248 
NATURE 
[ Dee. 30, 1 860 
general and special movements of subsidence, the author dwelt 
upon the intimate connection between the Alpine lakes and the 
innumerable rock basins of the rest of the northern hemisphere. 
This connection, he said, could hardly be accidental. It pointed 
to some general cause which had been at work during a recent 
geological period, and he could not doubt but that this general 
cause was the thick mantle of ice which, from independent 
evidence, can be shown to have enveloped a great part of Europe 
and North America. The idea of the erosion of lake basins by 
the grinding power of land ice had been first propounded by 
Professor Ramsay, and there seemed every reason to believe that 
this view would come eventually to be accepted even by the geo- 
logists of Switzerland. — Professor Turner read a preliminary 
notice of the great finner whale recently stranded at Longniddry. 
It was so seldom that one of these large whales found its way to 
our very doors, and there were still so many unsolyed problems 
to be worked out in connection with the structure and classifica- 
tion of the larger cetacea, that he gladly availed himself of the 
arrival of the rare visitor to devote such time as he could spare 
to the study of the huge creature. The length of the animal, he 
said, measured from the tip of the lower jaw to the“end of the 
tail, 78 feet 9 inches. The girth of the body, immediately behind 
the flipper, was 45 feet. Its girth, in line with the oval orifice, 
was 28:feet, whilst around the root of the tail it was only 7 feet 
6 inches. The inner surface of the lower jaw close to its upper 
edge and on the border was concave, and sloped inwards so as to 
admit the edge of the upper jaw within it. The length from 
the angle of the mouth to the top of the lower jaw, along the 
curved border, was 21 feet 8 inches. The dorsum of the upper 
jaw was not arched in the antero posterior direction. It sloped 
gently upwards and backwards to the blow holes, from which a 
low but readily recognised median ridge passed forwards on the 
back, gradually subsiding some distance behind its tip. On each 
side of this ridge was a shallow concavity immediately in front 
of the blow holes, the ridge bifurcated and the forks passed 
backwards, enclosing the nostrils for several inches, and then 
subsided. The outer borders of the upper jaw were not straight, 
but extended forward from the angle of the mouth for some 
distance in a gentle curve, and then rapidly converging in front 
formed asomewhat pointed tip. Their rounded palatal edges 
fitted within the arch of the lower jaw. The transverse diameter 
of the upper jaw over its dorsum between the angles of the 
mouth was 13 feet 3 inches. From the blow holes the outline of 
the back, curved upwards and backwards, was uniformly smooth 
and rounded, and for a considerable distance presented no 
dorsal mesial ‘ridge. From the tip of the lower jaw to the 
anterior border of the dorsal fin, the measurement was 59 feet 
3 inches. Behind the dorsal fin the sides of the animal sloped 
rapidly downwards to the ventral surface, so that the dorsal and 
ventral mesial lines were clearly marked, and the sides tapered 
off to the tail. The ventral surface of the throat, and the sides 
and ventral surface of the chest and belly, were marked by 
numerous longitudinal ridges and furrows. When he first saw 
the animal, the furrows separating the ridges were not 
more than from 4 to } of an inch broad, whilst the ridges 
themselves were in many places 4 inches in breadth ; 
but as the body began to swell by the formation of gas 
from decomposition, the furrows were opened up, became wider 
and shallower, and the ridgesunderwent a corresponding diminu- 
tion in breadth. The flipper projected from the side of the body 
thirty-one feet four inches behind the top of ,the lower jaw, and 
fourteen feet behind the angle of the mouth. It curved out- 
wards and inwards, terminating in a free, pointed end. The 
distance between the two flippers, measured over the back be- 
tween the anterior borders of their roots, was eighteen feet six 
inches. On the dorsum of the beak and of the cranium, on the 
back of the body, and for some distance down its sides, the 
colour was dark steel, amounting in some sights almost to black. 
On a line with the pectoral flipper the sides were mottled with 
white, and on the ventral surface irregular, and in some cases 
large patches ‘of silver grey or whitish colour were seen. The 
dorsal fin was steel grey or black, except near its posterior border, 
where it was a shade lighter and streaked with black lines. The 
anterior of the lobes of the tail, its upper surface near the root 
and for the anterior two-thirds, were black. The upper surface 
of the flipper was steel grey, mottled with white at the root, at 
the tip along its posterior or internal border and on the under 
surface white patches were seen, on the upper surface near the 
tip, and here they were streaked with black lines running in the 
long axis of the flipper. White patches also extended from the 
| ages protozoic life had the preponderance. 
root of the flipper to the adjacent parts of the sides of the 
animal. The outside of the lower jaw was black, whilst the 
inside was streaked with grey and brown. The tongue of the 
whale was of enormous size. The dorsum was comparatively 
smooth in front, but at the posterior part it was eleyated into 
hillocks, which were separated by deep furrows. The baleen 
had a deep black colour, and consisted on each side of the plates 
which projected from the palate into the cayity of the mouth. 
