392 Reviews and Notices of BooTcs, 



to the West Indies and the New World, it was pre-eminently the 

 precursor and pioneer of the telegraph. Silently, and as with 

 finger on its lips, it led them across the waste of waters to the 

 new homes of the world ; but when these were largely filled, and 

 houses divided between the old and new hemispheres longed to 

 exchange affectionate greetings, it r<^moved its finger and broke 

 silence. The quivering magnetic needle which lies in the coil of 

 the galvanometer is the tongue of the electric telegraph, and 

 already engineers talk of it as speaking." 



" One might almost think that Dr. Wilson was the living ana- 

 logue of that astronomical fact which he thus describes :* " I would 

 liken science and poetry in their natural interdependence to those 

 binary stars, often different in colour, which Herschel's telescope 

 discovered to revolve round each other. ' There is one light of 

 the sun,' says St. Paul, ' and another of the moon, and another 

 of the stars : star differeth from star in glory.' It is so here. 

 That star or sun, for it is both, with its cold, clear, white light, 

 is SCIENCE : that other, with its gorgeous and ever-shifting hues 

 and magnificent blaze, is poetry. They revolve lovingly round 

 each other in orbits of their own, pouring forth and drinking in 

 the rays which they exchange ; and they both also move round 

 and shine towards that centre from which they came, even the 

 throne of Him who is the Source of all truth and the Cause of 

 all beauty." 



Contrihutions to Pdlceontology. By Prof. James Hall. 



Prof. Hall has for some time been in the habit of publishing 

 annually in the Report of the Regents of the University of New 

 York, the more important new species described by him during 

 the year. These reports have the useful purpose of giving early 

 notice of Prof. Hall's discoveries to those who may be working 

 in the same field. We can here only direct attention to those in 

 our hands, that those concerned may take due notice of their 

 contents. The report for 1859-60, relates to species of OrtTiis 

 and Cyclonema from the Hudson R. group of Ohio and the 

 Western States, to the distinctions between Belleropbon and some 

 allied genera, with descriptions of new species; to a new genus of 

 shells resembling Cleodera, and named Cleoderma, of which six 

 species are described, and to a number of new species from the 



^ In ' The alleged Antagonism between Poetry and Chemistry.' 



