516 Chronicles of Science. [Oct., 



2. ARCHEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY. 



Yielding to the desire of trie Belgian Minister of the Interior, 

 M. Dupont has collected into a small octavo volume the first series 

 of his papers on the Belgian caverns, under the title of " Notices 

 prehminaires sur les fouilles executees sous les auspices du gouverne- 

 ment Beige dans les cavernes de la Belgique." It contains notices 

 of the caverns on the banks of the Lesse explored up to the month 

 of April, 1866 ; of the caverns on the banks of the Meuse explored 

 up to October, 1865; and of the author's researches into the 

 Quaternary deposits of the valleys of both those rivers. These 

 memoirs having been originally published in the Bulletin of the 

 Academy of Sciences of Brussels are now tolerably well known, 

 and require no further notice at our hands ; but their publication 

 in a compact form will be welcome news to the many English 

 ethnologists and geologists who are interested in the progress of 

 M. Dupont's researches. 



Mr. J. S. Moore has recorded, in the Journal of the Royal 

 Geological Society of Ireland, the finding of a stone hatchet, under 

 interesting circumstances, at Kilbride, County of Wicklow. It 

 was found imbedded in hard clay, and carefully covered by a large 

 stone, fourteen inches broad, eighteen inches deep, and two feet 

 long, perfectly flat on the under side, and weighing about 3 cwt. 

 This stone was firmly imbedded, and wedged in by five other large 

 stones, varying in weight from one to three hundredweight. About 

 two loads of smaller stones were firmly and closely packed upon 

 these. Stiff hard clay rose around the base of the large stones to 

 the height of six inches, and from that up to the surface of the 

 ground lay about 1 8 inches of bog. The author speculates on the 

 means — natural and artificial, — whereby the hatchet may have 

 been placed in the position in which it was found, and the most 

 probable of his suggestions seems to be that it was hidden there by 

 a native previous to the growth of the bog, and the accumulation 

 of the clay around the base of the large stones. 



A controversy on the subject of certain submarine forests on the 

 shores of Liverpool Bay and the River Mersey has been carried on 

 for some time past between the Rev. Dr. A. Hume and Mr. Joseph 

 Boult. The latter gentleman in several papers, and especially in 

 one recently published in the 'Transactions of the Historic Society 

 of Lancashire and Cheshire,'* upholds the idea that the peat of this 

 district has been derived from other localities where peat pre-existed, 

 e. g. Chat Moss, and that the remains (Roman) found in it " are 

 appurtenant to the original localities from which the peat is derived, 

 and may furnish a clue to identify those localites wherever they 



* New series, vol. vi., p. 89. 



