Scientific InteUigence. — Geology. 197 



which is occasionally met with in such quantity, that it is pro- 

 fitable to collect and burn them. Through most of the valleys 

 separating these gravel hills, small streams or rivulets run over 

 beds which often contain marl; such is particularly the case 

 with respect to the river of Enniskerry, from the bed of which 

 marl, containing a large proportion of carbonate of lime, is some- 

 times raised as manure. The presence of these bones in the 

 gravel, would seem to warrant the inference, that the destruction 

 of the animal to which they belong was owing to the same cause 

 which conveyed those large heaps of sand and gravel to the situ- 

 ation which they at present occupy ; and that this was the work 

 of a vast inundation or deluge, by which the surface of this 

 country was once submerged, appears to be sufficiently evident 

 from the very striking resemblance which these gravel hills bear 

 on a great scale, to the smaller heaps of sand and gravel left in 

 the beds of mountain rivers after floods. The bodies of animals 

 overtaken and drowned by this inundation, after remaining for 

 a short time under water, would naturally run into a state of 

 putrefaction ; and having become inflated by the gaseous fluids 

 disengaged in their interior during that process, they would rise 

 and float on the surface until the soft parts were completely de- 

 composed, when the bones, having their connecting media de- 

 stroyed, would descend by their own gravity : and should the 

 surface on which they come to rest at the bottom consist of a 

 soft material, they would sink into this to a greater or less depth. 

 It was thus, in all probability, that the bones of the fossil deer 

 came to be deposited in their usual position in the marl, at a 

 time coeval with, or immediately subsequent to, the formation 

 of that substance; while the bones found in the sand would 

 seem to owe their position there to the circumstance of the ani- 

 mal they belonged to happening to have been overwhelmed by 

 the enormous masses of gravel and clay which the water rolled 

 before it in the violence of its first irruption. — Froin 2d edition of 

 Descripticm of the Fossil Deer of Ireland^ hy John Hart^ Esq. 

 M.R.LA.,^c. 



4. New Volcanic Isle in the Mediterranean. — In a letter pur- 

 porting to be from Lieut. St Lamert, of the frigate Armide, to 

 the Russian admiral, inserted in one of the newspapers, is a 

 short account of this curious island. The following passage in 



