110 Things not generally Known. 



glaciers or floating icebergs, before those strata were consoli- 

 dated. Saturday Review, No. 142. 



FLOW OF THE HER DE GLACE. 



Michel Devouasson of Ghamouni fell into a crevasse on the 

 Glacier of Talefre, a feeder of the Mer de Glace, on the 29th 

 of July 1836, and after a severe struggle extricated himself, 

 leaving his knapsack below. The identical knapsack reap- 

 peared in July 1846, at a spot on the surface of the glacier 

 four thousand three hundred feet from the place where it was 

 lost, as ascertained by Professor Forbes, who himself collected 

 the fragments ; thus indicating the rate of flow of the icy river 

 in the intervening ten years. Quarterly Review,, No. 202. 



THE ALLUVIAL LAND OF EGYPT : ANCIENT POTTERY. 



Mr. L. Horner, in his recent researches near Cairo, with the 

 view of throwing light upon the geological history of the allu- 

 vial land of Egypt, obtained from the lowest part of the boring 

 of the sediment at the colossal statue of Rameses, at a depth of 

 thirty-nine feet, this curious relic of the ancient world ; the 

 boring instrument bringing up a fragment of pottery about an 

 inch square and a quarter of an inch in thickness the two 

 surfaces being of a brick-red colour, the interior dark gray. 

 According to Mr. Homer's deductions, this fragment, having 

 been found at a depth of 39 feet (if there be no fallacy in his 

 reasoning), must be held to be a record of the existence of man 

 13,375 years before A.D. 1858, reckoning by the calculated rate 

 of increase of three inches and a half of alluvium in a century 

 11,517 years before the Christian era, and 7625 before the 

 beginning assigned by Lepsius to the reign of Menos, the 

 founder of Memphis. Moreover it proves in his opinion, that 

 man had already reached a state of civilisation, so far at least 

 as to be able to fashion clay into vessels, and to know how 

 to harden it by the action of strong heat. This calculation is 

 supported by the Chevalier Bunsen, who is of opinion that the 

 first epochs of the history of the human race demand at the 

 least a period of 20,000 years before our era as a fair starting- 

 point in the earth's history. Proceedings of Royal Soc., 1858. 



Upon this theory, a Correspondent, "An Old Indigo -Planter," writes 

 to the Atkenoeum, No. 1509, the following suggestive note : " Having lived 

 many years on the banks of the Ganges, I have seen the stream encroach 

 on a' village, undermining the bank where it stood, and deposit, as a 

 natural result, bricks, pottery, &c. in the bottom of the stream. On 

 one occasion, I am certain that the depth of the stream where the bank 

 was breaking was above 40 feet ; yet in three years the current of the 

 river drifted so much, that a fresh deposit of soil took place over the 

 debris of the village, and the earth was raised to a level with the old 

 bank. Now had our traveller then obtained a bit of pottery from where 

 it had lain for only three years, could he reasonably draw the inference 

 that it had been made 13,000 years before ?" 



