which covered the highest mountains, and gradually flowed into vacuities and subterranean cavities produced by the consolidation of the earth’s crust. He regarded fossils as the real remains of plants and animals which had been buried in the strata; and, in speculating on the formation of mineral substances, he speaks of crystals as the geometry of inanimate nature.—Brewster’s Life of Newton, vol. ii. p. 100, note. (See also “The Age of the Globe,” in Things not generally Known, p. 13.)

“THE FATHER OF ENGLISH GEOLOGY.”

In 1769 was born, the son of a yeoman of Oxfordshire, William Smith. When a boy he delighted to wander in the fields, collecting “pound-stones” (Echinites), “pundibs” (Terebratulæ), and other stony curiosities; and receiving little education beyond what he taught himself, he learned nothing of classics but the name. Grown to be a man, he became a land-surveyor and civil engineer, and was much engaged in constructing canals. While thus occupied, he observed that all the rocky masses forming the substrata of the country were gently inclined to the east and south-east,—that the red sandstones and marls above the coal-measures passed below the beds provincially termed lias-clay and limestone—that these again passed underneath the sands, yellow limestone, and clays that form the table-land of the Coteswold Hills; while they in turn plunged beneath the great escarpment of chalk that runs from the coast of Dorsetshire northward to the Yorkshire shores of the German Ocean. He further observed that each formation of clay, sand, or limestone, held to a very great extent its own peculiar suite of fossils. The “snake-stones” (Ammonites) of the lias were different in form and ornament from those of the inferior oolite; and the shells of the latter, again, differed from those of the Oxford clay, Cornbrash, and Kimmeridge clay. Pondering much on these things, he came to the then unheard-of conclusion that each formation had been in its turn a sea-bottom, in the sediments of which lived and died marine animals now extinct, many specially distinctive of their own epochs in time.

Here indeed was a discovery,—made, too, by a man utterly unknown to the scientific world, and having no pretension to scientific lore. “Strata Smith’s” find was unheeded for many a long year; but at length the first geologists of the day learned from the land-surveyor that superposition of strata is inseparably connected with the succession of life in time. Hooke’s grand vision was at length realised, and it was indeed possible “to build up a terrestrial chronology from rotten shells” imbedded in the rocks. Meanwhile he had constructed the first geological map of England, which has served as a basis for geological maps of all other parts of the world. William Smith was now presented by the Geological Society with the Wollaston Medal, and hailed as “the Father of English Geology.” He died in 1840. Till the manner as well as the fact of the first appearance of successive forms of life shall be solved, it is not easy to surmise how any discovery can be made in geology equal in value to that which we owe to the genius of William Smith.—Saturday Review, No. 140.

DR. BUCKLAND’s GEOLOGICAL LABOURS.

Sir Henry De la Beche, in his Anniversary Address to the Geological Society in 1848, on presenting the Wollaston Medal to Dr. Buckland, felicitously observed:

It may not be generally known that, while yet a child, at your native town, Axminster in Devonshire, ammonites, obtained by your father from the lime quarries in the neighbourhood, were presented to your attention. As a scholar at Winchester, the chalk, with its flints, was brought under your observation, and there it was that your collections in natural history first began. Removed to Oxford, as a scholar of Corpus Christi College, the future teacher of geology in that University was fortunate in meeting with congenial tastes in our colleague Mr. W. J. Broderip, then a student at Oriel College. It was during your walks together to Shotover Hill, when his knowledge of conchology was so valuable to you, enabling you to distinguish the shells of the Oxford oolite, that you laid the foundation for those field-lectures, forming part of your course of geology at Oxford, which no one is likely to forget who has been so fortunate at any time as to have attended them. The fruits of your walks with Mr. Broderip formed the nucleus of that great collection, more especially remarkable for the organic remains it contains, which, after the labours of forty years, you have presented to the Geological Museum at Oxford, in grave recollection of the aid which the endowments of that University, and the leisure of its vacations, had afforded you for extensive travelling during a residence at Oxford of nearly forty-five years.

