206 Scientific Intelligence, — Geology. 



60 feet English ; that is to say, a much more rapid augmen- 

 tation than has been observed elsewhere. The only method, 

 as it occurs to me, in which we can explain this phenome- 

 non, is by attributing to the upper strata over Northern 

 Asia a greater conducting power of heat than the other parts 

 of the globe which we inhabit ; and this result will be the more 

 striking, as it comes in some degree to support another result 

 of the same kind. In fact, the excessive variations of tempe- 

 rature which have been observed at Jakouzk, and in other parts 

 of Easter Siberia, during the course of the solar year, lead us 

 to the conclusion that the earth's surface is there endowed with 

 a radiating and thermal power much superior to that of Eu- 

 rope. — Comptes Rendus, 16th Avril 1838. 



5. Metamorphic Bocks. — That doctrine of the Edinburgh 

 Plutonian School, first taught by Hutton, and now known 

 under the name of mineral vietamorphism, is rapidly progress- 

 ing. Its chief supporters are our countryman Lyell, and on 

 the Continent, Keerstein, Virlet, Boblaye, Keilhau, Von Buch, 

 Beaumont, &c. &c. 



6. On the Formation of Serpentine. — Mr Bobert, in Keilhau's 

 Gaea Norvegica, states, as the conclusions he has drawn from 

 an attentive examination of the various local portions of ser- 

 pentine occurring near Modum in Norway, that many ser- 

 pentine masses owe their existence to the transformation of 

 other minerals ; that the general diffusion of serpen tinic sub- 

 stances, with all their variations, may chiefly arise from the 

 impulse to their production and formation having been com- 

 municated at a very remote epoch under relations and condi- 

 tions unknown to us ; and finally, that some serpentines are 

 only to be regarded as the middle link in the conversion which 

 several minerals undergo into the kind of talc called Speclcstein. 

 Mr Bobert states, that in the serpentines of Modum there are 

 neither traces of Neptunian deposition, nor of volcanic action. 



7. Beryl of Aberdeenshire. — Dr Fleming informs us that it oc- 

 curs in contemporaneous veins of coarse granite in gneiss at the 

 Stony hill of Nigg. It has been known as occasionally occur- 

 ring in similar veins in the granite of Rubislaw, where, in the 

 rock itself, some small tolerably perfect crystals may occasion- 

 ally be met with. 



