162 Miscellanies. 



MISCELLANIES. 



FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC. 



1 . Museum o/" Gideon Mantell, Esq. of Lewes, in Sussex, Eng- 

 land. — We have for some tinae intended to publish a notice of this 

 museum, which, in the sciences to which it relates, is one of the most 

 remarkable and instructive in the world, especially when it is consid- 

 ered that it is the result of individual effort. We are happy to man- 

 ifest, in this manner, our respect for the character of the distinguished 

 and excellent proprietor, _^and to exliibit this museum, as a model wor- 

 thy of imitation in this country, especially in the vast secondary, ter- 

 tiary and diluvial region of our middle and southern Atlantic coast. 



We shall adopt Mr. Mantell's own account in his published cata- 

 logue of 1829, which is introduced by the following eloquent and 

 beautiful passage from Sir H. Davy. 



" If we look with wonder upon the great remains of human works, 

 such as the columns of Palmyra, broken in the midst of the desert ; 

 the temples of Psestum, beautiful in the decay of twenty centuries ; 

 or the mutilated fragments of Greek sculpture in the Acropolis of 

 Athen's, or in our own museums, asproofsof the genius of artists, and 

 power and riches of nations now past away ; with how much deeper 

 feeling of admiration must we consider those grand monuments of na- 

 ture which mark the revolutions of the globe ; continents broken into 

 islands ; one land produced, another destroyed ; the bottom of the 

 ocean become a fertile soil ; whole races of animals extinct, and the 

 bones and exuviae of one class covered with the remains of another ; 

 and upon the graves of past generations — the marble or rocky tomb, 

 as it were, of a former animated world — new generations rising, and 

 order and harmony established, and a system of life and beauty pro- 

 duced out of chaos and death ; proving the infinite power, wisdom, 

 and goodness of the Great Cause of all things !" 



Sussex, and the adjacent parts of Hampshire, Surrey, and Kent, 

 are composed of beds of gravel, chalk, clay, limestone, sand, and 

 sandstone, lying upon one another in a certain order, and having a 

 general inclination towards the south-east in Sussex, and north-east 

 in Surrey and Kent. In these beds are found, more or less abund- 

 antly, the remains of animals and vegetables ; but the organic bodies 

 discovered in some of the strata, are not to be met with in others ; 

 for instance, in certain beds the fossils are entirely of terrestrial or 



