SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
463 
Natural History Society, of which the distinguished naturalist Pliny, who 
perished at Pompeii, was a member P ” — Yide Geological Magazine , July. 
A Hycena Den in Carmarthenshire has been described by Dr. Henry Hicks. 
The cavern is known as the Crygan Cave, and is near Langharne. The bones 
found by Dr. Hicks were those of Hycena speloea, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, 
Elephas primigenius , Equus, and Cervus. It is remarkable that most of the 
bones are gnawed exactly in the same manner as those from Wookey Hole. 
Coalfields in St. Catherines , Brazil. — Mr. Edward Thornton has transmitted 
to London a communication on this subject. The existence of coal in this 
district has for many years been an established fact ; but no practical ex- 
ploration had been made until the years 1861-63, when Viscount Barbacena, 
having purchased a tract of land containing the best seams, ascertained the 
existence of a series of coal-beds at nine different levels, underlying a sand- 
stone formation, horizontally disposed, and varying in thickness from 1£ to 
10 feet. Analyses of specimens of the coal prove it to be of good quality, 
its profitable working depending solely upon the facilities for transport. — 
Geological Society , June 19. 
Cretaceous Flora of Belgium. — Mr. E. Coemans has published an essay on 
the fossil flora of the first stage of the cretaceous strata of Hainault. The 
plants consist almost exclusively of Conferee and Cycadece. 
Banded and Brecciated Concretions. — Mr. John Buskin, who has returned to 
the field of geology, has given us, in the Geological Magazine , a most in- 
teresting paper on the origin of the above forms of concretionary growth. 
The illustration which accompanies the paper is also most instructive. Mr. 
Buskin thinks that the transformations of solid into fragmentary rocks may 
be ranged under the following heads : — 1. Division into fragments by con- 
traction or expansion, and filling of the intervals with a secreted, injected, 
or infused paste, the degree of change in the relative position of the frag- 
ments depending both on their own rate and degree of division, and on the 
manner of the introduction of the cement. — 2. Division into fragments by 
violence, with subsequent injection or secretion of cement. The walls of 
most veins supply notable instances of such action, modified by the influence 
of pure contraction or expansion. — 3. Homogeneous segregation, as in oolite 
and pisolite. — 4. Segregation of distinct substances from a homogeneous 
paste, as of chert out of calcareous beds. My impression is that many so- 
called siliceous a breccias ” are segregations of knotted silex from a semi- 
siliceous paste ; and many so-called brecciated marbles are segregations of 
proportioned mixtures of iron, alumina, and lime, from an impure , calcareous 
paste. — 5. Segregation, accompanied by crystalline action, passing into 
granitic and porphyritic formations. — Geological Magazine , August. 
Relations of the Upper and Lower Silurians. — This difficult problem has 
been solved by Mr. T. Mc’K. Hughes, who, from a very large practical know- 
ledge, arrives at the conclusion long since (1846) stated by Sedgwick — viz., 
that “ on the evidence both of mineral structure and of fossils, we are com- 
pelled to separate the coniston flags from the coniston limestone and calcareous 
slates, placing the former at the base of the Upper Silurian series of the lake 
district.” 
Becidiar Stratum in Arbroath Cemete)'y. — In the Geological Section of the 
British Association, Mr. Carruthers called attention to specimens of a 
