June 14, 1883] 



NA TURE 



157 



We learn from the Spanish papers that the Mining Exhibition 

 now open at Madrid, is a great success. However incomplete, 

 it still represents to a certain degree the present state of this wide 

 branch of n>tional welfare of Spain, and probably will give an 

 impulse to the further development of geology, which is one of 

 the most popular sciences with the Spanish savants. 



Thirty-two schemes were examined by the jury for the 

 erection of a statue to Christopher Columbus at Barcelona. The 

 most accredited opinion in Spanish artistic circles is, however, 

 that none of them corresponds to the greatness of the event of 

 the discovery of a new continent, which it has to commemorate. 

 The statue will be erected on the seashore, facing the port of 

 Barcelona. 



A writer in the Times on the present Czar of Russia and his 

 two predecessors refers to some improvements which have been 

 made during the present reign. "The most hopeful of all 

 recent signs in Russia," he says, "has been the entire cessation 

 of the ecclesiasticil censorship that was formerly exercised over 

 scientific writings. The censors used to be attached to the 

 Universities ; many of them were nomine s of the higher clergy ; 

 and books that were considered unorthodox were never licensed 

 by them unless the author paid fees which deprived him of all 

 profit in his work. This, at least, was generally the case, and if 

 an author evaded payment it could only be through the patronage 

 of some very powerful man. M. Delyanoff has allayed much 

 irritation among Russian wt'a«/j and given a valuable stimulus to 

 University education by limiting the jurisdiction of the censors 

 to political works. So we shall hear no more of books being 

 suppressed — as one was by Count Tolstoi — for inquiring too 

 minutely into miracles alleged to have been wrought by bones of 

 saints drawn from the catacombs of Kieffand sold by the clergy 

 at high prices." 



1 hav • reseiv d the sixteenth volume of the Memoirs of the 

 Society of Naturalists at the Kharkoff University, It is mostly 

 occupied by a long paper by A. W. Guroff, on ihe geology of 

 the provinces of Kharkoff and Ekaterinoslav, being a valuable 

 addition to the former work by Prof. Levakovsky, "On the 

 Cretaceous and subsequent Formations," and to the works of 

 MM. Borisyak, Briot, Klemtn, and many others. The author 

 describes at length the crystalline rocks of the ra pids of 

 the Dnieper, and gives a map of their extension, as well as a 

 classification of this complicated series. He then mentions 

 the littoral formations of the coal-basin of the Don, as well 

 as the cial-measures of the Kalmius, and dwells at some 

 length on the Bakhmut depression, describing the different 

 stages of its Permian deposits. As to the much-discussed ques- 

 tion of the upper members of this formation, which are con- 

 sidered by several Rus-ian geologists to belong to the Trias, 

 he is inclined too to consider them as intermediary between the 

 Permian and the Jura, as they contain remains of the Posidono- 

 mya (Est her ia) minuta and the Equisetum arenaceum, which 

 both characterise the same formation on the Volga. The 

 Jurassic deposits which unite the Jura of the Don with that of 

 Kieff, as also the Rhetic group of the Donets, are then dealt 

 with, and a complete list of the Donets Jurassic fauna is given. 

 The Donets Jura proves to be more like the Jura of middle 

 Europe than that of middle Russia. The Tertiary deposits 

 of Kharkoff (the Spondylus beds) seem to belong to the Eocene 

 forma'.ion, which is covered with sand and sandstone of the 

 Miocene period. The other papers of the same volume are a 

 supplementary list of 200 Diptera of Kharkoff, by W. A. 

 Yaroshevsky, bringing their number up to 908 species ; and a 

 note on the parasites of the Stauronotus vastator. 



