5f2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



summit of the Carboniferous formation. At the mouth of the Paria 

 tliis is at the water's edge ; at the mouth of the Colorado Chiquito it 

 is 3,800 feet above the river. The fall of the river, in the same dis- 

 tance, is about 000 feet, so that the whole dip of the rock between 

 the two points is about 3,200 feet. The distance, by river, is sixty- 

 five miles ; in a direct line, twenty miles less. So we have a dip of 

 the formation of 3,200 feet in forty-five miles, or about seventy feet to 

 a mile. 



The slope of the country to the north is the same as the dip of the 

 beds, for the country rises to the south as the beds rise to the south. 



Stand on the Vermilion Clifts, at the head of Marble Canon, and 

 look off down the river over a stretch of country that steadily rises in 

 the distance until it reaches an altitude far above even the elevated 

 point of observation, and then see meandering through it to the south 

 the gorge in which the river runs, everywhere breaking down with a 

 sharp brink, and in the perspective the summits of the walls appearing 

 to approach until they are merged in a black line, and you can hardly 

 resist the thought that the river burrows into, and is lost under, the 

 great inclined plateau. 



A POPULAR YERDICT. 



THE life of Kobert Knox, the celebrated Edinburgh anatomist, 

 written by his friend and pupil Dr. Lansdale, is a work of much 

 interest on account of the contributions to science made by that 

 remarkable man ; but there were some tragic features in his career 

 which, taken in connection with the stupid and brutal "public opin- 

 ion " of which he was made the victim, have an instructiveness of a 

 quite different kind, yet of such importance that it is desirable they 

 should not be forgotten. We can give here but a very imperfect 

 sketch of the case, and would refer curious readers to Dr, Lansdale's 

 book, from which \A^e condense the following statement, making free 

 use of the language of the author. 



Robert Knox, who is numbered among tlie descendants of the 

 sturdy Scotch reformer, was born in 1T91. He was educated at the 

 High-School of Edinburgh, which boasted of many great names, such 

 as Brougham, Horner, and Cockburn, in the long roll of its illustrious 

 alumni. But few of its students showed more brilliant parts than 

 young Knox, who rose, apjDarently without effort, to the head of every 

 class, and came out gold-medalist in 1810. He joined the medical 

 classes of Edinburgh the same year, but pursiied a broad course of 

 literary, historical, and scientific studies, together with those bearing 

 more immediately upon the medical profession. He early took a prom- 



