GEOLOGY. 271 



same bird's claws on other slabs of stone. The bird which has left us 

 this footprint may be supposed to have been at least twelve feet high, 

 and perhaps much more. The strata in which these fossils occur are 

 referred to the middle division of the Wealden formation. 



Last Ape in Europe. A recent English writer makes known the 

 interesting fact that only four individuals of the Barbary ape (Innus 

 Sylvanus) now exist on the rock of Gibraltar. He proposes, with the 

 intention of obviating the extinction of this species in Europe, to in- 

 troduce a number of apes from Apes Hill (Mount Abyla), on the 

 Moorish side of the straits, and to preserve them rigorously under 

 severe penalties to be enforced against those lovers of sport who may 

 shoot them. This ape, perchance the last representative of a fauna 

 which united the present animal populations of Africa and Europe 

 during the later Pliocene age, has now reached the utmost limit to 

 which a species can attain, and is succumbing to the same extinctive 

 influences which are rapidly causing the extirpation of the lion on 

 the slopes of the Greater and Lesser Atlas. 



Discovery of Microscopic Organisms in Palaeozoic Rocks. Dr. M. 

 C. White, in a communication to Silliman's Journal, shows that many 

 of the hornstone nodules found in the Devonian and Silurian rocks 

 of this country abound in organisms referable to the Desmidire and 

 Diatomacese, with numerous spicula of sponges and fragments of the 

 dental apparatus of Gasteropods. These observations are of great 

 interest to the geologist as well as the microscopist as they carry back 

 to a very early epoch forms of life which have hitherto been looked 

 upon as belonging only to a much more recent era in the life of our 

 planet. The extreme abundance of hornstone nodules in one palseo- 

 zoic limestone will render it easy to multiply observations in the 

 new field of research ; and it should be remembered by those who 

 undertake such examinations, that the use of turpentine renders the 

 chips of chert almost as transparent as glass. Silliman's Journal. 



Different Ages of American Gold Deposits. At a recent meeting 

 of the Boston Natural History Society, Mr. Marcou stated that the 

 gold of the Atlantic coast was of another formation from that of 

 California. The slate of Nova Scotia was metamorphic Taconic 

 rock. There had been found in North Carolina beds of red sand- 

 stone containing gold washed into it during its formation, showing its 

 existence previous to the formation of the latter. In California the 

 quartz gold-bearing veins seldom occur in the slate itself. We appear 

 to have in America gold of two different periods. In Australia the 

 gold is entirely of the drift period, while that of the Atlantic coast is 

 of anterior date. 



Gold of Australia. At the International Exhibition, London, 

 1862, the total mass or bulk of the gold exported from Australia from 

 1851 to 18G1 ten years was represented by a gilded truncated 

 pyramid, ten feet square at the base, and forty-two feet high. These 

 dimensions in solid gold were equivalent to 800 tons or 520,000,000 

 of dollars ; which is the exact amount transmitted from Australia during 

 the time above mentioned. 



Coal Production of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia Ledger gives 

 the production of coal in the State of Pennsylvania, for 18G2, at 

 8,295,172 toa: : . of which 7,481,718 were anthracite. 