The researches as to the invertebrate fauna of the Black Sea, 

 which were made from 1833 to 1863 by Rathke, Nordmann, 



Kes>ler, and Wagner, which researches had brought only to 

 f >rty the number of species of cru taceans discovered in the 

 Black Sea, have contributed towards spreading the idea as to 

 the remarkable poverty of this fauna. This opinion was rapidly 

 overthrown by the more recent researches of MM. Czerniawsky, 

 Markusen, and Bobretsky, who discovered in the space of a few 

 years no less than 130 new species of crustaceans in the Black 

 Sea, and brought, in 1869, the total number of crustacean 

 species discovered there up to 160. The subsequent dredgings 

 of MM. Krichaguin, Grebnitsky, and Czerniawsky abided to the 

 number seventy-six species more, and this last explorer even 

 affirmed in one of his memoirs that the crustacean fauna of a 

 single bay of the Black Sea — the Bay of Yalta — is richer than 

 that of the whole of the Belgian coast. The opinions, however, 

 as to the kinship of the Black Sea fauna with the faunas of the 

 neighbouring seas are still divided. MM. Markusen and 

 Giebnitsky maintained that it is closely akin to that of the seas 

 of the north, and proved it by the presence of such crus- 

 taceans as are not met with in the Mediterranean (various 

 species of Mysis and representatives of the groups of the 

 Cumacea, Bathyporeia, Niphargus, Padocerus, and Siphome- 

 cetes), but are common in the seas of the north. They pointed 

 out al-o the circumstance that the forms which are the most 

 numerous in the Black Sea are either cosmopolite forms or such 

 as are common in the northern seas, but not those which might 

 have immigrated from the Mediterranean. In a notice published 

 in the la*t volume of the Memoirs of the Kieff Society 0/ 

 Naturalists, M. Sovinsky points out, however, that the rever ; e 

 opinion — which admits a close relationship of the Black Sea 

 crustaceans with the Mediterranean ones — gains more and more 

 ground during these la^t few years. The Mediterranean fauna 

 was of course submitted to the influence of the northern faunas, 

 and its northern forms might have found an appropriate medium 

 in the less salt water of the Black Sea ; but the Black Sea fauna 

 looks rather as a part of the fauna of the Mediterranean basin, 

 slowly m idified by the medium it inhabits ; this opinion is sup- 

 ported, in fact, by the kinship of several Black Sea forms with 

 those of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and by the rich- 

 ness <>f the Black Sea fauna in mere varieties and in such forms 

 a-- are purely local, the prevailing types of the fauna being still 

 the cosmopolite ones. The Black Sea fauna would be thus but 

 a part of the Mediterranean fauna, but much impoverished an I 

 modified to a great extent by the variety of local conditims. 



Russian geologists do not seem to hesitate in admitting 

 the aqueous origin of granitic rocks which formerly were unani- 

 mously considered as igneous and eruptive. The late Prof. 

 Barbot de Marny adopted this theory during the last years of his 

 life, and the same theory is supported now with regard to the 

 Dneiper pegmatites, by M. Gouroff, in the Memoirs of the Society 

 of Naturalists at the Kharkoff University (vol. xvi.). After a 

 thorough study of the granitic rocks of the rapids of the Dnieper, 

 he describes these rocks, consisting of orthoclase, plagioclase, 

 quartz, and biotite (this last and the orthoclase being often sub- 

 stituted by chlorite and epidote) as granitites. These granitites 

 always appear stratified, and alternate with granitic g.ieisse-, 

 their stratification being well developed with an inclination 

 towards N. 70 E. at 60°. They are also crossed with 

 numerous veins of pegmatite. The quartz of the peg- 

 matite contains large microscopical inclusions of water, some- 

 times with carbonic acid, and with solutions of natrium an 1 

 calcium chloride ; it is coloured brown, which colour disappears 

 when it is heated. The veins of pegmatite contain large crystals 

 of quartz and orthoclase. They decrease towards their low er 

 ends and terminate in accumulations of crystalline quariz. They 

 very often interfere with veins of quartz, either crystalline (with 

 microscopic inclusions of water), or opal-like. M. Gourofl pro- 

 poses to discuss further the question as to the origin of the peg- 