The plates were arranged in rows—370 were counted on each 
side—which lay somewhat obliquely across the palate, extending 
from near the base of the great mesial palatal ridge to the outer 
edge of the palate. The plates diminished in size so much that 
at the tip, where the two sets of baleen became continuous, they 
were merely stiff bristles. He was happy to state, however, that 
the skeleton had been secured by the directors of the Museum of 
Science and Art in this city, who had granted him permission 
to examine it as soon as it was in a fit state. Prof. M‘Donald 
gaye it as his opinion that the whale which stranded at Long- 
niddry was a water-breathing animal, and not an air-breathing 
animal.—The other paper read was “‘ On the Aggregation in the 
Dublin Lying-in Hospital.” 
MILAN 
Royal Lombardian Institute, November 11.— Professor 
Schiaparelli communicated a note upon a recent pamphlet by: 
Signor Gaetano Baratta, proposing a method for the geometrical 
trisection of any given angle. He showed by a table of measure- 
ments that the first angle obtained by M. Baratta’s rule is always 
greater than one-third of the primary angle.—Professor Emilio 
Villari presented a memoir on the electro-motor force of palla- 
dium in gas batteries. The author was led by the consideration 
of the great attractive force of palladium for hydrogen, and the 
fact that the hydrogen thus held by palladium possesses great 
chemical activity, to apply it to the construction of gas batteries. 
He described the mode in which he constructed his batteries and 
the experiments performed with them, which showed yery com- 
plex actions, but proved that a palladium-element has a greater 
electro-motor force than one of Grove’s gas-elements, because 
hydrogen in contact with palladium is considerably more oxydis- 
able than hydrogen in contact with platinum. ‘This electro- 
motor force is still further increased if the palladium which is in 
contact with oxygen (/.e., the positive electrode) is oxydised. 
—A new determination of the orbit of Clytie (asteroid 73), with 
ephemerides, by Signor Giovanni Celoria, was communicated by 
Professor Schiaparelli. 
MONTREAL 
Natural History Society, November 29.—Principal Daw- 
son in the chair. Mr. Billings read a paper on the genus 
Scolithus, and some allied Fossils. The fossils known under the 
names of Scolithus and Arenicolites were described as consisting 
of cylindrical or rod-like bodies, which penetrate the layers of 
sandstone perpendicularly downwards, to a distance varying from 
a few lines to two or three feet. There are several varieties, the © 
most common of which has the rods from one-twelfth to one-fourth 
of an inch in diameter; in another more rare form they have at the 
surface of the beds a wide trumpet-shaped expansion, two or three 
inches across, but taper to a point below, where they are, in 
general, more or less curved. Under certain circumstances, they _ 
can be entirely separated from the rock, and then present the 
appearance of simple cylindrical or conical rods of sandstone 
with no internal structure. All the varieties are more or less 
distinctly marked by a series of oblique annulations—a charac- 
ter which Mr. Billings thought to be of importance, as it seemed 
to show they were all members of ene family of organisms. So 
long as these fossils were only known by specimens exhibiting no 
internal structure, it was impossible to decide to which division 
of the animal or vegetable kingdom they belonged. The 
Geological Survey had, however, ascertained that the Potsdam 
formation included a considerable deposit of limestone, in which 
the same fossil forms were found, with the internal structure 
beautifully preserved. By these it was proved that they were 
not the casts of worm-burrows, but sponges. Mr. Billings believed 
that these ancient sponges, or at least many of them, lived in 
the sand or soft ooze of the ocean’s bottom, with their some- 
times wide and trumpet-shaped mouths either even with or a 
little elevated above the surface. During the discussion that 
followed the reading of the paper, Dr. Dawson said that if Mr. 
Billings was right, it would appear that.in the seas of the earlier 
In reply to a ques- ~ 
tion by Mr. Whiteayes, Mr, Billings said that siliceous spiculee 
