VIII NOTES BY THE EDITOR 



only of the coarse gravel with worked flints above mentioned, but also 

 of supers-imposed beds of sand and loam, in which are many fresh- 

 water and land shells, for the most part entire, and of species now 

 living in the same part of France. "With the shells are found bones of 

 the mammoth and an extinct rhinoceros, R. tichorhinus, an extinct 

 species of deer, and fossil remains of the horse, ox, and other ani- 

 mals. These are met with in the overlying beds, and sometimes also 

 in the gravel where the implements occur. At Menchecourt, in the 

 suburbs of Abbeville, a nearly entire skeleton of the Siberian rhinoce- 

 ros is said to have been taken out about forty years ago, a fact afford- 

 ing an answer to the question often raised, as to whether the bones of 

 the extinct mammalia could have been washed out of an older alluvium 

 into a newer one, and so redeposited and mingled with the relics of 

 human workmanship. 



" The exploration of caverns, both in the British Isles and other parts 

 of Europe, has in the last few years been prosecuted with renewed 

 ardor and success, although the theoretical explanation of many of the 

 phenomena brought to light seems as yet to baffle the skill of the ablest 

 geologists. Dr. Falconer has given us an account of the remains of 

 several hundred hippopotami, obtained from one cavern, near Palermo, 

 in a locality where there is now no running water. The same palaeon- 

 tologist, aided by Colonel Wood, of Glamorganshire, has recently 

 extracted from a single cave in the Gower peninsula of South Wales 

 a vast quantity of the antlers of a reindeer, perhaps of two species 

 of reindeer, both allied to the living one. These fossils are most of 

 them shed horns; and there have been already no less than eleven 

 hundred of them dug out of the mud filling one cave. 



" In the cave of Brixham, in Devonshire, and in another near Paler- 

 mo, in Sicily, flint implements were observed by Dr. Falconer, associated 

 in such a manner with the bones of extinct mammalia, as to lead him 

 to infer that man must have coexisted with several lost species of quad- 

 rupeds; and M. de Vibraye has also this spring called attention to 

 analogous conclusions, at which he has arrived hy studying the posi- 

 tion of a human jaw with teeth, accompanied by the remains of a 

 mammoth, under the stalagmite of the Grotto d'Arcis, near Troyes, in 

 France." 



An international congress of persons interested in chemical pursuits 

 was held at Carlsruhe, Germany, in September, 1860, Dumas of Pa"ris 

 being in the chair. The attendance was large, and although a great 

 majority of those present, as might have been expected, were Ger- 

 mans, yet representatives from many other parts of the world were not 

 wanting. The proceedings lasted some days, and a detailed account 

 of the deliberations is to be published. 



Among the questions submitted for general discussion were the 

 following ; 



Would it be judicious to establish a difference between the term 

 atom and molecule ? 



