1887 | Mineralogy and Petrography. 371 
has recently stated that the same grottoes contain the bones of 
orty-two species of birds, fourteen of them birds of prey, the 
others the food-birds of the primitive race who inhabited the 
Among the recent species are the maigre, tunny, salmon, and 
trout. Altogether, in the six caverns once inhabited by quater- 
nary man, M. Gaudry reports eight hundred and forty thou- 
sand fragments, vertebrate and invertebrate, belonging to one 
hundred and eleven species of the former category and one hun- 
dred and seventy-one of the latter. 
Recent.—Professor J. D. Dana, in a recent article in the 
American Journal of Science, canes. in connection with the 
recent disturbances at Kilauea, Vesuvius, and Tarawera, that vol- 
canic action must be attributed to the hydrostatic pressure of the 
column of lava; the pressure of vapors escaping in underground 
regions from the lavas, or produced by contact with them, acting 
either quietly or catastrophically ; and the pressure of the sub- 
siding crush of the crust forcing up the lavas in the conduit. 
MINERALOGY AND PETROGRAPHY:. 
ical News.—The rocks occurring in equatorial 
ound by O. Mi 
ites, nepheline-tephrites and basanites, limburgites, melilite- 
basalts, augite andesites and feldspathic basalts among the 
younger ones. The granophyres contain an augite with partings 
which are so closely and peculiarly associated that the author 
thinks they might be due to the solution in the granophyre sub- 
‘stance of some foreign inclusion. The gneisses, schists, and am- 
phibolites also contain a diallagic and an orthorhombic augite. 
Among the granular constituents of two specimens of amphib- 
olite, prismatic crystals of scapolite were noticed. The porphy- 
ritic feldspathic constituent of the trachytes (acmite-trachytes) 
corresponds very closely to the soda-microcline of Forstner.3 
1 Edited by Dr. W. S. BAYLEY, van tt Wisconsin, 
Bre Be ahrb. fr. Min., etc., Beil. Bd., iv. p. 57 
3 Cf. American Naiuralist, Notes, June, 1885, p - 600. 
VOL. XXI.—NO. 4. 25 
