GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 2o3 



raised throughout the world in 1S57, amounted to 125 millions of 

 tons, worth 930 millions of francs. Prussia alone, he says, contains 

 enough coal to suffice for the consumption of the glohe for nine cen- 

 turies, taking as a measure that of 1857 ; while England, far from 

 being exhausted, as some Continental alarmists suppose, is able to 

 supply the world with coal for 4000 years. 



SYNCHRONISM OF COAL-BEDS. 



Professor C. H. Hitchcock has explained to the American 

 Association the Synchronism of the Coal-Beds in the Rhode Island 

 and Western United States Coal Basins, arguing from their fossil 

 remains, that they form a connecting link between the Appalachian 

 and Nova Scotian coals and those of the West. 



Professor J. S. Newberry contended that the fossil remains did 

 not wholly show the synchronism of the coal measures. Professor 

 William B. Rogers said that in our early attempts to trace the con- 

 tinuity of single coal seams we are often led astray. Coal measures 

 may contain the same fossils, and yet not have been deposited at the 

 same time. Professor Agassiz took the same view, and said that it 

 was pi - obable that our peat bogs of the north and cedar swamps of 

 the south may at one and the same time become coal-beds, and yet 

 their fossils would differ. So deposits formed at the same time, and 

 not far distant, may not contain a single identical fossil, and our old 

 method may therefore lead us to error. Again, the deposits of a 

 very long period may be of very small thickness. Thus the coral 

 beds of Florida, although but sixty or seventy feet thick, were pro- 

 bably begun before man was created ; and it may turn out that the 

 carboniferous epoch is really more than one, perhaps even ten cosmic 

 periods. He was satisfied that there is no better way of identifying 

 rocks than by the study of fossils, but the study of the geographical 

 distribution of animals on the present surface of the earth should 

 precede the attempt at classifying periods or strata by their fossils. 



MANURES, ETC. 

 Dr. Lankester, in his eighth lectm-e " On the Relations of the 

 Animal Kingdom to Man," dwells especially on the uses of bones 

 (recent and fossil) as Manures, and of gelatine and membranes. The 

 modes of nutrition of plants, and the history of the application of 

 manures (with especial reference to the labours of the great chemist 

 Liebig), were adverted to. The nature and sources of the first 

 mineral phosphates ; the nodules, formerly called coprolites (now 

 considered to be the ear-bones, &C, of fossil whales and sharks), 

 found in the green sand and red crag, and their mode of preparation 

 for agricultural purposes, were described. On the lecture-table were 

 placed specimens (from Mr. J. B. Lawes) of manufactured super- 

 phosphate of lime. The importance of the discovery of vast quan- 

 tities of native phosphate -of lime in Spain by Br. Daubeny, 

 and by Mr. D. Forbes, in Sweden, as sources of wealth to those 

 countries, was specially noticed. The nature of gelatine, its 

 sources (from bones, skins, fish skins and fish sounds, and similar sub- 

 stances), and their manufacture into glue, size, jellies, and isinglass, 



