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neighbourhood of Boston the unstratified drift does not lie in anything like 
a continuous sheet, but is distributed in long and rather narrow ridges, 
which, with varying height, on account of long-continued denudation, 
may be traced for miles across the country. These ridges are particularly 
conspicuous in the islands of the harbour of Boston, where, although much 
worn by the action of tidal currents, the parallelism is quite apparent. 
They exhibit two sets of trends, the one being north-west and south-east, 
the other north-east and south-west j and a comparison of the sections, 
given at various points in the islands of the harbour, at Chelsea, Somer- 
ville, Cambridge, Brighton, South Boston, and elsewhere, has shown that 
throughout this region the drift is remarkably similar at the same height 
above the sea. The drift contains pebbles of various sizes, five-foot 
boulders, and fragments of every gradation down to coarse sand. The 
whole is embedded in a fine mud, which so binds the materials together 
that, in the lower parts of the mass, where it has been subjected to con- 
siderable pressures, it has become a hard conglomerate. Nowhere is there 
any attempt at stratification. In regard to the origin of these drifts, Pro- 
fessor Shaler agrees with Agassiz in considering them as the materials 
which rested in and upon the glacial sheet at the close of its history, and 
which were dropped in the places they now occupy by the melting of the 
ice upon which they rested. As this drift deposit must have originally 
been at least one hundred and fifty feet thick, it is diflicult to conceive how 
such a mass of detritus as that in question could have ever been contained 
in a glacial stream, and the supposition is necessary that the mass of the 
drift must have been rent from the floor of the glacier as it moved along. 
A new Fossil Myriapod is described by Mr. Woodward, F.G.S., in the 
11 Geological Magazine ” for March. It was discovered by the late Mr. 
Thomas Brown, after whom he names it. The specimen, preserved in the 
round, is four inches in length, and nearly a quarter of an inch in breadth, 
is contained in an ironstone-nodule (like those previously discovered), both 
sides of which are well preserved. Thirty-six raised body rings, separated 
by an equal number of intermediate depressions, can be counted between 
the head and the last segment, each ring having two pairs of appendages. 
There are indications of pores, and also of the bases of tubercles or spines, 
along the dorsal line, but the latter are less perfectly preserved. In their 
great work on the 11 Geological Survey of Illinois,” 1863, vol. iii. p. 556, 
Pigs, a-d, &c., Messrs. Meek and Worthen have described and figured two 
new forms of myriapod under the generic name of Euphoberia — namely, E. 
armigera and E. f major. The specimen described is named E. Brownii. 
The Skeleton of Dinornis . — Professor Owen read before the Zoological 
Society, at its meeting on June 6, a paper on Dinornis, being the seven- 
teenth of his series of communications on these extinct birds. The present 
paper gave a description of the sternum and pelvis, and an attempted res- 
toration of the whole skeleton of Aptornis defossor. 
Life of Mr. Davidson. — The u Geological Magazine ” for April gives a 
very interesting sketch of the life of Mr. Davidson, the well-known 
authority on Brachiopoda. It gives also an excellent portrait of this dis- 
tinguished man, and a list of his writings, occupying two pages of small 
type. We may also mention that at the anniversary meeting of the 
