Miscellanies. 205 



Captain Hughes communicated also, as appears in the bulletin, a spir- 

 ited sketch of the meeting of the British Association which he attended 

 at Glasgow, in the autumn of 1840, with the views of many of its great 

 men in scientific and practical geology. 



On the whole, we are very favorably impressed by the plan and first 

 inception of the National Institution at Washington, and we cordially wish 

 it success. We trust that the government will respond to, and fulfill their 

 high obligations in regard to the munificent half million bequest of Mr. 

 Smithson, and will bring it to bear either in aid of this Institution, or in 

 some other form, without delay, as neglect and procrastination which 

 would be as little to our honor as to our advanage. 



The frequent changes among our public men connected with the general 

 government, creates no small anxiety as to the fate of any efforts to pro- 

 mote good knowledge and liberal arts, so far as a local institution at Wash- 

 ington may depend upon those who are oppressed with political duties, and 

 whose action is so liable to receive a disastrous bias from the malign at- 

 mosphere of party. Liberal institutions at Washington, under the influ- 

 ence of enlightened and truly patriotic minds, could not fail to exalt the 

 character, both of the government and of the country — of every such in- 

 stitution we would devoutly say, esto perpetua ! 



12. Fossil Turtle. — Dr. Mantell has discovered a small fossil turtle in 

 the chalk of Kent — a very beautiful thing, and he has prepared a me- 

 moir on it for the.Royal Society. 



13. Fossil Saurians. — Dr. Mantell has communicated to the Royal 

 Society an elaborate memoir upon the iguanodon, hylaeosaurus, and other 

 reptiles of Tilgate Forest, embodying all our knowledge of the osteology 

 of those saurians, derived chiefly from his own researches. 



14. Microscopical Observations and Microscopes. — Dr. Mantell, under 

 date of London, March 29, 1841, writes to the senior editor of this Journal : 



" Microscopical observations are now all the rage in every department 

 of science. If you go to the Royal Society, you are sure of the micro- 

 scopical investigation of the embryo— at the Medico-Chirurgical, micro- 

 scopical observations on the blood corpuscules — at the Geological, micro- 

 scopical observations on fossil teeth, and at the Linnsan, microscopical 

 observations on vegetable organization. At the soiree of the president of 

 the Royal Society, (the Marquis of Northampton,) microscopes are the 

 great subject of attention, and then we have a microscopical society and 

 a microscopicalJournal. 



" My young son has been very busy with his microscope in examining 

 some American water from West Point, sent by Dr. Bailey, and we have 

 seen some of your infusoria alive and as active as if they had not had a 