DISCOVERIES OF M. AGASSIZ.34

This great paleontologist, in the course of his ichthyological researches, was led to perceive that the arrangement by Cuvier according to organs did not fulfil its purpose with regard to fossil fishes, because in the lapse of ages the characteristics of their structures were destroyed. He therefore adopted the only other remaining plan, and studied the tissues, which, being less complex than the organs, are oftener found intact. The result was the very remarkable discovery, that the tegumentary membrane of fishes is so intimately connected with their organisation, that if the whole of the fish has perished except this membrane, it is practicable, by noting its characteristics, to reconstruct the animal in its most essential parts. Of the value of this principle of harmony, some idea may be formed from the circumstance, that on it Agassiz has based the whole of that celebrated classification of which he is the sole author, and by which fossil ichthyology has for the first time assumed a precise and definite shape. How essential its study is to the geologist appears from the remark of Sir Roderick Murchison, that “fossil fishes have every where proved the most exact chronometer of the age of rocks.”

SUCCESSION OF LIFE IN TIME.

In the Museum of Economic Geology, in Jermyn Street, may be seen ores, metals, rocks, and whole suites of fossils stratigraphically arranged in such a manner that, with an observant eye for form, all may easily understand the more obvious scientific meanings of the Succession of Life in Time, and its bearing on geological economies. It is perhaps scarcely an exaggeration to say, that the greater number of so-called educated persons are still ignorant of the meaning of this great doctrine. They would be ashamed not to know that there are many suns and material worlds besides our own; but the science, equally grand and comprehensible, that aims at the discovery of the laws that regulated the creation, extension, decadence, and utter extinction of many successive species, genera, and whole orders of life, is ignored, or, if intruded on the attention, is looked on as an uncertain and dangerous dream,—and this in a country which was almost the nursery of geology, and which for half a century has boasted the first Geological Society in the world.—Saturday Review, No. 140.

PRIMITIVE DIVERSITY AND NUMBERS OF ANIMALS IN GEOLOGICAL TIMES.

Professor Agassiz considers that the very fact of certain stratified rocks, even among the oldest formations, being almost entirely made up of fragments of organised beings, should long ago have satisfied the most sceptical that both animal and vegetable life were as active and profusely scattered upon the whole globe at all times, and during all geological periods, as they are now. No coral reef in the Pacific contains a larger amount of organic débris than some of the limestone deposits of the tertiary, of the cretaceous, or of the oolitic, nay even of the paleozoic period; and the whole vegetable carpet covering the present surface of the globe, even if we were to consider only the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics, leaving entirely out of consideration the entire expanse of the ocean, as well as those tracts of land where, under less favourable circumstances, the growth of plants is more reduced,—would not form one single seam of workable coal to be compared to the many thick beds contained in the rocks of the carboniferous period alone.

ENGLAND IN THE EOCENE PERIOD.

Eocene is Sir Charles Lyell’s term for the lowest group of the Tertiary system in which the dawn of recent life appears; and any one who wishes to realise what was the aspect presented by this country during the Eocene period, need only go to Sheerness. If, leaving that place behind him, he walks down the Thames, keeping close to the edge of the water, he will find whole bushels of pyritised pieces of twigs and fruits. These fruits and twigs belong to plants nearly allied to the screw-pine and custard-apple, and to various species of palms and spice-trees which now flourish in the Eastern Archipelago. At the time they were washed down from some neighbouring land, not only crocodilian reptiles, but sharks and innumerable turtles, inhabited a sea or estuary which now forms part of the London district; and huge boa-constrictors glided amongst the trees which fringed the adjoining shores.

Countless as are the ages which intervened between the Eocene period and the time when the little jawbones of Stonesfield were washed down to the place where they were to await the day when science should bring them again to light, not one mammalian genus which now lives upon our plane has been discovered amongst Eocene strata. We have existing families, but nothing more.—Professor Owen.

FOOD OF THE IGUANODON.

