240 
for his future lectures. Thus the specimens may be said 
to Jive in his pages, with all their bright motley of colour 
and their extraordinary odours—only flattened a little by 
the supreme necessities of the case. 
Mingled with the paradoxes, and generally more or less 
directly suggested by them, we have many valuable 
pieces of information—as, for instance, about the calendar 
(pp. 219, &c.), the names of the “beast” (p, 403), the 
‘* Macclesfield Letters ” (p. 448), &c.—and we have anec- 
dotes, verses more or less confessedly doggrel, and para- 
doxes full-blown, from the author’s own pen. 
One extract must suffice, though there are hundreds 
equally good, for which we must refer the reader to this 
most thoroughly enjoyable book itself. Our choice is 
determined by the present aspect of the education ques- 
tion ; and conveys a much-needed lesson to all who are 
capable of comprehending. 
“Tt was somewhat more than twenty years after I had 
thus heard a Cambridge tutor show sense of the true place 
of Horner’s method, that a pupil of mine who had passed 
on to Cambridge was desired by his College tutor to solve 
a certain cubic equation—one of an integer root of two 
figures. In a minute the work and answer were presented 
by Horners method. ‘ How!’ said the tutor, ‘this can’t 
be, you know,’ ‘There is the answer, sir, said my pupil, 
greatly amused, for my pupils learnt not only Horner’s 
method, but the estimation it held at Cambridge. ‘Yes,’ 
said the tutor, ‘there is the answer, certainly; but it 
stands to veason that a cubic equation cannot be solved 
in this space.’ He then sat down, went through a process 
about ten times as long, and then said with triumph, 
‘There! that is the way to solve a cubic equation!’ I 
think the tutor in this case was never matched, except by 
the country organist. A master of the instrument went 
into the organ-loft during service, and asked the organist 
to let him Alay the congregation out; consent was given. 
The stranger, when the time came, began a voluntary, 
which made the people open their ears, and wonder who 
had got into the loft; they kept their places to enjoy the 
treat. When the organist saw this, he pushed the inter- 
loper off the stool, with ‘You'll never play ’em out this 
side Christmas.’ He then began his own drone, and the 
congregation began to move quietly away. ‘There!’ 
said he, ‘that’s the way to play ’em out !’” 
BURMEISTER’S ANNALS OF THE PUBLIC 
MUSEUM OF BUENOS AYRES 
Anales del Museo Publico de Buenos Ayres, para dar a 
conocer los objetos de Historia Natural nuevos o poco 
conocidos conservados en este establecimento. Por 
German Burmeister, M.D. Vol. ii., parts 1—4. (Bue- 
nos Ayres and London: Taylor and Francis.) 
N a previous number of NATURE (vol. iii. p. 282), 
Prof. Flower has given our readers an account of 
the first volume of this most meritorious work, and of the 
objects of its distinguished author in undertaking it. 
Since Prof. Flowers’s article was published, four parts of 
the second volume of the ‘‘Anales” have been issued, 
containing a series of articles and illustrations of quite as 
great zoological interest as those in the first volume. The 
wonders of the extinct Mammalian Fauna of the Argen- 
tine Republic are well known, and in the present volume 
Prof, Burmeister devotes himself to their exposition. In 
the first part he commences a complete monograph of 
the Glyptodonts, or extinct gigantic Armadillos, repre- 
sented by specimens in the museum under his charges 
NATURE 
[Yan. 30, 1873 
and carries it on to the end of Part IV. In the first 
volume of the “ Annals” Prof. Burmeister, in the course 
of a general article on the fossil mammals of the dilu- 
vium of Buenos Ayres, had given a preliminary expo- 
sition of his views as to the arrangement of these won- 
derful animals. He now enters vat length upon the 
description of the species known to him, and gives a 
series of splendid lithographs to illustrate their remains. 
Not only are the bones of the Glyptodonts so perfectly 
preserved as to enable many of the skeletons to be com- 
pletely restored, but great portions of the extraordinary 
suits of armour with which they were clad above and 
below have likewise been discovered, so that their external 
appearance can likewise be portrayed. Those who 
interest themselves in palzontology will do well to secure 
copies of these beautiful illustrations, a few of which are 
on sale at Messrs. Taylor and Francis, of Red Lion Court, 
at ros. a number. 
We should add that, attached to each number of the 
“Anales” is a “ Boletin del Museo Publico de Buenos 
Ayres,” in which is given an account of the additions 
made to the establishment during the year. An important 
acquisition in 1871 was the series of remains of the 
Machrauchenia patachonica, an extinct animal allied to 
the horses and tapirs, formerly belonging to a naturalist 
named Bravard, who was killed in the earthquake of 
Mendoza. These specimens formed the basis of Prof. 
Burmeister’s complete restoration of this animal, pub- 
lished in the first volume of the “ Anales.” 
OUR BOOK SHELF 
Notes on the Post-pliocene Geology of Canada, &¢. By 
J. W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S. (Montreal ; 
Mitchell and Wilson, 1872.) 
THESE “ Notes,” which are reprinted from the Canadian 
Naturalist, cannot fail to interest European glacialists. 
Especially valuable for purposes of comparison are the 
detailed notes on the fossils obtained from the glacial 
beds. The lists include in all about 205 species, distri- 
buted as follows :—Radiata, 24 ; Mollusca, 140; Arti- 
culata, 26 ; Vertebrata, 5. All these, with three or four 
exceptions, may be affirmed, says the author, to be living 
northern or southern species. Moreover, the fauna of the 
older part of the Canadian glacial deposits is more Arctic 
in character than that of the modern part. It would thus 
appear that since the accumulation of the boulder-clay a 
gradual amelioration of climate has taken place; but the 
change from Arctic conditions has evidently been less 
decided on the west than on the east side of the Atlantic, 
Dr, Dawson’s conclusions regarding what we may term 
the physics of the glacial epoch will probably meet with 
less acceptance than his paleontological results. He con- 
siders the Erie-clay described by Whittlesey, Newberry, 
and others to be of marine, and not of fresh-water origin, 
as these authors believe. But his reasons for this opinion 
can hardly be considered satisfactory. When an extensive 
deposit of fine clay, after having been examined over a 
wide area, is found not only to be totally destitute of 
marine organisms, but to contain quantities of drift-wood, 
and to have associated with it beds of peat and an old 
soil containing tree roots, the probabilities are that the 
clay-beds are of fresh-water origin, Besides, if we are 
not mistaken, fresh-water shells have been got in the Erie 
clay. That much-vexed question, the origin of boulder- 
clay comes in for some discussion in these “ Notes,” the 
author inclining to think the deposit is marine, It is some- 
what significant, however, that the boulder-clay is only 
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