122 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
that even the souud of a bell has becu reflected from the cloiub. 
Thirty-two miles and 130 miles are certainly considerable distances to 
hear the report of cannon. But iu advancing a conjecture, that the 
sullen noises sometimes heard ou the western coasts of England and 
Belgium might have some connexion with the subterranean rumblings 
which accompany earthquakes and volcanic phenomena, I remembered 
having read that during the eruptions of the volcano on the island of 
St. Vincent (30th April, 1812) a noise like the report of cannons was 
heard, without any sensible concussion of the earth, over a space of 
100,000 geogi'aphical square miles; and on the 23rd of January, 
1835, during the eruption of the volcano Conseguina, iu Nicaragua, 
a subterranean noise was heard at the same time on the island of 
Jamaica, and on the plateau of Bogota, a distance greater than that 
which separates London from Algiers ! As the editor of the Geologist 
justly observes, we cannot, however, be too careful in the manner of 
investigating these questions of noises. 
It is time now that we should turn our atteution a little to some 
paleeontological researches that will perhaps be read with interest. 
The following concerns the oldest fossil mammalia. 
It was in the oolitic beds of fitonesfield that, more than forty 
years ago, the first remains of mammalia older than the tertiary 
formations were discovered. This discovery was looked upon with 
suspicion by many naturalists, who could not believe in the existence 
of mammalia at such an early date. 
" In spite of the authority of the justly celebrated naturalists who 
regard the Stonesfield foisils as true mammals, we cannot help 
cherishing some doubts," M. Alcide d'Orbigny writes, in 1850, iu his 
excellent Cours elementaire de PaleontohKjie ct de Geologie Strati- 
graphuiues ; " in studying comparatively the animal forms of each 
series, we have found that the exceptions were generally based upon 
inexact determinations. . . . Why, if they be really mammalia, have 
not the bones of the head, or any of the bones connected with the 
jaws even, been described, that the determination of the animals 
might have been confirmed thereby ? . . . We think either that the 
animals themselves belong to the class of reptiles, as others have 
already thought, or that the lower jaws, being one of the narrowest 
parts of the skeleton, must have fallen from the tertiary beds into 
the crevices of the Jurassic strata." 
These scruples were never indulged in by Georges Cuvier. " In the 
month of February, 1832," says M. Elie de Beaumont, "in spite 
of the contrary insinuations by which it was endeavoured to efface a 
fact standing out as an anomaly to the laws established by him, 
Cuvier one evening took from his collection one of the jaws found at 
Stonesfield, and demonstrated in his own drawing-room that this 
bone belonged to a mammal, and that it could not possibly have 
formed part of the skeleton of any of the Saurian tribe. As to the 
geological position of these fossils discovered by Broderip and Buck- 
land, M. Cuviernever had the slightest doubt of it." 
