43i 



THE GEOLOaiST. 



bed of ferruginous clay, about a foot thick. The black sand " is a very 

 imT)ortant deposit, both on account of the thickness and the number of 

 fossils it contains. It is the equivalent of the " black crag" or " glauco- 

 nite crag." As this deposit has nowhere been penetrated in the excavations, 

 its thickness is not known. The chief shell is the Pectunculus variabilis. 



The " Systeme E-upelien " is solely represented by the "marne argii- 

 leuse," which is found at Fort no. 8, and in the brickfields of Edeghem. 

 It is a black or bronze-coloured clay, containing concretions of pyrites and 

 septari^, often incrusting Nautilus Aturi. It also contains flint-pebbles 

 and teeth of Carcharoclon heterodon. 



EEYIEW. 



Essays and Ohsernations on Natural History, Anatomy, Physiology, Psy- 

 chology, and Geology. By John Hunter, F.R.S. Being his Posthu- 

 mous Papers on those subjects, arranged and revised, with Notes, by 

 Bichard Owen, F.R..S., D.C.L., Superintendent of the Natural His- 

 tory Department, British Museum, etc. etc. John Yan Voorst. 



The aphorism of Niebuhr, that " he who calls what has vanished back 

 again into being, enjoys a bliss like that of creating," which has been 

 quoted by almost every geologist from Lyell downwards, is nowhere more 

 applicable than to the discovery and safe transmission to the thinking 

 scientific men of the present day of the long-lost Hunterian manuscripts, 

 and especially on that on Greology, to which we shall draw our readers' 

 attention. 



John Hunter, after communicating to the Boyal Society of London, in 

 1793, his paper " on the Fossil Bones presented to that Society by His 

 Most Serene Highness the Margrave of Anspach " (' Philosophical Trans- 

 actions,' vol. Ixxxiv. 1794), followed up the subject by a second memoir, 

 summing up the conclusions which he had deduced from.his study of "Ex- 

 traneous Fossils " in general. This manuscript he communicated to the 

 Koyal Society, with the following result : — 



" The attention of the Secretaries or Council of the Boyal Society had 

 been called, by some of the Fellows, to the expressions in the first paper, 

 on the ' thousands of years ' required for such and such geological phe- 

 nomena ; and, in the second memoir, the Secretaries found that a chrono- 

 logy of the earth, widely different from the usually accepted one, was more 

 directly and emphatically affirmed by the author, as essential to the ra- 

 tional comprehension of the phenomena he treated of, while, at the same 

 time, the adequacy of the cliief or sole geological dynamic at that time 

 recognised, viz. the Mosaic Deluge, to account for the presence of marine 

 fossils on land, was called in question. Considerations for the repute and 

 interests of the author himself may have swayed his advisers in the recom- 

 mendation to him to submit the manuscript to a geological friend, before 

 finally sending it in for formal acceptance and perusal before the Society. 

 Major Bennell, author of some papers in the 'Philosophical Transactions' on 

 ' Tides and Currents.' and other geographical subjects, undertook the deli- 

 cate task of submitting to Hunter the misgivings of the authorities mainly 

 responsibk> for the publications of the Royal Society. He did it in these 

 words : ' This leads mo to remark that, in page 3, you have used the term 



