Fossil Botany. 2oj 



This was followed by a period of intense cold, during which 

 time many of the terraces and mesas of our coast were planed 

 down by the slow but irresistible action of immense glaciers and 

 sheets of ice. 



Many northern species of land shells and plants followed these 

 glaciers and ice-fields, and are now living where, previous to the 

 Glacial Period, species lived and grew which are now extinct in 

 this region, but are found living nearer the tropics. 



Parallel illustrations are noticed by Grant Allen, an eminent 

 English writer, who, in a recent article on the White Mountains 

 of New Hampshire, says: — 'A glacial fauna and flora still cling to 

 the heights. Polar butterflies stranded there at the end of the 

 Great Ice Age, keep up to this day the lineal succession of their 

 little colony, though no others of their kind are again to be found 

 in all America, till you reach the frozens shores of Labrador." 



The plants are everyone of Arctic species, and he enumerates 

 several, all of which were once common glacial forms. 



The history of the world from its beginning, is a history record- 

 ed at every step, but the records are buried and concealed as fast 

 as they are written, and their reading can only be partially accom- 

 plished, and that by patient observation and study, by many and 

 widely separated observers. 



The combined readings of these various observations constitute 

 the summary of our knowledge of the past, and from which we 

 make our deductions of the probabilities of the future. 



Lorenzo G. Yates. 



MUMMY EYES FOR JEWELRY. 



(Read before the New York Microscopical Society, October 2d, 1885, by George F. Lunz ) 



The subject which I take the liberty of presenting to you this 

 evening was brought to my attention by a number of articles that 

 recently appeared in the daily papers. In these articles it was 

 stated that a necklace was being made by Messrs. Tiffany & Co. 

 of petrified human eyes; that arsenic had been used in the prep- 

 aration of these eyes, and that three workmen who w^ere engaged 

 on the necklace had been made suddenly ill by the deleterious 

 poison, and refused to resume work on such dangerous material. 

 Through the kindness of Mr. W. E. Curtis I was enabled to 

 bring the material with me to-night, and on inquiry at headquart- 

 ers the facts were elicited, which I shall present to you. An ex- 

 planatory letter from Mr. Curtis was likewise loaned to me by Mr. 

 C. Hanford Henderson, and this, with the information gleaned 

 from Messrs. Tiffany & Co., has enabled me to give a true and 

 satisfactory account of the matter. Mr. Curtis writes that "mum- 

 mies are very common in Peru, so common, in fact, that they can 

 readily be obtained at $4 or $5 apiece." The writer himself 



