414 NATURAL SCIENCE. J6ne. 



the letter referred to above, in order to save the duplication of 

 work, and the extravagant expenditure of energy and money, which 

 result from the numerous independent publications all tending to 

 the same end. The most striking illustration of the waste in this 

 direction is perhaps seen in the fact that no less than three recognised 

 publications are issued year by year dealing with zoological literature, 

 viz., the Zoological Record ; the Zoologischer Jahresheyicht ; and the 

 Zoologischer Anzeiger. In Geology the case is not at present so bad, 

 for D'Agincourt's Anmiaire is the only publication embracing, or rather 

 attempting to embrace, the geological literature of the whole world. 

 There are, however, numerous other geological records of local 

 interest, as Blake's Annals of British Geology, Nikitin's Russkaya 

 Gheologicheskaya Biblioteka, and the Bibliografia Gcologica Italiana of the 

 Italian Survey. As it has been proved more than once that the 

 scientific public will not support these works, despite their enormous 

 value, it behoves all those interested in the cataloguing of scientific 

 literature, to consider any scheme whereby the necessary catalogue 

 can be produced without the doleful interruptions due to non-support, 

 incompleteness, unpunctuality, or neglect, which have characterised 

 these publications in the past. 



Boulders as Sources of Error. 



In Nature for May 3, Professor ]\IcKenny Hughes has an 

 interesting letter on the above subject. He points out that a 

 quantity of rubbish of all descriptions is taken by barges down the 

 lower Thames and spread on the adjoining lands. Thence it is 

 carried on " with road scrapings, fragments of every kind of road 

 metal ; with soil turned out in digging foundations, specimens of all 

 tlie materials used for building ; with the contents of middens, and 

 every variety of object of domestic use and ornament." He himself 

 has seen pieces of Napoleonite on the surface in North Kent ! Then, 

 with regard to the soils washed out of a cliff of boulder clay, although 

 in the majority of cases there is no doubt as to their origin. Professor 

 Hughes points out that there is another serious source of error, of 

 which he gives a good example. 



" A Norwegian vessel, carrying timber from Christiansund to 

 Boston, in Lincolnshire, ran aground and became a total wreck off 

 Old Hunstanton last winter. I saw her in January. The vessel 

 looked sound enough to a landsman's eye ; but she was dismasted 

 and gutted, and the salvage was on the sand dunes close by. About 

 her a pool of varying breadth had been formed by the swirl of the 

 water round the hull. The currents had been deflected by various 

 circumstances here and there, as especially where a quantity of 

 ballast had been thrown out. This consisted of large boulders 

 of various kinds of gneiss and porphyry, and the weighty pile looked 

 as if it were little affected by the currents of the incoming and 

 receding tides. 



