290 Chronicles of Science. [April, 



on the Norfolk coast, would teach this in an hour. As well might 

 we expect to find grains of wheat preserved between millstones. 



The gravel that fills a valley is not necessarily the result of the 

 excavation of the valley. It may have been cut out, then sub- 

 merged beneath the sea — filled to the top with drift — once more 

 re-elevated, and again scooped out, leaving remains of the old diift 

 on its flanks. 



To enable the Thames to reach the gravel -beds now more than 

 150 feet above its waters, we must have a subsidence of land to that 

 extent, which would not only enable the Thames, but the sea itself, 

 to have a hand in rolling them over and remaking them. 



We cannot deal here with the great mass of materials brought 

 together in Mr. Tylor's paper, and as we rise fi'om its perusal the 

 feeling is strongly impressed upon us that he is not the " master- 

 mind to whom is reserved the privilege, to whom is given the 

 power, to construct from those fragmentary truths a systematic 

 whole."* 



(4.) The other postponed paper, " On Flint Flakes from Car- 

 rickfergus and Larne," by G-. V. Du Noyer, Esq., will be found 

 noticed in the ' Chronicle of Archaeology.' 



The contents of the journal proper, that is to say, the papers 

 belonging to the past quarter are : — 



(1.) An announcement by Sir Roderick Murchison that the 

 Russian geologists had ascertained that a large tract in Siberia, 

 between the rivers Lena and Jenissei, is composed of Upper Silurian 

 rocks and Carboniferous rocks, containing coal-seams ; with rocks of 

 Oolitic and Liassic age, corresponding with those already examined 

 in Russia. It thus appears that the vast, slightly undulating, and, 

 to a great extent, horizontal and unbroken formations, each of which 

 occupies so wide an area in European Russia, are repeated on the 

 eastern side of the Ural Mountains. In this range of mountains 

 only are to be found igneous and erupted rocks. 



(2.) Professor Sandberger gives a section of a well at Kissingen 

 through the Zechstein formation, the Bunter and Saliferous beds. 



(3.) An abstract only of Mr. Tylor's paper on the ' Formation 

 of Deltas, and on the Evidence and Cause of Great Changes in the 

 Sea-level during the Glacial period.' 



This is again a very complex paper, and is presented to the 

 mind like a vast picture, painted by a patient artist who, however, 

 lacked the necessary genius to group his figures and produce the 

 effect he doubtless had in his mind at starting. 



A paper treating of the formation of deltas ; the parabolic 

 curve of the beds of rivers ; raised sea-breaches ; the ice-cap at the 

 poles, and reduction of the volume of the sea during the Glacial 



* Sue Article VII., " Thn Scientific Year," ' Qiiiirt. Joiirii. of Science,' 

 Jannaiy, IHOO, p. 74. 



