Rev. \\\ D. Conybeare's Report on Geology. 435 



posits ; and in the diluvium we may observe that the Mastodons ap- 

 proximate to those of Ava and Tuscany, although nevertheless mostly 

 specifically distinct, while the Megalonyx is peculiar to America. 



" We have yet collected from India and from Australia little infor- 

 mation on which we can rely, only that it appears that the usual re- 

 mains in the bone caves of the latter are generally those of kanga- 

 roos, wombats, and other animals still inhabiting that continent, 

 mingled however with other bones belonging to some animal resem- 

 bling an hippopotamus, now unknown in those parts. To India and 

 to Australia, however, it is that we must look, no less than to Ame- 

 rica, with full confidence that we shall speedily thence obtain sufficient 

 evidence on all these fundamental questions to afford us a basis of 

 induction sufficiently extensive and firm to enable us, at no distant 

 period, steadily to lay the foundation and securely to raise the super- 

 structure of an enduring and general geological theory." 



Mr. Conybeare's Report, of the value of which the foregoing ana- 

 lysis and extracts will enable every reader to form a correct estimate, 

 concludes with the following notice of the geological section with 

 which it is accompanied ; a section, we believe, of greater extent than 

 any that has yet been produced. 



,r As an appropriate illustration of the recent progress and actual 

 state of geology, I have presented to the Society an engraved sec- 

 tion traversing Europe from the northern extremity of Great Britain 

 to Venice, being, as I believe, the first attempt at so extensive a de- 

 sign as yet submitted to the public. In its execution of course the 

 merit of a careful compiler is all that I can pretend to claim: the En- 

 glish portion is all which I can fairly appropriate to myself on the title 

 of original observation ; for both the extremities, viz. the northern 

 section of Scotland, including the Brora coal-field, and the whole 

 Alpine section (by far the most important and instructive part of the 

 whole), I am indebted to my friend Mr. Murchison, the present [late] 

 President of the Geological Society, whose recent contributions to our 

 science have so abundantly vindicated his claim to our highest office ; 

 his laborious, exact, and scientific surveys of the Alpine chains, of 

 which a specimen is thus presented, are especially a credit to the 

 English school of geologists. Oeynhausen and Dechen have been my 

 authorities for the central portion of the section. 



" A scale of one degree of a great circle of the globe is given with 

 the section, which however is to be understood only as an approxi- 

 mation, and not strictly to be applied throughout, as some portions, 

 especially in the Alpine districts, have been given on a somewhat 

 larger scale to display the phaenomena. No regular scale of eleva- 

 tions lias been attempted : to have adopted such a scale would have re- 

 duced the English chains to imperceptible undulations, or exaggerated 

 the Alps into proportions most inconvenient for the purposes of the 

 section." 