Dr. Mantell, from the examination of the anterior part of the right side of the lower jaw of an Iguanodon discovered in a quarry in Tilgate Forest, Sussex, has detected an extraordinary deviation from all known types of reptilian organisation, and which could not have been predicated; namely, that this colossal reptile, which equalled in bulk the gigantic Edentata of South America, and like them was destined to obtain support from comminuted vegetable substances, was also furnished with a large prehensile tongue and fleshy lips, to serve as instruments for seizing and cropping the foliage and branches of trees; while the arrangement of the teeth as in the ruminants, and their internal structure, which resembles that of the molars of the sloth tribe in the vascularity of the dentine, indicate adaptations for the same purpose.

Among the physiological phenomena revealed by paleontology, there is not a more remarkable one than this modification of the type of organisation peculiar to the class of reptiles to meet the conditions required by the economy of a lizard placed under similar physical relations; and destined to effect the same general purpose in the scheme of nature as the colossal Edentata of former ages and the large herbivorous mammalia of our own times.

THE PTERODACTYL—THE FLYING DRAGON.

The Tilgate beds of the Wealden series, just mentioned, have yielded numerous fragments of the most remarkable reptilian fossils yet discovered, and whose wonderful forms denote them to have thronged the shallow seas and bays and lagoons of the period. In the grounds of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham the reader will find restorations of these animals sufficiently perfect to illustrate this reptilian epoch. They include the iguanodon, an herbivorous lizard exceeding in size the largest elephant, and accompanied by the equally gigantic and carnivorous megalosaurus (great saurian), and by the two yet more curious reptiles, the pylæosaurus (forest, or weald, saurian) and the pterodactyl (from pteron, ‘wing,’ and dactylus, ‘a finger’), an enormous bat-like creature, now running upon the ground like a bird; its elevated body and long neck not covered with feathers, but with skin, naked, or resplendent with glittering scales; its head like that of a lizard or crocodile, and of a size almost preposterous compared with that of the body, with its long fore extremities stretched out, and connected by a membrane with the body and hind legs.

Suddenly this mailed creature rose in the air, and realised or even surpassed in strangeness the flying dragon of fable: its fore-arms and its elongated wing-finger furnished with claws; hand and fingers extended, and the interspace filled up by a tough membrane; and its head and neck stretched out like that of the heron in its flight. When stationary, its wings were probably folded back like those of a bird; though perhaps, by the claws attached to its fingers, it might suspend itself from the branches of trees.

MAMMALIA IN SECONDARY ROCKS.

It was supposed till very lately that few if any Mammalia were to be found below the Tertiary rocks, i. e. those above the chalk; and this supposed fact was very comfortable to those who support the doctrine of “progressive development,” and hold, with the notorious Vestiges of Creation, that a fish by mere length of time became a reptile, a lemur an ape, and finally an ape a man. But here, as in a hundred other cases, facts, when duly investigated, are against their theory. A mammal jaw had been already discovered by Mr. Brodie on the shore at the back of Swanage Point, in Dorsetshire, when Mr. Beckles, F.G.S., traced the vein from which this jaw had been procured, and found it to be a stratum about five inches thick, at the base of the Middle Purbeck beds; and after removing many thousand tons of rock, and laying bare an area of nearly 7000 square feet (the largest cutting ever made for purely scientific purposes), he found reptiles (tortoises and lizards) in hundreds; but the most important discovery was that of the jaws of at least fourteen different species of mammalia. Some of these were herbivorous, some carnivorous, connected with our modern shrews, moles, hedgehogs, &c.; but all of them perfectly developed and highly-organised quadrupeds. Ten years ago, no remains of quadrupeds were believed to exist in the Secondary strata. “Even in 1854,” says Sir Charles Lyell (in a supplement to the fifth edition of his Manual of Elementary Geology), “only six species of mammals from rocks older than the Tertiary were known in the whole world.” We now possess evidence of the existence of fourteen species, belonging to eight or nine genera, from the fresh-water strata of the Middle Purbeck Oolite. It would be rash now to fix a limit in past time to the existence of quadrupeds.—The Rev. C. Kingsley.

FOSSIL HUMAN BONES.

