Ai'CiL 1, iS65.] 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP, 



91 



GEOLOGY. 



A Coal's Account of Itself.-^"! cannot 

 exactly remember," he went on to say, " how I was 

 formed, except from tradition; but as the members 

 of our family (and it is a very large one, for I have 

 relations in Staffordshire, Lancashire, South Wales, 

 Newcastle, Scotland, and indeed in most parts of 

 the country) are pretty well agreed upon the point, 

 I may take it for granted that the account is 

 tolerably correct. You will scarcely believe me 

 when I tell you that the ancestors of myself, and all 

 my kith and kin, were trees — nothing more nor less 

 than stems and leaves, which the rays of the sun 

 had ripened and made green ; and it almost makes 

 me believe in the doctrine of metempsychosis, to 

 find myself giving out that heat which the rays of 

 the sun stored up in the leaves of my fore- 

 fathers — so much so, that a celebrated engineer, 

 George Stephenson by name, actually called us 

 'bottled sunshine/ If you don't believe it, 

 examine me closely through a microscope when I 

 have finished giving out my heat and become a 

 cinder, and you will find, by treating me with nitric 

 acid in a particular way, not only the structure of 

 the tree, but will also be able to tell from what 

 particular class of tree I descended." — Once a Week, 



The Manueactuke oe Eossils. — At a meeting 

 of the Manchester Geological Society Mr. J. Plant 

 called the attention of the meeting to a serious 

 fraud that had been going on for some time among 

 excavators at the Macclesfield New Cemetery. 

 The excavations had been made in gravels that 

 belonged to the drift, and a number of fragments 

 of shells belonging to a recent period, and occa- 

 sionally a few nearly perfect, had been found by the 

 workmen, and these had fallen into the hands of 

 gentlemen interested in the geology of the locality. 

 Encouraged by the pecuniary results of their dis- 

 coveries some of the workmen had supplied spurious 

 shells, obtained from their friends at Liverpool, 

 Southport, or Ireland, and they had even robbed 

 rookeries and garden plots that contained shellwork. 

 The shells so obtained were subjected to the action 

 of fire or acid, to deprive them of their epidermis, 

 and to bring out a thin coating of white lime ; to 

 give them a true drift character they were after- 

 wards shaken in a basket of gravel, and had imparted 

 to them the necessary red tinge. Having no know- 

 ledge of species, some of the workm.en liad operated 

 on West Indian and African shells, specimens of 

 which Mr. Plant produced. But the most audacious 

 fi-aud that they had attempted "was the manufacture 

 of a fossil. They had very cleverly set a mactra 

 {stultorum) in a piece of Ketton oolite. The shell, 

 v/hich had the peculiar pink tinge of the species, 

 was so cleverly cemented v/ith the oolite that even 

 an ordinary geologist miglit have been deceived. 



One of the workmen had said to a gentleman 

 writing to Mr. Plant " that they had made a good 

 thuig of it. They had deceived the museums of 

 London, Manchester, and Liverpool, and there had 

 been a fine set of people asking them for the shells." 

 Such a dispersion might lead to very erroneous 

 deductions as to the origin of the diluvial di-ift of 

 Macclesfield, and he (Mr. Plant) thought it right 

 to mention the fraud- to the society, so t-ha_t it might 

 be exposed. — Manchester Guaixlian. 



Stanner Eocks. — I see a note in your last num- 

 ber respecting the capture of a female badger and 

 her cubs at Stcmner Rocks, near Kington, Hereford- 

 shire. Some of the students and lovers of nature 

 who take Science Gossip may be glad to know that 

 Stanner Rocks and the immediate neighbourhood 

 possess peculiar interest for the naturalist. Stanner 

 Hocks lie within a pleasant walk of the little country 

 town of Kington, on the borders of Radnorshire, 

 now easUy reached by railway from Hereford or 

 Leominster. They are very striking from the bold, 

 rocky appearance they assume among the rounded 

 hills of Hergest ridge and Bradnor-hill which flank 

 them. They are, in fact, the nortii-eastern extremity 

 of masses of volcanic rocks, which in Worsel Wood, 

 Hunter Hill, and Old Radnor Hill, are emptied in 

 this district though the lower Wenlock, or Wool- 

 hope limestone, which is altered and metamorphosed 

 into a crystalline, amorphous mass, well worthy of 

 observation. The volcanic rock of Stanner is a par- 

 ticularly hard, dark, hypersthenic rock; and Sir R. 

 Murchison, who described this ancient lava in his 

 " Silurian System," five-and-twenty years ago, re- 

 marked that it resembled the hypersthenic Trap of 

 Cornish, in the Isle of Skye. Before the submer- 

 gence of by far the greater part of England during 

 the glacial period, the volcanic rocks of Stanner, 

 Hanter-hill, Worsel-wood, and Old Radnor were, 

 no doubt, connected. The valleys and hollows be- 

 tween were evidently eroded and scooped out during 

 that period, as large masses of this peculiar rock are 

 scattered over the different hills to the north-east 

 ciud north of the district, and portions are found 

 in the drift that lies along the slopes of old red sand- 

 stone near Lyonshall, and other localities. The 

 botany of Stanner-rocks is almost as interesting as 

 the geology. Y/hen I was last there, two summers 

 ago in the month of June, the rocks were purple 

 with that rare and local plant Lychnis viscaria and 

 the Geranium sangidneum, Vv'hich grows nowhere 

 else in the Kington district. I also gathered that 

 very rare plant, Sclerantlms perennis, which I believe 

 only grows in two or three localities in Great Britain. 

 A friend, who accompanied me, took several good 

 beetles ; and what with scenery, rocks, geology, 

 botany, and entomology, we passed two very happy 

 days among the old volcanic rocks of Stanner.— 

 r. S. 8. 



