SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
367 
beneath the secondary deposits of London, pass beneath the Channel and part 
of France, and make their reappearance in Austria and Russia. There is no 
reason why his theory may not be correct ; but we may ask, whether it 
would be possible to procure coal by driving a shaft through all the 
secondary and tertiary deposits. Is a coal-mine workable at such a 
depth ? 
j Russian Coal Resources. — Recent explorations and surveys appear to show 
that the Russian coal resources are much vaster even than those of the 
United States of America. In the Oural district coal has been found in 
various places, both in the east and west sides of the mountain-chain ; its 
value being greatly enhanced by the fact that an abundance of iron is found 
in the vicinity. There is an immense basin in the district of which Moscow 
is the centre, which covers an area of 120,000 square miles, which is there- 
fore nearly as large as the entire bituminous coal area of the United States. 
The coal region of the Don is more than half as large as all of our coal 
measures. Besides these sources, coal has lately been discovered in the 
Caucasus, Crimea, Simbirsk, the Kherson, and in Poland. 
Fossil British Oxen have had a paper devoted to them by Mr. W. Boyd 
Dawkins, at the meeting of the Geological Society on the 21st of March. 
The author considered that the problem of the origin of our domestic races of 
cattle can only be solved after a careful examination of each of the three 
European fossil species of oxen ; namely, Bos urus of Caesar, B. longifrons of 
Owen, and B. bison of Pliny. In this paper Mr. Dawkins began the inquiry 
with Bos urus, Caesar, and he arrived at the conclusion that between this 
species and Bos tccurus, or the common ox, there is no difference of specific 
value, though the difference in size and some other characters of minor value 
render the bones of the two varieties capable of recognition. After giving 
the synonymy of Bos urus in some detail, and measurements of the different 
bones as represented by specimens from a number of localities, Mr. Boyd 
Dawkins described the range of the species in time and space. 
What Atmospheric Agency can effect. — Mr. J. Beete Jukes and Mr. Scrope 
are still at issue on this point, the former contending that aqueous atmospheric 
agencies have most to do with the outline form of the earth, while the latter 
relies on volcanic influence as the most powerful and most general influence. 
In a letter, recently published, Mr. Jukes lays down two conclusions which, 
he says, are in our islands specially applicable to palaeozoic districts, but 
which, mutatis mutandis, apply to rocks of all ages. These are as follow : — 
1st. The sea has removed vast masses of rock, and left undulating surfaces, 
the highest points of which ultimately become the summits of mountains. 
2nd. When these undulating surfaces are raised high into the air, they are 
attacked by the atmospheric agencies, and hills, valleys, and plains gradually 
carved out of the rock-mass below, their particular features depending on 
original varieties in the nature of that mass, and variations in the action of 
the atmospheric agencies. The latter depend largely on the variations of 
temperature, by which water is made to assume the different forms of vapour, 
water, snow, and ice. It must be recollected that the forms of our Palaeozoic 
grounds are of very ancient date, anterior to the period of the New Red 
Sandstone, and that the great denudation of the Older Palaeozoic Rocks took 
place even before the deposition of the Old Red Sandstone. The. time, then, 