In the paleontological collection in the British Museum is preserved a considerable portion of a human skeleton imbedded in a slab of rock, brought from Guadaloupe, and often referred to in opposition to the statement that hitherto no fossil human hones have been found. The presence of these bones, however, has been explained by the circumstance of a battle and the massacre of a tribe of Galtibis by the Caribs, which took place near the spot in which the bones were found about 130 years ago; for as the bodies of the slain were interred on the seashore, their skeletons may have been subsequently covered by sand-drift, which has since consolidated into limestone.

It will be seen by reference to the Philosophical Transactions, that on the reading of the paper upon this discovery to the Royal Society, in 1814, Sir Joseph Banks, the president, considered the “fossil” to be of very modern formation, and that probably, from the contiguity of a volcano, the temperature of the water may have been raised at some time, and dissolving carbonate of lime readily, may have deposited about the skeleton in a comparatively short period hard and solid stone. Every person may be convinced of the rapidity of the formation and of the hardness of such stone by inspecting the inside of tea-kettles in which hard water is boiled.

Descriptions of petrifactions of human bodies appear to refer to the conversion of bodies into adipocere, and not into stone. All the supposed cases of petrifaction are probably of this nature. The change occurs only when the coffin becomes filled with water. The body, converted into adipocere, floats on the water. The supposed cases of changes of position in the grave, bursting open the coffin-lids, turning over, crossing of limbs, &c., formerly attributed to the coming to life of persons buried who were not dead, is now ascertained to be due to the same cause. The chemical change into adipocere, and the evolution of gases, produce these movements of dead bodies.—Mr. Trail Green.

THE MOST ANCIENT FISHES.

Among the important results of Sir Roderick Murchison’s establishment of the Silurian system is the following:

That as the Lower Silurian group, often of vast dimensions, has never afforded the smallest vestige of a Fish, though it abounds in numerous species of the marine classes,—corals, crinoidea, mollusca, and crustacea; and as in Scandinavia and Russia, where it is based on rocks void of fossils, its lowest stratum contains fucoids only,—Sir R. Murchison has, after fifteen years of laborious research steadily directed to this point, arrived at the conclusion, that a very long period elapsed after life was breathed into the waters before the lowest order of vertebrata was created; the earliest fishes being those of the Upper Silurian rocks, which he was the first to discover, and which he described “as the most ancient beings of their class which have yet been brought to light.” Though the Lower Silurian rocks of various parts of the world have since been ransacked by multitudes of prying geologists, who have exhumed from them myriads of marine fossils, not a single ichthyolite has been found in any stratum of higher antiquity than the Upper Silurian group of Murchison.

The most remarkable of all fossil fishes yet discovered have been found in the Old Red Sandstone cliffs at Dorpat, where the remains are so gigantic (one bone measuring two feet nine inches in length) that they were at first supposed to belong to saurians.

Sir Roderick’s examination of Russia has, in short, proved that the ichthyolites and mollusks which, in Western Europe, are separately peculiar to smaller detached basins, were here (in the British Isles) cohabitants of many parts of the same great sea.

EXTINCT CARNIVOROUS ANIMALS OF BRITAIN.

Professor Owen has thus forcibly illustrated the Carnivorous Animals which preyed upon and restrained the undue multiplication of the vegetable feeders. First we have the bear family, which is now represented in this country only by the badger. We were once blest, however, with many bears. One species seems to have been identical with the existing brown bear of the European continent. Far larger and more formidable was the gigantic cave-bear (Ursus spelæus), which surpassed in size his grisly brother of North America. The skull of the cave-bear differs very much in shape from that of its small brown relative just alluded to; the forehead, in particular, is much higher,—to be accounted for by an arrangement of air-cells similar to those which we have already remarked in the elephant. The cave-bear has left its remains in vast abundance in Germany. In our own caves, the bones of hyænas are found in greater quantities. The marks which the teeth of the hyæna make upon the bones which it gnaws are quite unmistakable. Our English hyænas had the most undiscriminating appetite, preying upon every creature, their own species amongst others. Wolves, not distinguishable from those which now exist in France and Germany, seem to have kept company with the hyænas; and the Felis spelæa, a sort of lion, but larger than any which now exists, ruled over all weaker brutes. Here, says Professor Owen, we have the original British Lion. A species of Machairodus has left its remains at Kent’s Hole, near Torquay. In England we had also the beaver, which still lingers on the Danube and the Rhone, and a larger species, which has been called Trogontherium (gnawing beast), and a gigantic mole.

