SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
659 
It was almost as fluid as water, perfectly neutral, and almost insipid to the 
taste. With this meta-gelatine, the red 'colouration was produced even more 
decidedly with ordinary gelatine. The addition of the acid solution of 
pernitrate of mercury produced at first a whitish flocculent precipitate, 
which, by standing, acquired a strong red colour, as did the supernatant 
liquid. 
GEOLOGY AND PAL.^ONTOLOGY. 
The Maltese Fossil Elephant . — The curious pigmy pachyderm whose 
remaius were some time ago discovered in the Maltese bone-caves, has been 
indefatigably investigated by its original discoverer. Dr. Leith Adams. This 
gentleman has recently met with further relics of the fossil elephant in 
several new localities. He met with its teeth in great quantities in a cavern 
near Crendi. In a gap, evidently at one time the bed of a torrent, he has 
discovered the teeth and bones of thirty more individuals. The skeletons are 
met with jammed between large blocks of stone in a way which shows 
clearly that the carcases must have been hurled into their present situations 
by violent floods or freshes. Dr. Adams has now almost completed the 
skeleton of this wonderful little representative of an order which, till this 
discovery was recorded, had been commonly termed gigantic. Dr. Adams 
concludes, from his numerous inquiries, that the Maltese elephant did not 
exceed the height of a small pony. 
The Geological Magazine has undergone a change of editorship, which may 
possibly result in the improvement of this periodical. The former editor, 
Professor Rupert J ones, is no longer connected with it, his place being taken 
by his colleague, Mr. Woodward. Two new editors have also been connected 
with the journal, whose names alone afford a guarantee of good science — they 
are Professor Morris, of University College, and Mr. Robert Etheridge, of 
the Jermyn-street “ School of Mines.” 
The Origin of Coal . — A new theory concerning the origin of coal and 
of petroleum has been put forward in America. Our readers are aware that 
one of the more generally accepted theories of the origin of petroleum sup- 
poses that substance to be a product of the distillation of coal by means of 
the earth’s internal heat. The new hypothesis starts a proposition which is 
the converse of this : according to it, instead of petroleum beings formed 
from coal, coal was formed from petroleum. It is well known that all organic 
substances which are not themselves volatile, such as wood and other vege- 
table matters, yield, when submitted to a heat below dull redness, tarry oils 
having in all cases the general character of petroleum, and differing only 
according to the specific differences in the materials from which they may 
have been obtained. The new theory supposes that the materials from which 
our coal-beds were formed were converted in the first instance into such 
“ tarry oils,” and that these oils, under long-continued action of heat, lost 
nearly all their oxygen and the chief part of their hydrogen, the residuum 
gradually becoming solid. The “ pitch-lake of Trinidad ” is referred to in 
support of this opinion. It is alleged that the theory of coal having been 
