244 



MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



[1855. 



STATED MEETING. 



21sT Makcd, 1855. 



The following donations were announced from T. D. Harington : — 



Guizot's Life of Cromwell. 



Mackintoslj's Military Tour through the Seat of War, Crimea, &c. 



Slavery on African Coast. 



Hue's Travels in Tartary, Thibet, &c. 



Scientific Annual, 1852 and 1853 (United States). 



Vear Book of Facts, 1852 and 1853. 



From G. B. Faribault : 



Public Accounts of the Province of Canada for 1853. 



Annual Report of the Postmaster General, for the year ended 31st 

 March, 1854. 



Keturn from the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, showing the num- 

 ber of Votes polled in each County. 



Documents submitted by the Bureau of Agriculture to the Legisla- 

 ture. 



Beport of the Superintendent of Education, Lower Canada, for 1853. 



The Seigniorial Tenure of Canada, and Plan of Commutation, by 

 J. C. Tachi5. 



Tables of the Trade and Navigation of the Province of Canada, for 

 1853. 



Census of Canada for 1851 and 1852, vol. 2. 



The thanks of the Society were ordered to be given to T. D. Har- 

 ington and G. B. Faribault. 



The following gentlemen were proposed as Associate Members. 



Walter Serocold, late Captain, 66th Regiment. 



William Chessell. 



A Paper was read by F. N. Boxer, submitting certain suggestions for 

 the better conducting the affairs of the Society. 



Resolved that F. N. Boxer's paper be referred for the consideration 

 of the Council of the Society. 



A Paper was read by A. B. Roche, entitled, "A Proposal for ex- 

 tending the Trade of the Province." 



HENRY E. STEELE, 



Recording Secretary. 



were visible, or the various phenomena which accompanied it particu- 

 larly manifest. We propose to condense the various accounts which 

 have reached us, an'l present them in a connected form in the June 

 number of this Journal. We shall feel indeb'ed to our readers and 

 correspondents for any exact information or description they may have 

 it in their power to communicate. 



Chiiir of Natui'al HlstoE-y-9 Ediubiirgli Uuiversity, 



Some difficulty appears to be found in selecting a fitting successor 

 to Professor Edward Forbes ; and we have referred, on another page, 

 to a discussion this has given rise to. According to the latest accounts, 

 we learn that the idea is gaining gro\md of subdividing the Chair into 

 two Professorships. One of Geology, for which it is understood the 

 Duke of Argyle — who takes a lively interest in the question — destines 

 Hugh Miller ; the other of Natural History, in its several distinct 

 branches, exclusive of Botany, which already constitutes a separate 

 Chair. For this Mr. AUman, of Trinity College, Dublin, is favourably 

 spoken. Though there are various other candidates — BIr. Iluxley, of 

 the London JIuseum of Practical Sciences, and recently one of the candi- 

 dates for the new Chair in University College, Toronto ; Professor Ni- 

 chol, formerly of Cork, and now of Aberdeen; and Dr. Fleming, of 

 New College, Edinburgh. The revenues of the Chair are estimated at 

 upwards of £1000 stg. ; so that it is a rare prize in the scientific lot- 

 tery, and may be expected to excite abundant emulation. The great 

 difficulty in finding a fit successor to Edward Forbes is no slight testi- 

 mony to the profound and singularly varied range of acquirements of 

 the late Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh. 



Miscellaneous Xuielli^cncc. 



T!ie HiuTicanc of tlic 18tU April, 1853. 