THE GREAT CAVE TIGER OR LION OF BRITAIN.

Remains of this remarkable animal of the drift or gravel period of this country have been found at Brentford and elsewhere near London. Speaking of this animal, Professor Owen observes, that “it is commonly supposed that the Lion, the Tiger, and the Jaguar are animals peculiarly adapted to a tropical climate. The genus Felis (to which these animals belong) is, however, represented by specimens in high northern latitudes, and in all the intermediate countries to the equator.” The chief condition necessary for the presence of such animals is an abundance of the vegetable-feeding animals. It is thus that the Indian tiger has been known to follow the herds of antelope and deer in the lofty mountains of the Himalaya to the verge of perpetual snow, and far into Siberia. “It need not, therefore,” continues Professor Owen, “excite surprise that indications should have been discovered in the fossil relics of the ancient mammalian population of Europe of a large feline animal, the contemporary of the mammoth, of the tichorrhine rhinoceros, of the great gigantic cave-bear and hyæna, and the slayer of the oxen, deer, and equine quadrupeds that so abounded during the same epoch.” The dimensions of this extinct animal equal those of the largest African lion or Bengal tiger; and some bones have been found which seem to imply that it had even more powerful limbs and larger paws.

THE MAMMOTHS OF THE BRITISH ISLES.

Dr. Buckland has shown that for long ages many species of carnivorous animals now extinct inhabited the caves of the British islands. In low tracts of Yorkshire, where tranquil lacustrine (lake-like) deposits have occurred, bones (even those of the lion) have been found so perfectly unbroken and unworn, in fine gravel (as at Market Weighton), that few persons would be disposed to deny that such feline and other animals once roamed over the British isles, as well as other European countries. Why, then, is it improbable that large elephants, with a peculiarly thick integument, a close coating of wool, and much long shaggy hair, should have been the occupants of wide tracts of Northern Europe and Asia? This coating, Dr. Fleming has well remarked, was probably as impenetrable to rain and cold as that of the monster ox of the polar circle. Such is the opinion of Sir Roderick Murchison, who thus accounts for the disappearance of the mammoths from Britain:

When we turn from the great Siberian continent, which, anterior to its elevation, was the chief abode of the mammoths, and look to the other parts of Europe, where their remains also occur, how remarkable is it that we find the number of these creatures to be justly proportionate to the magnitude of the ancient masses of land which the labours of geologists have defined! Take the British isles, for example, and let all their low, recently elevated districts be submerged; let, in short, England be viewed as the comparatively small island she was when the ancient estuary of the Thames, including the plains of Hyde Park, Chelsea, Hounslow, and Uxbridge, were under the water; when the Severn extended far into the heart of the kingdom, and large eastern tracts of the island were submerged,—and there will then remain but moderately-sized feeding-grounds for the great quadrupeds whose bones are found in the gravel of the adjacent rivers and estuaries.

This limited area of subsistence could necessarily only keep up a small stock of such animals; and, just as we might expect, the remains of British mammoths occur in very small numbers indeed, when compared with those of the great charnel-houses of Siberia, into which their bones had been carried down through countless ages from the largest mass of surface which geological inquiries have yet shown to have been dry land during that epoch.

The remains of the mammoth, says Professor Owen, have been found in all, or almost all, the counties of England. Off the coast of Norfolk they are met with in vast abundance. The fishermen who go to catch turbot between the mouth of the Thames and the Dutch coast constantly get their nets entangled in the tusks of the mammoth. A collection of tusks and other remains, obtained in this way, is to be seen at Ramsgate. In North America, this gigantic extinct elephant must have been very common; and a large portion of the ivory which supplies the markets of Europe is derived from the vast mammoth graveyards of Siberia.

