3G4 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
described by the late Hugh Miller, were long before known to the quany- 
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 Pterygotus were 
termed " seraphim " by the Scotch quarry-men, by reason of the 
" wing-like form and featlier-like ornaments of the hinder part of the 
head, the part most usually met with" (Lyell, Manual, p. 419), and 
the words Pterichthys and Pterygotiis 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 Puff-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 the " 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? We 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. We 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, 
