Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 159 



Pliocene period, and to its subsequent elevation, the author stated 

 that the chief physical feature of the country after that elevation 

 was a high mountain-range, from which glaciers of enormous 

 volume, owing to peculiar meteorological conditions, descended 

 into the plain below, removing in their course the loose Tertiary 

 strata, and thus widening and enlarging the pre-existing depres- 

 sions, the occurrence of which had at first determined the course of 

 the glaciers. 



The author then observes that, the country having acquired a 

 temporary stability, the glaciers became comparatively stationary, 

 and therefore formed moraines, the materials of which were cemented 

 together by the mud deposited from the water issuing from the 

 glacier; new moraine matter would then raise the bed of the outlet 

 and dam up the water below the glacier, and from this moment, he 

 believes, the formation and scooping out of the rock-basin begins ; 

 for the ice being pressed downwards, and prevented by the moraine 

 from descending, its force would be expended in excavating a basin 

 in the rock below. 



4. " Note on a Sketch Map of the Province of Canterbury, New 

 Zealand, showing the glaciation during the Pleistocene and Recent 

 times, as far as explored." By Julius Haast, Ph.D., F.G.S. 



This paper contained a general explanation of a Sketch Map 

 illustrating the past and present distribution of the glaciers on the 

 eastern side of the Southern Alps of New Zealand, as well as the 

 author's views on the excavation of Lake-basins in hard rocks, as 

 shown by the coincidence between the positions of the lakes and the 

 terminations of the ancient glaciers. 



XXV. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



ON SOME THERMO-ELECTRIC PILES OF GREAT ACTIVITY. 

 BY PROF. R. BUNSEN. 



OF all substances whose thermo-electric differences have been 

 hitherto examined, and whose electric conductibility is suffici- 

 ently good to enable them to be employed advantageously in thermo- 

 electric piles, bismuth occupies the highest, and an alloy of two parts 

 of antimony with one part of tin the lowest place in the tension series. 

 Experiment has shown me that pyrolusite stands above bismuth in 

 this series, and that copper pyrites occupies a far higher place than 

 even pyrolusite. When copper pyrites is combined with the above 

 alloy so as to form a thermo-electric pair, or, better still — in order to 

 be able to employ greater differences of temperature — when copper 

 pyrites is combined with copper, far stronger currents are obtained 

 han, under the. same circumstances, are yielded by any of the 

 er mo-electric piles hitherto in general use. 

 To determine the constants of such a pile the following arrange- 