The mammoth ranged at least as far north as 60°. There is no doubt that, at the present day, many specimens of the musk-ox are annually becoming imbedded in the mud and ice of the North-American rivers.

It is curious to observe, that the mammoth teeth which are met with in caves generally belonged to young mammoths, who probably resorted thither for shelter before increasing age and strength emboldened them to wander far afield.

THE RHINOCEROS AND HIPPOPOTAMUS OF ENGLAND.

The mammoth was not the only giant that inhabited England in the Pliocene or Upper Tertiary period. We had also here the Rhinoceros tichorrhinus, or “strongly walled about the nose,” remains of which have been discovered in enormous quantities in the brickfields about London. Pallas describes an entire specimen of this creature, which was found near Yakutsk, the coldest town on the globe. Another rhinoceros, leptorrhinus (fine nose), dwelt with the elephant of Southern Europe. In Siberia has been discovered the Elaimotherium, forming a link between the rhinoceros and the horse.

In the days of the mammoth, we had also in England a Hippopotamus, rather larger than the species which now inhabits the Nile. Of our British hippopotamus some remains were dug up by the workmen in preparing the foundations of the New Junior United Service Club-house, in Regent-street.

THE ELEPHANT AND TORTOISE.

The idea of an Elephant standing on the back of a Tortoise was often laughed at as an absurdity, until Captain Cautley and Dr. Falconer at length discovered in the hills of Asia the remains of a tortoise in a fossil state of such a size that an elephant could easily have performed the above feat.

COEXISTENCE OF MAN AND THE MASTODON.

Dr. C. F. Winslow has communicated to the Boston Society of Natural History the discovery of the fragment of a human cranium 180 feet below the surface of the Table Mountain, California. Now the mastodon’s bones being found in the same deposits, points very clearly to the probability of the appearance of the human race on the western portions of North America at least before the extinction of those huge creatures. Fragments of mastodon and Elephas primigenius have been taken ten and twenty feet below the surface in the above locality; where this discovery of human and mastodon remains gives strength to the possible truth of an old Indian tradition,—the contemporary existence of the mammoth and aboriginals in this region of the globe.

HABITS OF THE MEGATHERIUM.

Much uncertainty has been felt about the habits of the Megatherium, or Great Beast. It has been asked whether it burrowed or climbed, or what it did; and difficulties have presented themselves on all sides of the question. Some have thought that it lived in trees as much larger than those which now exist as the Megatherium itself is larger than the common sloth.35 This, however, is now known to be a mistake. It did not climb trees—it pulled them down; and in order to do this the hinder parts of its skeleton were made enormously strong, and its prehensile fore-legs formed so as to give it a tremendous power over any thing which it grasped. Dr. Buckland suggested that animals which got their living in this way had a very fair chance of having their heads broken. While Professor Owen was still pondering over this difficulty, the skull of a cognate animal, the Mylodon, came into his hands. Great was his delight when he found that the mylodon not only had his head broken, but broken in two different places, at two different times; and moreover so broken that the injury could only have been inflicted by some such agent as a fallen tree. The creature had recovered from the first blow, but had evidently died of the second. This tribe had, as it turns out, two skulls, an outer and an inner one—given them, as it would appear, expressly with a view to the very dangerous method in which they were intended to obtain their necessary food.

The dentition of the megatherium is curious. The elephant gets teeth as he wants them. Nature provided for the comfort of the megatherium in another way. It did not get new teeth, but the old ones went on for ever growing as long as the animal lived; so that as fast as one grinding surface became useless, another supplied its place.

THE DINOTHERIUM, OR TERRIBLE BEAST.

