8G4 



THE GEOLOGIST^ 



described by the late Hugh Miller, were long before known to the quarry- 

 men as petrified cherubims ; for the attachment of the fins to the neck- 

 plate gave them much the appearance of those cliubby cherubs with flut- 

 tering wings, so often carved by village cutters upon grave-stones." 



We confess this anecdote is new to us ; but we were fully aware of 

 the fact, that the fragments of the large crustacean Fterygotus were 

 termed " seraphim " by the Scotch quarry-men, by reason of the 

 " wing-like form and feather-like ornaments of the hinder part of the 

 head, the part most usually met with" (Lyell, Manual, p. 419), and 

 the words PtericJithys and JBterygotus having the four first letters in 

 common, is perhaps sufficient excuse for the confusion between a 

 ganoid fish and a crustacean. 



Does not the Welshman in Shakespeare's Henry Y. come to the 

 reader's mind — 



" In the comparisons between Macedon and Monmouth, the situations, 

 look you, are both alike. There is a river in Macedon, and there is also 

 moreover a river at Monmouth ; it is called Wye at Monmouth, but it is 

 out of my prains what is the name of the other river ; but it is all one, 'tis 

 like as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both." 



It is too much to expect an aesthetic writer who knows Tennyson 

 better than Morris's Catalogue, to " creep servilely after the sense " 

 of common thinking men. 



Our author tries the marvellous: — 



" Many fungi have affinities to animal forms. Some African forms of 

 these remarkable plants, referable to the genus Boletus, have been com- 

 pared, in size, colour, and shape, to sleeping lions. With such resem- 

 blances, it may be imagined that early botanists did not overlook the op- 

 portunity of linking them with the supernatural. One amusing instance 

 is the species of Starry Pufi"-ball {Geaster), figured by Sterbeeck in his 

 ' Theatrum Fungorum' (1675) as a family party of Anglo-Saxons going to 

 sea in a boat made out of the mycelium of the fungus." 



May we ask, what is the supernatural instance here alluded to ? Is 

 it tlie " delusive shilling sail " of the Anglo-Saxons, or is it the sleeping 

 lions ; or are mushrooms allied to lions, or to ghosts, or both to either, 

 or what, or which? AYe know that witches had intercourse with the 

 supernatural world, and went to sea in tubs ; perhaps that is what is 

 meant, but we should have been told so. AYe must avow ourselves 

 on this occasion of the same opinion as Lord Dundreary on another, 

 " that there are some things no fellow can understand." 



Our zoologist, whose " study has been to describe organisms by 

 the depths of scientific research, or to seek out the more playful 

 phases of terrene life," sinks rapidly to the congenial level of the 

 dirt-pie, and tells us, " The forms, odd and absurd-looking as they are, 



