NOTES AND QUERIK8. 
17.7 
but it is only those who enjoyed his friendship that can fully appreciate his worth. 
His honest kindness, his gentle nature, and warm generous heart, will remain long 
in the memory of the large circle of friends and acquaintances wlio mourn his loss 
and cherish his memory. 
Local Museums. — " Dear Sib, — The worthy peojile who, with so much public 
spirit, form these collections usually begin at tiie antijiodes, and work backwards, 
so that tiieir innnediate neighi)ourhood is the last locality to be illustrated. This 
is particularly unfortunate, since the chief value of local collections consists in 
then' being representative of their district with its peculiar features ; and it is 
exceedingly disappointing to go in search of relics which perhaps have derived 
their- very names from the place where you seek them, and to find musty garments 
from Polynesia instead of tlie objects of your inquiry. It will conduce to the con- 
venience of many of your increasing staff of readers, if you will kindly invite brief 
notices of local nniseums ; and, after a sufficiently long interval, publish a list of 
them to serve as a guide to the traveller. I inclose a brief commencement. — 
Yours truly, S. li. IJ'attison, Torrington-square." 
" Public Geological Museums. 
Penzance. — Museum of the Royal Cornwall Geological Society. Rich in 
mineral specimens. Rich in Petherwyu fossils, unan-anged, and in other 
Devonian fossils of Cornwall. 
Truiio. — Royal Institution. — Some good specimens from the Devonians. 
Exeter. — Athenaeum. 
Taunton. — Archseological Society. David Williams's collection, and other 
Devonian fossils from the western counties : many unnamed ; some named 
by Mr. Salter ; much work still to be done. 
Dorchester. — Some good mammalian remains ; and well stocked vrith insect- 
remains and plants from the Eocene tertiaries. 
Ryde. — New collection. Good in Greensand fossils and Wealden bones." 
—Approving entirely of Mr. Pattison's suggestion, we invite at once further 
connmuiications from those gentlemen who have knowledge of the state of any 
of the provincial Natural History institutions. — Ed. Geol. 
The First Fossil Me«aceros. — " Ballaug his peculiarly interesting to the 
geologist, as the locality where the first tolerably perfect specimen of the gi'eat 
Irish elk was discovered. At a farm known by the name of Balla Terson, to the 
eastward of the new church, and about a mile from the foot of the mountains, are 
two oval depressions in the drift-gravel platform ; they are on either side of a by- 
road which leads down from the great northern higli-road to the sea-shore. It 
was in the most westerly of the two that the celebrated fossil, figured in the 
" Ossemens Fossiles," torn. iv. pi. 8, from a sketch transmitted by Prof. Jamieson 
to Baron Cuvier, was discovered. Mr. Oswald Douglas (Edinhuryh Journal of 
Science, 1826, vol. iii. p. 28) has well pointed out the character of the basin, and 
-the circumstances under wiiicli the elk was found. — ' It is a small turf-bog, about 
a hundred yards long by fifty wide, and occu]iied in the central part by a pool, 
varying in size according to the moisture of the season, in which aquatic plants 
luxuriate. The superficial stratum is a light and fibrous peat, of good quality, 
enveloping some fi'agments of bog-timber. The thickness of the peat in the 
centre of this basin is six feet ; but it thins out considerSWy towards the margin. 
Under the peat is a ])ed of fine bluish-white earthy sand, from two to three feet in 
thickness. This rests upon a deposit of white marl, containing delineations of 
shells. The marl is of a fibrous laminar structure, and when dry as white as 
chalk. The shells are delineated white upon a somewhat darker gi'ound, and are 
discovered by separating the layers, but are seldom, if ever, found in their original 
state. In this marl a gi-eat quantity of bones of the elk were found at the first 
opening of the pit, occurring at various depths in the marl ; but the deejier they 
were found, the more fresh and perfect did they appear, and near the b(jttom com- 
plete heads were met with. The skeleton which was presented by the Duke of 
Athol to the Museum of the University of Edinburgh was found quite at the 
bottom of the marl, where the bed was about twelve feet thick. The different 
bones, though partly connected, were in much disorder. An ingenious blacksmith 
of the village ])ossessed himself of the skeleton, and, in putting it together accord- 
ing to his own ideas of what the animal was, found himself short of a few bones, 
which he siqiplied from the relics of other animals, and it was some time 