The family of herbivorous Cetaceans are connected with the Pachydermata of the land by one of the most wonderful of all the extinct creatures with which geologists have made us acquainted. This is the Dinotherium, or Terrible Beast. The remains of this animal were found in Miocene sands at Eppelsheim, about forty miles from Darmstadt. It must have been larger than the largest extinct or living elephant. The most remarkable peculiarity of its structure is the enormous tusks, curving downwards and terminating its lower jaw. It appears to have lived in the water, where the immense weight of these formidable appendages would not be so inconvenient as on land. What these tusks were used for is a mystery; but perhaps they acted as pickaxes in digging up trees and shrubs, or as harrows in raking the bottom of the water. Dr. Buckland used to suggest that they were perhaps employed as anchors, by means of which the monster might fasten itself to the bank of a stream and enjoy a comfortable nap. The extreme length of the Dinotherium was about eighteen feet. Professor Kemp, in his restoration of the animal, has given it a trunk like that of the elephant, but not so long, and the general form of the tapir.—Professor Owen.

THE GLYPTODON.

There are few creatures which we should less have expected to find represented in fossil history by a race of gigantic brethren than the armadillo. The creature is so small, not only in size but in all its works and ways, that we with difficulty associate it with the idea of magnitude. Yet Sir Woodbine Parish has discovered evidences of enormous animals of this family having once dwelt in South America. The huge loricated (plated over) creature whose relics were first sent has received the name of Glyptodon, from its sculptured teeth. Unlike the small armadillos, it was unable to roll itself up into a ball; though an enormous carnivore which lived in those days must have made it sometimes wish it had the power to do so. When attacked, it must have crouched down, and endeavoured to make its huge shell as good a defence as possible.—Professor Owen.

INMATES OF AN AUSTRALIAN CAVERN.

From the fossil-bone caverns in Wellington Valley, in 1830, were sent to Professor Owen several bones which belonged, as it turned out, to gigantic kangaroos, immensely larger than any existing species; to a kind of wombat, to formidable dasyures, and several other genera. It also appeared that the bones, which were those of herbivores, had evidently belonged to young animals, while those of the carnivores were full-sized; a fact which points to the relations between the two families having been any thing but agreeable to the herbivores.

THE POUCH-LION OF AUSTRALIA.

The Thylacoleo (Pouch-Lion) was a gigantic marsupial carnivore, whose character and affinities Professor Owen has, with exquisite scientific tact, made out from very small indications. This monster, which had kangaroos with heads three feet long to feed on, must have been one of the most extraordinary animals of the antique world.

THE CONEY OF SCRIPTURE.

Paleontologists have pointed out the curious fact that the Hyrax, called ‘coney’ in our authorised version of the Bible, is really only a diminutive and hornless rhinoceros. Remains have been found at Eppelsheim which indicate an animal more like a gigantic Hyrax than any of the existing rhinoceroses. To this the name of Acerotherium (Hornless Beast) has been given.

A THREE-HOOFED HORSE.

Professor Owen describes the Hipparion, or Three-hoofed Horse, as the first representative of a family so useful to mankind. This animal, in addition to its true hoof, appears to have had two additional elementary hoofs, analogous to those which we see in the ox. The object of these no doubt was to enable the Hipparion to extricate his foot with greater ease than he otherwise could when it sank through the swampy ground on which he lived.

TWO MONSTER CARNIVORES OF FRANCE.

A huge carnivorous creature has been found in Miocene strata in France, in which country it preyed upon the gazelle and antelope. It must have been as large as a grisly bear, but in general appearance and teeth more like a gigantic dog. Hence the name of Amphicyon (Doubtful Dog) has been assigned to it. This animal must have derived part of its support from vegetables. Not so the coeval monster which has been called Machairodus (Sabre-tooth). It must have been somewhat akin to the tiger, and is by far the most formidable animal which we have met with in our ascending progress through the extinct mammalia.—Professor Owen.

GEOLOGY OF THE SHEEP.

No unequivocal fossil remains of the sheep have yet been found in the bone-caves, the drift, or the more tranquil stratified newer Pliocene deposits, so associated with the fossil bones of oxen, wild-boars, wolves, foxes, otters, &c., as to indicate the coevality of the sheep with those species, or in such an altered state as to indicate them to have been of equal antiquity. Professor Owen had his attention particularly directed to this point in collecting evidence for a history of British Fossil Mammalia. No fossil core-horns of the sheep have yet been any where discovered; and so far as this negative evidence goes, we may infer that the sheep is not geologically more ancient than man; that it is not a native of Europe, but has been introduced by the tribes who carried hither the germs of civilisation in their migrations westward from Asia.

