330 Chronicles of Science. [ April, 
by the walls of Pondiko-Kastron. Towards Arcadia the coast flattens, 
and opens an uninterrupted panorama of the hill-plateau of the Morea, 
terminating on the north in the peaks of the Cyllenic mountains, and 
on the south by the rocky portions of the Taygetos. The Cape con- 
sists of a coarse-grained marine limestone, of Upper Pliocene age, in 
many places exhibiting the old borings of molluscs, and overlaid by 
deposits of sand and marl, which cover the undulating ground for miles 
along the sea-shore, and up to the base of the mountains in_ the 
interior. The stone-marl around Pyrgos abounds in Ostrea lamellosa, 
and in the limestone and sandstone are species of Cardita, with Cardium 
edule, Turritella communis, Venus multilamella, and Scalaria pseudo- 
scalaris. Pyrgos itself stands on a colossal oyster-bank, portions of 
which are exposed to the eye in many parts of the town. It is over- 
laid by a thick stratum of marl, in which but very few fossil remains 
are to be found. Dr. Weiss’s sketch is principally a description of the 
routes taken, and will be a useful guide to future explorers of this 
unworked region. 
Dr. Carte has recorded the discovery of bones of the Polar bear 
in Lough Gur, county Limerick. In the paper before the Dublin 
Geological Society, in which he has described them, he comments on 
the extreme abruptness with which, in the newer formations, mammalian 
forms have appeared in abundance, contrasting in this respect with the 
gradual appearance of the lower forms of life in the older strata. 
The second part of the excellent monograph of Rissoidea, by 
MM. Gustav Schwartz and Mohrenstern, of Vienna, contains the genus 
Rissoa, illustrated by four fine lithographic plates. The author gives 
in a diagrammatic form the relationships of the recent and fossil 
species, referring the 30 recent species to 11 items in the Pleistocene 
age, these again to 6 in the Pliocene, these to 4 in the Miocene, 2 in 
the Oligocene, and finally to one derivative, the Rissoa nana in 
the Hocene. 
Mr. 8. V. Wood, jun., has published an admirable article on the 
Red Crag and its relation to the Fluvio-marine Crag, and the Drift of 
the Eastern Counties. From the result of his survey he comes to the 
conclusion, that in the Red Crag, once regarded as of Miocene age, 
we have the initiatory stage in England of that series of events which, 
known under the term “ Drift,” began by the encroachment upon the 
- land of England of a bay of the Northern Ocean, and which encroach- 
ment afterwards extended over the area of the Eastern Counties, and 
ultimately involved the submergence of that still more extensive area 
now covered with the ice-borne detritus and clay of the northern Drift. 
There is often more information to be got from, as there is cer- 
tainly less trouble in reading, a pamphlet of a single sheet. In 
England we have had Professor Ramsay strenuously contesting for the 
ice-scooped origin of the Swiss lakes, and the eloquent Ruskin as 
enthusiastically defending the powers of weather and water upon, and 
the effects of molecular motion within, the rocks. The learned pro- 
fessor of Berne, M. Studer, now appears before the world in a brochure 
of 16 pages, which he opens with the admission, that “in the origin 
of the Swiss Lakes we have a problem difficult to resolve,” and of 
