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other drift. The Esker drift, he said, was formed subsequently. These 
drifts are a remarkable feature in the landscape in the Irish counties in 
which they exist. They are in the form of long ridges, which traverse the 
centre of Ireland from east to west, and on reaching the valley of the Shan- 
non take a north-westerly direction. After showing the peculiar composi- 
tion of these drifts, he described the immense erratic blocks which are met 
with in many parts of the country. All of them are angular, and had evi- 
dently been transported on ice by a current from the north-west, as the most 
remarkable of them are the porphyrite granite of West Galway. 
Dr, Carpenter's Speculations considered by the Americans. — Dr. Carpen- 
ter’s idea that we are living in the chalk formation does not find many sup- 
porters in America. In a recent paper read before the Lyceum of Natural 
History of New York, Dr. Newberry, the president, said “ that the conclu- 
sion drawn from those discoveries, that they overturned geological classifica- 
tion, was simply absurd. These explorations in the depths of the ocean had 
proved only this : that there had been less change in the fauna of the depths 
of the ocean than in that of the shores, and that a few forms characteristic 
of the fauna of the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods continued to exist there 
while they had disappeared in shallower water ; but these were the most 
insignificant possible fragments of great life-groups, that had almost en- 
tirely passed away. The finding of a crinoid or foraminifer of the Chalk 
living in the ocean depths did not recall the race of the great reptiles, 
winged, swimming, and walking ; the huge ammonites and the other in- 
finitely-varied forms of the Cephalopoda, which characterise that period. 
So with all the other geological ages. They were chapters in the life- 
history of the globe which were distinct and well-defined, holding each its 
relative place. Human history may repeat itself, but geological history 
never can.” 
The Carboniferous Fossils of West Virginia . — Mr. F. B. Meek, in the 
a Report Regents of University W. Virginia,” describes some new species 
of fossils from the district of Monongalia Co., viz. : Macrodon obsoletus, of 
the lower coal-measures, Niicula anodontoides, Yoldia Stevensoni and Y. 
Carbonaria of the coal-measures, and Phillipsia Stevensoni, from the Ches- 
ter group of the subcarboniferous. From a survey of the species collected, 
he concludes that the Chester group (of the Illinois Reports) is represented 
in Western Virginia by at least six Illinois species, and along with ten or a 
dozen other species which he could not identify because of the imperfect 
state of the specimens. The beds also contain Hemipronites crassus, a coal- 
measure species, and a Cyrtoceras and Bellerophon , closely like species of the 
coal-measures. He observes that Monongalia County is the farthest point 
eastward at which the Chester group, or indeed any other of the divisions 
of the subcarboniferous limestones of the West, has yet been recognised. 
The species from the lower coal-measures are mostly the same that occur 
in the coal series of Indiana, Blinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, &c., 
though few of them have before been found so far eastward. In some of 
the States mentioned, nearly all of the species range through the whole of 
the coal-measures, showing, as Mr. Meek remarks, that species lived on 
through a great length of time, and consequently that the climatic 'and 
other physical conditions of the era must have remained remarkably uniform. 
