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 emuient 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 opened 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 intrejiid Dr. 
Kane, whose hazardous voyages of discovery and explorations of 
the Arctic Seas, have spread his fame far and wide. Germany has 
likewise suff'ered 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 gi-anite, 
measuring some six yards high, and from fifty to sixty yards in 
circumference, should be transformed into a monument to honour 
and perpetuate the memoiy 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- 
