14 NATURAL SCIENCE. Jan, 
Stone have been made of slabs from the Lower Lias and White 
Lias (Rhetic) Beds, but not, so far as we know, with satisfactory 
results. 
THE new part of the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 
contains an interesting account, by Mr. W. J. L. Abbott, of the 
deposits and fossils found in excavations made for the foundation of 
the new Admiralty buildings at Whitehall. Full lists of the fossils 
are given, the most interesting finds being an undetermined species of 
waiter-tortoise (Emys), and leaves of the Arctic birch (Betula nana). 
This is the first time any Arctic plant has been found fossil in the 
Thames valley, and the water-tortoise in Britain was known only 
from Norfolk. 
GeroLocists will be glad to learn that a series of unpublished 
papers and notes by the late Professor Carvill Lewis, on the Glacial 
Geology of Great Britain and Ireland, will shortly be published as a 
small volume by Messrs. Longmans & Co. Dr. H. W. Crosskey is 
preparing an introduction. 
A pBroGRAPHy of the late Sir Andrew Ramsay, who was for nine 
years Director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, is being 
prepared by his successor, Sir Archibald Geikie. 
A New monthly journal of Ornithology, the Ovmithologischen 
Monatsberichte, is announced by Messrs. Friedlander & Son, of Berlin. 
The first number is to appear this month, and the annual subscrip- 
tion is 6 marks. The editor is Dr. Ant. Reichenow, and the main 
object of the journal appears to be the publication of brief preliminary 
notes on new researches, with a detailed index to current ornitho- 
logical literature. 
Tue World’s Fair at Chicago possesses an unusual interest from 
a Hygienic point of view. The probability is that cholera will break 
out again in Europe next spring. Whatever may be the vehicle of 
the cholera germs, it certainly tends to spread along the route where 
those who are affected have passed. It would certainly more or less 
affect the success of the Fair if intending visitors had any suspicion 
that dangers arising from this source were not entirely under control. 
There is also some reason to suppose that Chicago is well suited to 
become a sort of headquarter for this disease. In 1891 the typhoid 
fever death-rate of Chicago was twelve times as great as that of 
London. This state of the public health points to a water supply 
contaminated by germs, and it is natural to expect that, if the cholera 
germ by any means reaches Chicago, the water supply would be one 
of the most efficient means of spreading it. 
