42 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



GEOLOGY. 



Burrow, the Geologist. — In your December 

 number a slight reference is made to Mr. John 

 Burrow, the " Settle Palaeontologist "—where he is 

 mentioned as "having spent his life in working out 

 the palaeontology of his district." Perhaps it may be 

 worth noting that this was not strictly the case, and 

 also that Mr. Burrow's work, in the fields of science, 

 furnished us with a good instance of what may be 

 done — as an interesting amusement — by our English 

 youth. I first made the acquaintance of Mr. Burrow 

 at Cambridge (where we kept in the same staircase), 

 and afterwards had the privilege and pleasure of re- 

 newing our friendship in his own much loved Craven 

 district. I frequently accompanied him to his pet 

 productive spots about Settle, which he had explored 

 for a considerable distance, and from which, by 

 patient energy, he had made a rich ingathering of 

 fossils— and all this (the point mainly to be noted) 

 while he was as patiently working his way to the 

 height of the sixth form in the neighbouring school at 

 Giggleswick. At Cambridge he won triple honours 

 — in mathematics, classics, and natural science — 

 still keeping to geology as a recreation, and proceed- 

 ing with the work of fossil-arrangement. Hence I 

 venture to say that the great work which he did 

 among the carboniferous rocks for palaeontology, ivas 

 the work of a schoolboy, and that, too, at a time when 

 "natural science" was never mentioned in public 

 school-life. Would that nowadays the interest of 

 this kind of recreative health-giving science could 

 compete in greater degree with the much-absorbing 

 interests of athletics, cricket, and football, in our 

 English schools. — Matthew Wood, Evesham. 



The Ultra-gaseous State of Matter. — One 

 of the most important discoveries in molecular 

 physics is undoubtedly that just communicated to the 

 Royal Society by Dr. Crookes, in a paper entitled 

 "The Illumination of Lines of Molecular Pressure, 

 and the Trajectory of Molecules." It has been so 

 long taken for granted that there could be only three 

 conditions in which matter existed — the solid, liquid, 

 and gaseous — that it comes upon us with downright 

 surprise to hear of a fourth condition — the ultra- 

 gaseous. But there can be little doubt that Dr. 

 Crooke's experiments have proved this. The paper 

 is reported at some length in "Nature" for De- 

 cember 12, and we refer our readers to it for the 

 details of the delicate experiments from which this 

 important conclusion is arrived at. It would seem 

 that the hypothetical "ether" of astronomers, which 

 is supposed to fill space, is not so supposititious as 

 some have argued. 



Marine Fossils in Gannister Beds. — Your 

 correspondent, Jas. Nield, of Oldham, has, I am 

 afraid, somewhat misapprehended the gist of my late 

 discovery of the above in Northumberland. The 



occurrence of marine forms in the lower coal-measures 

 of England (not to be confounded with the often mis- 

 named "lower coal-measures" of Scotland, which 

 are the equivalent of our carboniferous limestone 

 series) has long been well-known to geologists, and 

 the neighbourhood of Oldham is the classical ground 

 for such finds. Up to the beginning of the year just 

 expired, however, the gannister series north of the 

 Tees had been determined and mapped by means of 

 stratigraphical evidence only, none but plant remains 

 similar to those characterising the overlying beds 

 (middle and upper coal - measures) having been re- 

 corded from these beds in the district. In February 

 1878, 1 hit upon the first batch of marine fossils in the 

 south of Northumberland. Since then I have found 

 more elsewhere in the county, and I am informed that 

 others have in the meantime been detected in carrying 

 out mining operations in South Durham. The entire 

 interest of the find lies in the palaeontological evidence 

 of occasional marine conditions having persisted from 

 upper carboniferous limestone or Yoredale beds into 

 those of the coal-measures much further north than 

 was believed by many (including myself) to be the 

 case. Some important theoretical considerations with 

 regard to the classification of the carboniferous rocks 

 depend on such facts, and give them a greater interest 

 than they might, at first sight, be supposed to possess. 

 In the original notice of my find in " Nature" an un- 

 fortunate misprint occurred — country for county — 

 whence, notwithstanding inrmediate correction, the 

 present misapprehension may have arisen. Some 

 account of the beds and their fossils will be found in 

 my recently issued ' ' Outlines of the Geology of North- 

 umberland."— G. H. Lcbour. 



Pleistocene Deposits of the Cornish Coast, 

 near Padstow. — This was the subject of a paper 

 recently read before the Geological Society, by Mr. 

 W. A. E. Ussher, F.G.S. The author described 

 certain deposits seen in a small bay near St. Enodock's 

 chapel, and known as Daymer Bay, and in section at 

 Greenway cliffs. The former included a portion of 

 raised beach, and a reef of consolidated old beach and 

 a peaty deposit below high-water mark, the raised 

 beach indicating a depression of from 5 to 10 feet and 

 a subsequent elevation of more than that amount, 

 during a pause in which the lower beach was formed. 

 The further elevation of the coast was sufficient to 

 favour the growth of forests furnishing the peaty bed, 

 which a subsequent subsidence has brought down to 

 its present level. Greenway cliffs consist of grey 

 slates, resting against which, in two places, are old 

 consolidated blown sands ; about 5 feet above high- 

 water mark is a raised beach, near which the face of 

 the cliff consists of "head " capped by gravel. Mr. 

 Ussher discussed the relative ages of these deposits, 

 and inclined to regard the gravel as a fluviatile deposit, 

 and the stony loam or " head " as an ancient talus or 

 flood-gravel, both deposited before the raised beach. 



