SKETCH OF SAMUEL LUTHER DANA. 697 



In a chapter on artificial manures and irrigation, he deals with 

 the use of swamp muck or peat, and tells how to make it a first- 

 class fertilizer by the addition of soda ash or potash. There are a 

 few pages on the physical properties of soils, and then the use of 

 bones as a fertilizer is discussed. An appendix contains the re- 

 sults obtained by Dr. Andrew Nichols and others with the meth- 

 ods suggested by Dr. Dana. 



Dr. Dana's geological knowledge was kept bright and in- 

 creased by constant additions from the best and latest authorities. 

 It aided him greatly in his agricultural researches. One of his 

 courteous attentions to scientific visitors was an excursion to a 

 traveling sand, in an outlying part of the city of Lowell, which 

 was slowly and steadily advancing over arable land, converting it 

 into a desert place. His long-sustained and minute observations 

 threw strong light on the formation of sedimentary rock deposits, 

 where currents of air rather than currents of water were the ac- 

 tive agent, and made this field his own. 



Dr. Dana died at his residence in Lowell, March 11, 1868, in 

 consequence of a fall upon the ice at his own doorstep. In person 

 he was tall and slender, with blue eyes, dark-brown liair, and a 

 fair complexion. The expression of his countenance was intel- 

 lectual and sympathetic. He was extremely witty, and, in his 

 hours of relaxation from study, he entered with great zest into 

 the pleasures of society, contributing his full share to the enjoy- 

 ment of others. Even in his scientific writings his humor had 

 some scope, and added a charm and zest to his descriptions that 

 made them highly enjoyable and utterly inimitable. 



Dr. Dana's first wife died in 1828 and he afterward married her 

 sister, Miss Augusta Willard. James Jackson, the only son of 

 Dr. Dana who survived childhood, when arrived at a suitable age 

 received a commission in the United States army, and was after- 

 ward promoted to the rank of brigadier general. Dr. Dana also 

 left three daughters. 



The question of the Asiatic origin or derivation of the Mexican and 

 Central American monuments was recently presented to the Anthropo- 

 logical Institute of Great Britain and Ireland by Mr. Osbert H. Howarth. 

 The speaker had become strongly of the opinion, after several years' obser- 

 vations of the works, that they were traceable to an Asiatic source, and 

 he suggested that no subject in the whole range of antiquity is better 

 worth careful study than the possible tracing of this splendid decorative 

 art of Central America through the various countries of Asia with a view 

 of determining whether or not any features of it could be positively identi- 

 fied with those which were known to exist in the earliest dynasties of Egypt. 

 The probabilities that this w r as the fact were much stronger to his mind 

 than any probability that the work arose from an independent source. 



