512 CJrronides of Science. [Oct*, 



even be a question -whether Cecidomi/ia ever was generally pre- 

 valent — it mav have been so only in Kieby"s time and the London 

 district.'"' 



The Rivers Pollution Commissioners have issued a report npon 

 the so-called i; ABC" process for defecating sewage. They pro- 

 nounce it a failure. The sewage treated on this plan is not defecated, 

 and the manure produced is extremely poor. The only advantage 

 derived from its adoption is a somewhat quickened subsidence of 

 the suspended matters which town sewage carries with it, but as 

 every 10 cwt. of these are rattled through the sewers of a town, 

 borne along in the case of a town with ordinary water supply in a 

 thousand tons of water, it is not likely that these suspended matters 

 can retain much that is soluble or valuable on their exit from 

 the sewer system of a town. And in point of fact the solid matters 

 of town sewage are of very little agricultural value indeed. It is 

 the liquid portion that contains the elements of the food of plants ; 

 and it is this, therefore, in which these substances axe present in 

 too dilute a form to be precipitated that must be carried to the 

 land, if either a nuisance is to be abated or a valuable property to 

 be turned to good account. The Commissioners pronounce sewage 

 irrigation to be the only method known to them by which both these 

 results can be attained. 



There has been an unusual prevalence of cattle disease during 

 the past quarter. During the severely restrictive system under 

 which alone cattle traffic was permitted during the prevalence of 

 the cattle plague, the more common diseases, the foot-and-m: 

 affection and pleuro-pneumonia, almost disappeared. They have 

 resumed their frequency and virulence with the relaxation of the 

 rales affecting cattle-markets. 



2. AECELEOLOGrY (Pbe-Histobic). 



Primeval Monuments of Peru* — Mr. E. G. Squier, the well- 

 known American archaeologist, has lately explored the early megar 

 lithic monuments of Peru. The great plateau of the Andes, elevated 

 13,000 feet above the sea, and fenced in with high mountains and 

 frigid deserts, possesses nevertheless a number of stone structures 

 belonging to what is regarded through the world as the earliest 

 monumental period, coincident in style and character with the so- 

 called cromlechs, dolmens, and "Sun" or u Druidical " circles of 

 Scandinavia, the British Isles. France, and Northern and Central 

 Asia. 



Considerable importance attaches to these remains, as indicating 



* By E. G. Squier, MA. ; F.S.A... &c. From ' The American Naturalist,' 

 vol. iv., 1870, p. 1. 



