NOTES AND QUERIES. 



177 



but it is only those who enjoj-ed his friendsliip that can fully appreciate his Avorth. 

 His honest kindness, his gentle nature, and warm generous heart, Avill remain long 

 in the memory of the large cu-cle of friends and acquaintances who mourn his loss 

 and cherish his memory. 



Local Museums. — " Dear Sir, — The worthy people who, with so much public 

 spu'it, form these collections usually begin at the antipodes, and work backwards, 

 so that their immediate neighl^ourhood is the last locahty to be illustrated. This 

 is particularly unfortunate, since the chief value of local collections consists in 

 their being representative of their district with its peculiar features ; and it is 

 exceedingly disappointing to go in search of relics wliich perhaps have derived 

 their very names from the place where you seek them, and to find musty garments 

 from Polynesia instead of the objects of your inquuy. It will conduce to the con- 

 venience of many of yoiu- increasing staff of readers, if you will kindly invite brief 

 notices of local museums ; and, after a sufficiently long interval, publish a list of 

 them to serve as a guide to the traveller. I inclose a brief commencement. — 

 Yours truly, S. R. Pattison, Torrington-square." 



" Public Geological Museums. 

 Penzaxce. — Museum of the Royal Cornwall Geological Society. Rich in 

 mineral specimens. Rich in Pether"wyn fossils, unaiTanged, and in other 

 Devonian fossils of Cornwall. 

 Truro. — Royal Institution. — Some good specimens fi'om the Devonians. 

 Exeter. — Athenaeum. 



Taunton. — Archseological Society. David Williams's collection, and other 

 Devonian fossils from the western counties : many unnamed ; some named 

 by Mr. Salter ; much work still to be done. 

 Dorchester. — Some good mammalian remains ; and weU stocked with insect- 



remams and plants from the Eocene tertiaries. 

 Ryde. — NeAv collection. Good in Greensand fossils and Wealden bones." 

 — Approving entirely of Mr. Pattison's suggestion, we invite at once further 

 communications from those gentlemen who have knowledge of the state of any 

 of the provincial Natural History institutions. — Ei>. Geol. 



The First Fossil Megaceros. — " Ballaug his peculiarly interesting to the 

 geologist, as the locality where tlie fii'st tolerably perfect specimen of the great 

 Irish elk was discovered. At a farm kno"v\ai by the name of Balla Terson, to the 

 eastward of the new church, and about a mile frqm the foot of the mountains, are 

 two oval depressions in the drift-gi-avel platform ; they are on either side of a by- 

 road Avhich leads down from the gi'eat northern high-road to the sea-shore. It 

 was in the most westerly of the two that the celebrated fossil, figm-ed in the 

 " Ossemens Fossiles," tom. iv. pi. 8, from a sketch transmitted by Prof. Jamieson 

 to Baron Cuvier, was discovered. Mr. Oswald Douglas {Edinburgh Journal of 

 Science, 1826, vol. iii. p. 28) has well pointed out the character of the basin, and 

 the circumstances under which the elk was found. — ' It is a small turf-bog, about 

 a hundred yards long- by fifty Avide, and occupied in the central part by a pool, 

 varymg in size according to the moisture of the season, in which aquatic plants 

 luxuriate. The superficial stratum is a light and fibrous peat, of good quality, 

 enveloping some fragraents of bog-timber. The thickness of the peat in the 

 centre of this basin is six feet ; but it thins out considerably towards the margin. 

 Under the peat is a bed of fine bluish- white earthy sand, from two to three feet in 

 thickness. This rests upon a deposit of white marl, containing delineations of 

 shells. The marl is of a fibrous laminar structure, and when dry as white as 

 chalk. The shells are delineated white upon a someAvhat darker gTound, and are 

 discovered by separating the layers, but are seldom, if ever, found in their original 

 state. In this marl a great quantity of bones of the elk Avere found at the first 

 opening of the pit, occurring at various depths in the marl ; but the deeper they 

 Avere found, the more fresh and perfect did they appear, and near the bottom com- 

 plete heads were met with. The skeleton Avhich was presented by the Duke of 

 Athol to the Museum of the University of Edinburgh Avas found quite at the 

 bottom of the marl, where the bed Avas about tAvelve feet thick. The different 

 bones, though partly connected, were in much disorder. An ingenious blacksmitli 

 of the village possessed himself of the skeleton, and, in putting it together accord- 

 ing to his oAvn ideas of Avhat the animal was, found himself short of a few bones, 

 Avliich he supplied from the relics of other animals; and it was some time 



