100 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE, 
Hudson street and the river, about 3,400 feet; thence under the river, curving 
five degrees northward to the New York bulkhead line at or near the foot of Mor- 
ton street, about 5,400 feet, then curving slightly southward in New York, about 
3,000 feet, to a point to be selected-by the city authorities. The extension grade 
of the tunnel is two in 100 feet descending from Jersey City, then ascending on 
the New York side three in 100 feet for 1,500. From that point the ascent will 
be on a grade of two in roo feet to the New York end. The greatest depth of 
water in the river is about sixty feet. Most of the bottom of the river bed is 
composed of tenacious silt, underlaid by hard sand. Near the New York shore 
a small extent of rock is encountered and some gravel.—.S¢. Louis Journal of 
Commerce. 
Eis MOLSON NG 
BOG BUTTER, FROM COUNTY GALWAY, IRELAND. 
Mr. John Plant, F. G. S., exhibited at a meeting of the Manchester, Eng- 
land, Philosophical society, January 19, 1880, a piece of mineral resin, familiar- 
ly known in the west of Ireland as Bog Butter, (Butyrellite). The lump weighed 
exactly 14 ozs. It came from a good depth in a bog in County Galway. <A few 
years ago, when in that part of Ireland, he had been unsuccessful in meeting 
with a sample of this curious substance, although he was informed that it was 
not unfrequently met with by the turf cutters during each summer. He heard of 
its origin and some of the uses to which it was said to be put by the poor people, 
if they got any of it, from a farmer at Killkee, but he could hardly credit the 
statement that in hard times it was melted down and actually used as a dripping 
to the potatoes ; he rather concluded that the greasing was limited to the axles of 
the potato cart. The Irish have a widespread belief that bog butter was hidden 
by the fairies in the bogs long ages ago; and it is affirmed that the butter is some- 
times found in small wooden kegs in bogs along the coast. These kegs they say 
have been hastily buried by smugglers running a cargo of contraband, though 
when bog butter was declared an illegal article of trade in Ireland they are un- 
able to say. Unfortunately, Mr. Plant was not shown a keg, or even a staver 
of a keg, but he was informed that specimens of veritable kegs of bog butter are to 
be seen in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy and in the museums at Ed- 
inburgh. The fairy origin of the bog butter he thought might be ascribed to the 
active imagination of the Celtic brain, many of the inexplicable things in nature 
being readily put down to the good or evil doings of the indigenous fairies of 
Erin. 
By the aid of scientific analysis the substance called bog butter can be shown 
to be a perfectly natural production arising from the decomposition of the veget- 
able matters forming the peat or bog, and to belong to the numerous family of 
