30 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



to light in our part of the scientific world, we think it will not be 

 without interest at the present moment, to cast a rapid glance over 

 some of the later and more remarkable geological observations 

 made on the continent during the year which has just brought 

 itself to a close. 



It is with deep regret we must, in the first instance, inform our 

 readers that the past year has been, for the science of geology, one 

 of frequent and almost irreparable losses. One after another the 

 names of some very eminent men have been erased from the list 

 of the living. — While England deplores the death of Hugh Miller, 

 Conybeare, Scoresby, and others whose reputations have not spread 

 so widely, France feels how great is the loss she has just experi- 

 enced by that of Constant Prevost, Dufrenoy, and D'Orbigny, who 

 have oj)ened more than one new and enlightened path in the 

 obscure branches of their favourite science, and whose meritorious 

 lives have not failed to excite a general admiration. Belgium has 

 lost the eminent Dumont whose classifications of the Belgian strata 

 and admirable geological maps have rendered his name immortal, 

 and American science still mourns for the young and intrepid Dr. 

 Kane, whose hazardous voyages of discovery and explorations of 

 the Arctic Seas, have spread his fame far and wide. Germany has 

 likewise suffered by the death of Dr. Lichtenstein, the learned 

 director of the Geological Museum at Berlin, and the unrelenting 

 hand of death, or rather, the accursed knife of a savage barbarian, 

 has taken away from us the young and indefatigable African tra- 

 veller. Dr. Vogel. 



At one of the last meetings of the Congress of German Natu- 

 ralists, it was proposed that an enormous erratic block of granite, 

 measuring some six yards high, and from fifty to sixty yards in 

 circumference, should be transformed into a monument to honour 

 and pei-petuate the memory of the illustrious Leopold Von Buch. 

 The Congress received the proposition with acclamations of delight 

 and immediately charged two of its members to superintend the 

 operation. The eminent men whose names we have just men- 

 tioned, do they not, one and all, deserve also their block of 

 granite ? 



In our idea nothing can be more interesting, and, at the same 

 time, more important to geological science, than accurate investi- 



