Miscellaneous Intelligence. 407 



three-and-a-half, showing well its remarkable precipices and the 

 system in its heights and valleys. Recently a survey has been 

 made of the small western island of the Hawaian Chain called 

 Nihoa or Bird Island. The island is 5200 feet in extreme length 

 and 2000 in mean width. It is the remains of the upper unsub- 

 merged portion of a volcanic mountain. The highest point is 

 near the northwest angle and is 903 feet above the sea level. The 

 northeast is but little lower, 869 feet. The north, east and west 

 sides are precipitous, and from the top of the bluffs, there are 

 gradual inward slopes, like the slopes of a crater, leading down 

 to a large, partly enclosed bay, which occupies nearly the whole 

 south side. Great numbers of dikes intersect the high preci- 

 pices on the northwest side which were found to traverse the 

 whole island. The survey indicates that the island was once the 

 site of a great volcano, and the dikes show the courses of fissures 

 through which the lavas flowed at various eruptions. 



OBITUARY. 



James Macearlane, of Towanda, Pa., died suddenly on the 

 eleventh of October. He was born at Gettysburg on the second 

 of September, 1819, was graduated at Pennsylvania College, of 

 the same place, in 1837, studied law at Carlisle, and was admitted 

 to the bar in 1845. He made himself well acquainted geologically 

 with the coal-measures and coal regions of Pennsylvania, and 

 published a work of great value on the Coal Fields of America. 

 His " Geologists' Traveling Hand-book,' 1 in which the formations 

 along all railroad routes in the country, as far as known, are 

 given, proved to be a great convenience to travelers, and of 

 much value to the science ; and during the two or three years 

 past he has been engaged in its revision for a new edition — and a 

 printers' proof arrived on the morning of his decease. His occa- 

 sional papers have reference mostly to the Coal-measures. 



Thomas Bland was born at Newark, Nottinghamshire, Eng- 

 land, Oct. /, 1809. His father, Dr. Thomas Bland, was a physi- 

 cian. His mother was a Shepard, and a niece of Richard Shepard, 

 who was a conchologist, from whom she acquired a love of natu- 

 ral history which led her to make collections of plants, minerals 

 and shells, and this love of nature was inherited by her son 

 Thomas. He was educated at Charter House School in London, 

 where he was a classmate of Thackeray. He subsequently studied 

 law and entered upon its practice in London. In May, 1836, he 

 became a Fellow of the Royal Geological Society of London. In 

 1842 he removed to Barbadoes and thence to Jamaica, where he 

 resided until about 1850, collecting largely in various departments 

 of natural history, especially in chonchology. While at Jamaica 

 be made the acquaintance of Prof. C. B. Adams, then of Middle- 

 bury College, Vermont. A close friendship ensued which ended 

 only with the untimely death of the latter in 1853. In 1850 Mr. 

 Bland returned to England, and after a stay of a few months, 

 accepted the appointment of superintendent of a gold mine at 



