56 | SCIENCE. 
and the Wisconsin historical society at Madison. To 
these must doubtless be added the American museum 
of natural history at New York, and the Peabody 
museum at New Haven, from which he received no 
reports. 
Four museums should apparently be grouped in a 
second class as important ones, but not so extensive 
as those of the first class; namely, Amherst college, 
the New London county historical society, the Wis- 
consin natural history society of Milwaukee, and the 
Wyoming historical] and geological society at Wilkes- 
barre, Penn. Eleven other museums are reported to 
have collections of considerable interest. To judge 
from the statements given in this paper, the Peabody 
museum at Cambridge is the largest in the country. 
A list of twenty-five other institutions believed to 
have collections, and from which no information was 
received, is appended. We have already referred to 
two. It may be remarked concerning these, that the 
Boston society of natural history has no such collec- 
tions, and that there is no institution bearing the 
title ‘ Academy of natural sciences, Baltimore, Md.’ 
— Dr. George M. Beard and Mr. Herbert Spencer 
almost simultaneously sound the alarm against our 
modern worry in the words, ‘The gospel of work 
must make way for the gospel of rest.’ An English 
writer, signing himself E. S., protests, in the Journal 
of science, against a theory of civilization which makes 
the acquisition of material wealth almost its sole 
object, and which brands all men not engaged in such 
pursuit as idlers. ‘‘We have under its inspiration 
stripped our own country, over a great and increas- 
ing part of its surface, of every beautiful feature. 
We have blackened its skies with smoke-clouds, pol- 
luted its air with sulphurous acid, filled its streams 
with liquid filth, covered its hills with ‘ spoil-banks,’ 
blighted its green fields, cut down its woods, and ex- 
tirpated many of its most lovely animal and vegetable 
species. Our cities, from London downwards, pre- 
sent, as their main feature, meanness, monotony, 
and ugliness by the square mile; rarely, indeed, re- 
lieved by a street or a single building upon which the 
eye may rest without pain.’”’ The diseases caused by 
over-work, public morals, and the effect of our system 
on true intellectual progress, receive vigorous treat- 
ment. The author concludes that our industrial civ- 
ilization is found wanting in every particular. ‘‘ It 
has broken down more rapidly and more disastrously, 
even, than the military régime which preceded it, and 
will be found to have left upon the human race even 
deeper marks of its failure.”’ 
— About half way between the mouth of the Santa 
Cruz River and the base of the Andes, and situated 
along the left bank, Signor Moreno has discovered an 
eocene deposit rich in mammalian remains. It lies 
at the base of an elevated terrace some eight hundred 
and twenty-five feet in height, and is made up of 
alternate lacustrine and marine strata (eocene, mio- 
cene, and pliocene), whose summit is mantled by 
an extensive accumulation of glacial detritus. The 
most important find here was the skull of a huge 
mammalian named by Burmeister ‘ Astrapotherium 
[Vou IIL, No. 49. 
patagonicum,’ and by him supposed to be closely re- 
lated to Brontotherium, but which Moreno (under 
the new name of Mesembriotherium Brocae) considers 
to be a generalized type of marsupial, probably aquatie 
in its habits, and having certain characters in the 
skull to ally it with the Carnivora. In the same de- 
posit were found the remains of a true marsupial. 
At a somewhat newer horizon, Moreno found the 
skulls of two genera of small-sized mammalians, 
which form a direct transition between the rodents 
and toxodonts. No traces of either miocene or eocene 
edendates were detected. In a deposit apparently 
transitional between the cretaceous and eocene were 
found two molars, with part of the cranium, of an ani- 
mal (Mesotherium Marshii) whose true position has 
not as yet been absolutely ascertained, but which ap- 
pears to represent the most ancient South American 
mammalian thus far discovered. Contrary to the 
opinion of geologists before him, Moreno considers 
Patagonia as the region whence the mammalia (late 
tertiary and quaternary) of the more northern regions 
have been derived. Instead of there having been a 
late southward migration into Patagonia, it is con- 
tended that a northerly migration set in with the 
advent of the glacial period; of which last, it is fur- 
ther claimed, there is convincing evidence. Patago- 
nia is believed to have been united with the Antarctic 
continent on the one hand, and with Australia on 
the other. 
— One of the reasons which led to the construction 
of inductive coils of the large diameter, employed 
by Professor Rowland in his present work on the 
ohm, is the hope of using them in a determination 
of the ohm according to the method of Lorentz. 
Their large size will admit of the use of a revolving- 
disk of more than half a metre in diameter. 
— The auk, a quarterly journal of ornithology, the 
continuation of the Nuttall bulletin, as the organ of 
the American ornithologists’ union, begins with Jan- 
uary, 1884, under the editorial supervision of Mr. 
Allen, with Dr. Elliott Coues, Mr. Robert Ridgway, 
Mr. William Brewster, and Mr. Montague Chamber- 
lain as associate editors, and with Messrs. Estes & 
Lauriat as publishers, necessitating the same general 
character as heretofore the Nuttall bulletin has borne, 
but with increased size and enlarged facilities. } 
— The Saturday lectures under the auspices of the 
Anthropological society and the Biological society of 
Washington will be delivered this year, as heretofore, 
in the lecture-room of the U.S. national museum, 
Saturday afternoons, at half-past three o’clock, be- 
ginning Jan. 5. The series will include twelve or 
more lectures, and will be divided into courses of 
four lectures each. The programme for the first 
course is herewith presented. The lectures are free, 
and the public are invited to attend. Jan. 5, Mr. 
Grove K. Gilbert, Cliffs and terraces; Jan. 12, Pro- 
fessor Otis T. Mason, Child-life among savage and — 
uncivilized peoples; Jan. 19, Professor Edward S. 
Morse, Social life among the Japanese; Jan. 26, 
Major J. W. Powell, Win-tun mythology. 
