Miscellanies. 207 



Wealden reptiles would be five or six pounds — size nine feet by five or 

 six. The hyla^osaurus would be about three guineas. Even the Maid- 

 stone iguanodon might be drawn on the same scale. — Dr. Mantell. 



16. Glaciers, Moraines, Sfc. — You will have seen that Agassiz's 

 " Etudes des Glacitrs" has excited some of our principal geologists and 

 others to hunt after moraines, and they instantly found proofs of former 

 glaciers, and of a cap of ice over the whole northern hemisphere, from 

 the boulders and scratches on the rocks and beds of gravel and mud, 

 which erst were considered indubitable proofs of diluvial action. As a 

 consequence, several memoirs on the former existence of glaciers in Eng- 

 land and Scotland were read at the Geological Society, and gave rise to 

 many animated discussions. This is now over, and Mr. Owen's foot- 

 marks and labyrinthine tracks are on the ascendant. But we are steadily 

 advancing in knowledge. Although Agassiz's theory, to the extent to 

 which he carries it, cannot be admitted, yet modified, it explains many 

 hitherto obscure phenomena. — Dr. Mantell. 



17. British Association — Mr. Murchison — His Journey to the Ural 

 Mountains — Opinions, S^c. — A letter from Roderick Impey Murchison, 

 Esq. to the senior editor, dated Paris, April 4, 1S41, announces "on au- 

 thority, that the next meeting of the British Association will be at Plym- 

 outh, (England,) on the 29th of July, and not on the 12th as was first pro- 

 mulgated." 



Mr. Murchison was at Paris, on his way to the Ural mountains in Rus- 

 sia, ia which tour he was to be accompanied by his friend, M. E. De Ver- 

 neuil, the companion of his journey in Northern Russia in the summer 

 of 1840. Of the geological results of this journey, an interesting ac- 

 count is given in a printed memoir of Messrs. Murchison and Verneuil, 

 which we have just received. Their journey, the present summer, is for 

 the purpose of settling some important questions in Russian geology, with 

 reference to a geological map of that country. The travellers hoped to 

 reach St. Petersburg!! the first of May, and to be in the Ural mountains 

 or their flanks in the first week in June. 



It appears from Mr. Murchison's last memoir alluded to above, that 

 " the evidences in Russia are most complete as regards a triple descend- 

 ing fossiliferous order of carboniferous, old red or Devonian and Silurian." 

 The Rhenish provinces and Germany furnished, it is true, to Mr. Mur- 

 chison and Prof Sedgwick, the proofs of a similar order, but Russia 

 alone has, as yet, supplied the union of proof required, viz. the order of 

 superposition and the collocation in the same bed of the Ichlhyolitcs of 

 Scotland with the shells of Devonshire. 



Mr. Murchison expresses his conviction that North America may ofier 

 the fullest and most perfect sequence of paleozoic strata in the world. He 



