& Miscellanies. A405 
after the period of the erection of these tombs. With respect to the 
relation these facts bear to each other, I beg to remark that the colossal 
nests of Capts. Cook and Flinders, and also those of Mr. James Burton, 
were all on the sea shore, and all of those about an equal distance from 
the equator. But whether the Egyptian birds, as described in those 
very ancient sculptures, bear any analogy to those recorded in the last 
pages of the great stone book of nature, (the new red sandstone forma- 
tion,) or whether they bear analogy toany of the species determined by 
Prof. Owen from the New Zealand fossils, I am not qualified to say, 
nor is it indeed the object of this paper to discuss; the intention of 
which being rather to bring together these facts, and to associate 
them with that recorded at Gezah, in order to call the attention of those 
who have opportunity of making further research into this interesting 
matter.— Atheneum, (London,) June, 1845. 
34. On the Heat of the Solar Spots; by Prof. Hewry, of Princeton 
College, New Jersey.—Sir D. Brewster read an extract of a letter 
which he had just received from Prof. Henry, who had recently been 
engaged in a series of experiments on the heat of the sun, as observed 
by means of a thermo-electrical apparatus applied to an image of the 
luminary thrown on a screen from a telescope ina dark room. He 
found that the solar spots were perceptibly colder than the surrounding 
light surface. Prof. Henry also converted the same apparatus into a 
telescope, by placing the thermo-pile in room of the eye-glass of a re- 
flecting telescope. The heat of the smallest cloud on the verge of the 
horizon was instantaneously perceptible, and that of a breeze four or 
five miles off could also be readily. perceived.—dtheneum, (London,) 
July, 1845, p. 700. 
35. Notice in a Letter from London to the Senior Editor, dated 
Aug. 30, 1845. 
A new line of railroad is being surveyed to connect Bath with Wey- 
mouth, and a railroad now cutting for the line from Tunbridge to Tun- 
bridge Wells (in Kent) passes through a fine series of wealden sands 
and clays. Some of these beds abound in fresh-water shells and crus- 
taceee, and Jand and marsh plants. In certain localities the sandstone 
is full of stems of the Equisetum Lyellii from a few inches to two feet 
long ; and numerous veins of lignite, formed of the carbonized remains 
of the same species of vegetables. These sands alternate with lami- 
nated shales, which are literally full of the crustaceous shells of Cypri- 
des, (Cypris Valdensis,) sprinkled with minute scales of fishes. A small 
species of the fresh-water shells (Cyclades) so characteristic of the 
fluviatile deposits, also abounds, together with layers of shelly lime- 
Vol. xx1x, No. 2.—July-Sept. 1845. 52 
