1865.] Geology and Palceontulogy. 301 



will suppose, rotatory glaciers — whirlpools of ecstatic ice, like whirl- 

 ing dervishes, which excavated hollows in the Alps," and so on. 

 Again, " Gigantic glaciers in oscillation, like handsaws, severed the 

 main ridge of the Alps," &c. Professor Kanisay and his followers do 

 not require any such ridiculous suppositions in support of their 

 views ; and, although we are no advocate of their theory, we submit 

 that Mr. Buskin has not argued against it in a proper manner or a 

 proper spirit. He should rather, on account of his own reputation, 

 have stuck to the text with which he began ; for if scientific contro- 

 versy is mischievous, the burlesque of it is much more so. The 

 following paragraph, with which we must conclude, is perhaps the 

 most amusing in the paper. " The lakes of Maggiore, of Como, and 

 Garda, are similar excavations by minor fury of ice-foam ; — the Adriatic 

 was excavated by the great glacier of Lombardy ; — the Black Sea by 

 the ice of Caucasus before Prometheus stole fire ; — the Baltic by that 

 of the Dovrefeldt, in the youth of Thor ; — and Fleet Ditch, in the days 

 of the ' Dunciad,' by the snows of Snow Hill. Be it all so ; but when 

 all is so, there still was a Snow Hill for the snows to come down." 



The admission of this remarkable paper, for the sake of catching a 

 great name, into a Scientific Journal, which should be most particu- 

 larly anxious to look to measures and not to men, is an apt illustration 

 of one of the growing evils of the day, for which, not editors, but the 

 reading public, must be held responsible. 



Palaeontology has recently sustained a most serious loss by the 

 death of Dr. Hugh Falconer, one of the greatest Palaeontologists that 

 ever lived. His death will be felt the more on account of his pub- 

 lished works containing a mere fraction of the knowledge he possessed. 

 Before he died, Geology and Palaeontology were in a much more ad- 

 vanced state than they can now be said to be, for though he wrote 

 little, he spoke frequently, and his opinion on Palaeontological sub- 

 jects was rightly deemed of the utmost value, partly from his know- 

 ledge, and partly from his caution. Now all this is lost to us, and much 

 more also, especially the salutary check which the fear of his playful 

 banter and scathing satire put upon the thoughtless tongues and hasty 

 pens of younger men. 



Pkoceedings of the Geological Society. 



No less than five papers in the last Number of the Geological 

 Society's ' Quarterly Journal ' are devoted to the Laurentian Formation 

 and its contents. This subject has recently acquired immense import- 

 ance from the discovery of Eozoon Canadense in rocks of that age in 

 Canada, so that in this chronicle we shall not be able to give any 

 account of the other two highly interesting memoirs in the same 

 number, namely, " On the Geology and Fossils of Jamaica," by Dr. 

 P. Martin Duncan and Mr. G. P. Wall, and " On the Correlation of 

 the Cretaceous Formations of the North-East of Ireland," by Mr. 

 Ralph Tate. 



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