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THE GEOLOGIST. 



that even the sound of a bell has been reflected from the cloudy 

 Thirty-two miles and 130 miles are certainly considerable distances to 

 hear the report of cannon. But in advancing a conjecture, that the 

 sullen noises sometimes heard on the western coasts of England and 

 Belgium might have some connexion with the subterranean rumblings 

 which accompany earthquakes and volcanic phenomena, I remembered 

 having read that during the eruptions of the volcano on the island of 

 St. Vincent (30th April, 1812) a noise like the report of cannons was 

 heard, without any sensible concussion of the earth, over a space of 

 160,000 geographical square miles; and on the 23rd of January, 

 1835, during the eruption of the volcano Conseguina, in Nicaragua,* 

 a subterranean noise was heard at the same time on the island of 

 Jamaica, and on the plateau of Bogota, a distance greater than that 

 which separates London from Algiers ! As the editor of the Geologist 

 justly observes, we cannot, however, be too careful in the manner of 

 investigating these questions of noises. 



It is time now that we should turn our attention a little to some 

 paleeontological researches that will perhaps be read with interest. 

 The following concerns the oldest fossil mammalia. 



It was in the oolitic beds of Stonesfield that, more than forty 

 years ago, the first remains of mammalia older than the tertiary 

 formations were discovered. This discovery was looked upon with 

 suspicion by many naturalists, who could not believe in the existence 

 of mammalia at such an early date. 



In spite of the authority of the justly celebrated naturalists who 

 regard the Stonesfield fossils as true mammals, we cannot help 

 cherishing some doubts," M. Alcide d'Orbigny writes, in 1850, in his 

 excellent Gours elementaire de Paleontologie et de Geologic Strati- 

 graphiqiies ; " in studying comparatively the animal forms of each 

 series, we have found that the exceptions were generally based upon 

 inexact determinations. . . . Why, if they be really mammalia, have 

 not the bones of the head, or any of the bones connected with the 

 jaws even, been described, that the determination of the animals 

 might have been confirmed thereby ? . . . We think either that the 

 animals themselves belong to the class of reptiles, as others have 

 already thought, or that the lower jaws, being one of the narrowest 

 parts of the skeleton, must have fallen from the tertiary beds into 

 the crevices of the Jurassic strata." 



These scruples were never indulged in by Georges Cuvier. " In the 

 month of February, 1832," says M. Elie de Beaumont, "in spite 

 of the contrary insinuations by which it was endeavoured to efface a 

 fact standing out as an anomaly to the laws established by him, 

 Cuvier one evening took from his collection one of the jaws found at 

 Stonesfield, and demonstrated in his own drawing-room that this 

 bone belonged to a mammal, and that it could not possibly have 

 formed part of the skeleton of any of the Saurian tribe. As to the 

 geological position of these fossils discovered by Broderip and Buck- 

 land, M. Cuvier never had the slightest doubt of it." 



