March 17, 1870] 
NATURE 
509 
of the Alps might be ; one paradise of lovely pasture and 
avenued forest of chestnut and blossomed trees, with cas- 
cades docile and innocent as infants, laughing all summer 
long from crag to crag and pool to pool, and the Adige 
and the Po; the Dora and the Ticino, no more defiled, 
no more alternating between fierce flood and venomous 
languor, but in calm clear currents bearing ships to every 
city and health to every field of all that azure plain of 
Lombard Italy. .... Without in the least urging my 
plans impatiently on any one else, I know thoroughly that 
this which I have said siou/d be done, can be done, for 
the Italian rivers, and that no method of employment of 
our idle able-bodied labourers would be in the end more 
remunerative, or in the beginnings of it more healthful 
and every way more beneficial than, with the concurrence 
of the Italian and Swiss Governments, setting them. to 
redeem the valleys of the Ticino and the Rhone. And I 
pray you to think of this; for I tell you truly—you who 
care for Italy, that both her passions and her mountain 
streams are noble; but that her happiness depends, not 
on the liberty, but the right government of both.” 
fad TAIN FRED, BROME 
V ITH beees regret we have to record the death of 
! Captain Fred. Brome, formerly Governor of the 
Military Prison on Windmill Hill, Gibraltar, and well 
known to many of our geological and archeological 
readers as the able and indefatigable explorer of the 
ossiferous caves and fissures of the rock. 
His explorations, an account of which, so far as they 
related to the human remains and relics, was published in 
the Transactions of the Congress of Prehistoric Archae- 
ology for 1868, were commenced in April, 1863, and unre- 
mittingly continued, often under considerable difficulties, 
to December, 1868, when he was most unaccountably 
removed from the post he had so long and so well 
occupied. 
The amount of labour and responsibility thus volun- 
tarily undertaken by Captain Brome, solely in the interest 
of science, and without any personal motive whatever, can 
scarcely be imagined, nor can the value of the results ob- 
tained by him be easily over-estimated. 
Amore striking instance of selfdevotion to a purely 
scientific object can nowhere be found. 
The results of Captain Brome’s work may be said to 
have afforded all, or nearly all, the knowledge we possess 
of the priscan population of the Rock of Gibraltar, and 
have added enormously to our materials for determining 
the nature of its quaternary fauna, as disclosed in the 
ossiferous breccia and other contents of the rock fissures, 
from the examination of which Cuvier truly anticipated 
that the most important information would be derived. 
Captain Brome’s death occurred, we are sorry to say, 
under very melancholy circumstances. Having been re- 
moved from the post which he had so long and so usefully 
filled, and for which, from his great experience, extra- 
ordinary energy, and high sense of duty, he was so ad- 
mirably qualified, he was appointed, on coming to Eng- 
land, Governor of the Military Prison at Weedon. Here 
he hoped to find an asylum for his family, and some 
compensation for the sacrifices he had been compelled 
to make in leaving Gibraltar. 
But this was not to be. Amongst the numerous reduc- 
tions of late effected in our military establishments, the 
disestablishment of the prison at Weedon was one. The 
notice that his services would be no longer required was 
received by Captain Brome a short time since, and it 
seems to have so affected him, from the apprehension that 
his family would thus be deprived of all support—and this 
after a public service of thirty years—that, although a 
strong and vigorous man, he gradually sank, from mental 
depression, as it would seem, and he may truly be said to 
have died of a broken heart on the 4th March, leaving 
a widow and eight children, we fear wholly unproy ided 
for. 
A more melancholy case, and one more deserving of the 
sympathy of the scientific world, and, as we should ven- 
ture to hope, of the consideration of the authorities at the 
War Office, it is impossible to conceive. G. Busk 
THE GEOLOGY OF THE HOLY LAND 
N the year 1866 the Duc de Luynes organised an 
expedition for investigating the physical geography 
and geology of the Holy Land and part of the surrounding 
territories. Narratives of some features of the explora- 
tions have already been given to the world, but it is only 
now that the first part of the geological report appears. 
M. Lartet, the geologist of the expedition, has chosen as 
the vehicle of publication for his memoir, the opening 
number of a new magazine—the Aznales des Sciences 
Géologigues. Instead of confining himself to a record of 
what he personally accomplished, he has with much 
labour given a brief summary of the publications of pre- 
vious writers, and has incorporated their results with his 
own, so as to present ina clear and connected form the 
sum of all that is at present known regarding the geology 
of the country between Lebanon and the Red Sea, Until 
the whole of the memoir is published it would be prema- 
ture to pass judgment upon the position which it will 
ultimately take in the geological bibliography of Palestine. 
The present instalment, after its introductory and historical 
sections, passes on to describe the igneous and crystalline 
rocks, leaving the great limestone and later formations 
for a subsequent paper. 
Viewed in the great scale, the geological structure of 
Palestine is remarkably simple. A long table-land or 
succession of table-lands, consisting for the most part of 
horizontal or gently inclined cretaceous and numimulitic 
limestones, is traversed by the valley of the Jordan, 
and cut through by transverse valleys, many of which 
are now quite dry. Stretching southwards into the 
peninsula of Sinai, these calcareous plateaux end against a 
mass of high rugged ground—the mountain-group of 
Sinai and Arabia—consisting of crystalline rocks. Here 
and there on the west side of the Jordan Valley, but much 
more markedly on the east side, the table-lands are 
roughened by rocks of volcanic origin. Everywhere there 
is evidence of vast denudation, whereby the plateaux have 
been cut into valleys and hills, and of a former climate 
when rain and river-water were much more developed 
than they are now. 
M. Lartet describes at some length the crystalline rocks 
which enclose the upper end of the Red Sea, and enters 
into considerable detail regarding the mineral differences 
of these various rocks ; but he touches with tantalising 
brevity upon their geological relations—a fault, however, 
which he shares with all other writers who have treated 
of the geology of these regions. We only learn from him 
that there is a central nucleus of granite round which are 
folded successive zones of gneiss and various schists and 
slates, and that all these rocks are pierced by intrusive 
masses of porphyry, dicrite, melaphyre, serpentine, &c. 
From the granites and old intrusive rocks he passes, by 
what seems an abrupt and awkward transition, to the 
basalts and lavas, which are among the most recent of 
the geological formations of the country; and he then 
takes up the schistose rocks. This arrangement is much 
more a petrographical than a geological one. We cannot 
but think that it interrupts the chronological sequence of 
events which it is the business of a geologist to decipher 
and describe. The volcanic rocks were not erupted until 
the cretaceous table-lands had been long exposed to denu- 
dation. It would surely have been better, therefore, to 
have deferred the history of the eruptions until some 
