SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 393 
has lately obtained from a deep digging in the Red Crag at Ramsholt two 
horns, which show marks of rude cutting. 
In the Lithographic slate of Solenhofen, in Bavaria, Herman von Meyer 
has found the impression of a feather, which is not to be distinguished 
from that of a bird. No bones of birds are known of older date than the 
Cambridge Greensand, in which they are very rare ; but the flying reptile, 
the Pterodactyle, is found in several species in the Bavarian representative 
of our Oxford Clay. 
Professor M‘Coy, of Melbourne, has found in the older tertiary deposits 
of Victoria a species of Trigonia. This genus of bivalve shells, which is 
one of the most characteristic fossils of the secondary rocks, had not before 
been found in the tertiary strata, though still living in the Australian seas. 
In the Silurian rocks of the colony the Professor finds the Graptolites and 
allied genera existing in many of the species which are found in Wales 
and Cumberland. And these same forms are found in North America 
and over much of Europe. Marvellous as so extensive a geographical 
distribution may seem, it must not lead to the inference that in the earlier 
ages of the world species were more widely diffused than now ; for, at the 
present day, many of the common forms of similar existing Polyzoan 
zoophytes, such as Begula nevitina, iEtcea anguina, &c., are found on our 
own shores, those of Europe generally, along the American continent, in 
Australia, and in New Zealand. 
It is not generally known that the remains of hot-blooded animals, 
mammals, have been found in the south of England, in a stratum even 
older than that which yielded the Seelidosaurus. Mr. Moore, of Bath, 
has found vertebrae and teeth of the Microlestes in a deposit at the base 
of the lias, called the Rhsetic beds, which extend over much of Central 
Europe. The Microlestes, as will be seen from the figure (4), which is 
enlarged three times, has the characteristic mammalian dentition in the 
molar teeth having fangs. 
Van Beneden has discovered that one of the peculiarities in which 
some of the Crag whales, such as Squalodon, differed from existing forms, 
was that they blew the watery vapour obliquely forwards instead of per- 
pendicularly upwards. 
The editor of the Geologist has figured some globular fossils from the 
lower chalk as fruits. They appear to have been drilled by the ship- worm 
( Teredo), and yet there is not a trace of structure. In the Cambridge 
greensand are commonly found spherical and egg-shaped bodies with aper- 
tures at the poles, such as there would be in a peeled orange were the 
central cord partially removed. An imaginative philosopher might make 
very many species of fruits out of those. They are possibly of vegetable 
origin. 
Professor Ramsay has been investigating the origin of the basins of 
the Swiss lakes, and he finds that they each lie directly in the path of 
some great glacier ; and, moreover, it is found that these, like the lakes of 
North Wales, lie in true rock basins, and not in hollows caused by subsi- 
dence or upheaval, nor in hollows scooped out by water, nor in lines of 
fracture; and, so exhausting all other possible causes, he shows that 
during a period when the glaciers descended lower than they do now these 