The progress of the remarkable storm which swept over a large por- 

 tion of Western Canada during the 18th of last month, has been re- 

 corded by the local Press of many localities where its destructive effects 



Elevation of the Land in Human Period. — General De la Mar- 

 mora, who has been employed twenty-four years on a geographical 

 and geological survey of Sardinia, presented an outline of his re- 

 searches in the latter department to the Geological Society of France 

 on 6th November last. In this paper he states that near Cagliari lie 

 found a raised beach containing shells mixed with works of human 

 art (pottery), at an elevation of 197 feet (60 metres) above the 

 sea. It seems to be slightly i«cZmc(?; and he speaks of another de- 

 posit, probably a newer one, a little farther on, which is horizont.al 

 and almost at the level of the sea. He estimates that at Alghero, 100 

 miles NNW., the rise produced by the same upheaval has been 328 

 feet, not attested, however, by human remains, but by the position of 

 a "quaternary sandstone." The extreme rarity of raised beaches 

 containing such remains renders these facts interesting. Mr. Lyell 

 refers only to three — one which I have seen, at Putzuoli, 20 feet above 

 the present sea level ; another near Stockholm, 60 feet above it, and 

 a third in Peru, seen by Mr. Darwin, 85 feet. It now appears that 

 some parts of Sardinia have been upheaved 197 feet since the island 

 was occupied by man. 



Velocity of the Electuio Chiiiient. — At the meeting of the Bel- 

 gian Royal Academy on 2nd December, M. Quetelet described Mr. 

 Airey's experiments with the electric telegraph to determine the difi'e- 

 rence of longitude between Greenwich and Brussels. The time spent 

 by the electric current in passing from the one observatory to the 

 other was found to be Os.l09, or rather less than the ninth part of a 

 seconcZ and this determination rests on 2;016 observations. The dis- 

 tance between the towns being 270 miles, the velocitj' of the current, 

 supposing it to be uniform, must rather exceed 2,500 miles per second, 

 or about one-seventh greater than that obtained by the American ob- 

 servers, a speed which would " girdle the globe" in ten seconds. The 

 difference of longitude from two series of observations, and by two 

 methods, was found to be 17m. 28s.9. Observations made by an eclipse 

 of the sun in May 1836, gave precisely the same results which may 

 be considered the most correct ; an eclipse of the sun in 1842, gave 

 four-tenths of a second less ; lunar occultations gave nine-tenths of a 

 second less ; and observations by chronometers gave 1 second and 

 three-tenths less. A second in this case represents a distance of 455 

 yards, and a tenth of a second 45J yards. Assuming the first-menticn- 

 ed time to be correct, the error in the chronometrical determination is 

 equivalent to 591 yards, or the ninth part of a mile, which, after all, 

 is only the 2430th part of the whole distance. 



Egg of the Eptounis. — At the meeting of the Academy of Sciences 

 on 5th March, M. I. G. Saint Hilaire presented two eggs of this gigan- 

 tic bird. The volume of one of them exceeded nine cubic decimetres, 

 and must therefore have been equal to a sphere 10.4 inches in diame- 

 ter, or to an egg-shaped body (an oblong spheroid) measui-ing 9 inches 

 by 12. In a later number of the journal from which this notice is 

 taken, we find the dimensions of three eggs of the Epyornis, of which 

 the largest is as follows: — Longest axis 12.15 inches, shortest axis 

 9.37 inches; elliptical circumference 36.4 inches. The Epyornis is 

 an extinct Madagascar bird, supposed to have been nearly fourteen 

 feet in height. 



New Gigantic Fossil Bikd. — Professor Constant Prevost submit- 

 ted to the Academy of Sciences on 12th March, the fossil bone of a 

 bird found in the Paris basin, near IMeudon. It was a tibia or leg 

 bone ; its length 17 J inches its breadth at the lower end fully 3 in- 

 ches ; at the upper 3|- ; at the middle If. A difference of opinion 

 existed among the naturalists as to whether it belonged to an Echas- 

 sier (a long-legged bird) or a Palmipede. If the former, M. Prevost 

 thought that it must have had twenty times the bulk of the swan. M. 

 Valenciennes regarded it as more allied in form to the albatross, and 

 in this case its dimensions will not be so great as M. Prevost conjec- 

 tured. It has been named Palnjornis Parisiensis, and was found at 

 the bottom of the tertiary beds, resting on the chalk. It was therefore 

 much older than the liuge birds of New Zealand and Madagascar, 

 which are found in alluvial deposits. — C. M., Scotsman. 