THE TRILOBITE.

Among the earliest races we have those remarkable forms, the Trilobites, inhabiting the ancient ocean. These crustacea remotely resemble the common wood-louse, and like that animal they had the power of rolling themselves into a ball when attacked by an enemy. The eye of the trilobite is a most remarkable organ; and in that of one species, Phacops caudatus, not less than 250 lenses have been discovered. This remarkable optical instrument indicates that these creatures lived under similar conditions to those which surround the crustacea of the present day.—Hunt’s Poetry of Science.

PROFITABLE SCIENCE.

In that strip of reddish colour which runs along the cliffs of Suffolk, and is called the Redcrag, immense quantities of cetacean remains have been found. Four different kinds of whales, little inferior in size to the whalebone whale, have left their bones in this vast charnel-house. In 1840, a singularly perplexing fossil was brought to Professor Owen from this Redcrag. No one could say what it was. He determined it to be the tooth of a cetacean, a unique specimen. Now the remains of cetaceans in the Suffolk crag have been discovered in such enormous quantities, that many thousands a-year are made by converting them into manure.

EXTINCT GIGANTIC BIRDS OF NEW ZEALAND.

In the islands of New Zealand have been found the bones of large extinct wingless Birds, belonging to the Post Tertiary or Recent system, which have been deposited by the action of rivers. The bird is named Moa by the natives, and Dinornis by naturalists: some of the bones have been found in two caves in the North Island, and have been sold by the natives at an extraordinary price. The caves occur in limestone rocks, and the bones are found beneath earth and a soft deposit of carbonate of lime. The largest of the birds is stated to have stood thirteen or fourteen feet, or twice the height of the ostrich; and its egg large enough to fill the hat of a man as a cup. Several statements have appeared of these birds being still in existence, but there is every reason to believe the Moa to be altogether extinct.

An extensive collection of remains of these great wingless birds has been collected in New Zealand by Mr. Walter Mantell, and deposited in the British Museum. Among these bones Professor Owen has discovered a species which he regards as the most remarkable of the feathered class for its prodigious strength and massive proportions, and which he names Dinornis elephantopus, or elephant-footed, of which the Professor has been able to construct an entire lower limb: the length of the metatarsal bone is 9¼ inches, the breadth of the lower end being 5-1/3 inches. The extraordinary proportions of the metatarsus of this wingless bird will, however, be still better understood by comparison with the same bone in the ostrich, in which the metatarsus is 19 inches in length, the breadth of its lower end being only 2½ inches. From the materials accumulated by Mr. Mantell, the entire skeleton of the Dinornis elephantopus has been reconstructed; and now forms a worthy companion of the Megatherium and Mastodon in the gallery of fossil remains in the British Museum. This species of Dinornis appears to have been restricted to the Middle Island of New Zealand.36

Another specimen of the remains of the Dinornis is preserved in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in Lincoln’s-Inn Fields; and the means by which the college obtained this valuable acquisition is thus graphically narrated by Mr. Samuel Warren, F.R.S.:

In the year 1839, Professor Owen was sitting alone in his study, when a shabbily-dressed man made his appearance, announcing that he had got a great curiosity, which he had brought from New Zealand, and wished to dispose of to him. It had the appearance of an old marrow-bone, about six inches in length, and rather more than two inches in thickness, with both extremities broken off; and Professor Owen considered that, to whatever animal it might have belonged, the fragment must have lain in the earth for centuries. At first he considered this same marrow-bone to have belonged to an ox, at all events to a quadruped; for the wall or rim of the bone was six times as thick as the bone of any bird, even of the ostrich. He compared it with the bones in the skeleton of an ox, a horse, a camel, a tapir, and every quadruped apparently possessing a bone of that size and configuration; but it corresponded with none. On this he very narrowly examined the surface of the bony rim, and at length became satisfied that this fragment must have belonged to a bird!—to one at least as large as an ostrich, but of a totally different species; and consequently one never before heard of, as an ostrich was by far the biggest bird known.