154 
in the vicinity the bed is found to attain it 
maximum thickness of nearly 250 feet, at Tign . 
St. Paul’s Bay, and Marsa Forno it is found to 
attain but from 30 to 60 feet and at St. •• ui Ian’s 
Bay and the other localities that were just now 
mentioned, it thins out and. ultimately disappears 
entirely. 
The line of demarcation between the Lower 
Limestone and the Globigerina Limestone is often 
so obscure that it requires a very cl 3 examina- 
tion to be enabled to trace it. As a ride the tran- 
sition is marked either by a bed of urchins irkutell >. 
striata , or by a seam of phosphatic nodules that 
attains a thickness of from 2-h to 3 feet. 
The nodules in this layer are of a very large 
size, and the phosphatised remains that are found 
associated with them are exceedingly numerous 
The origin of these phosphatic layers which ore so 
extensively developed in the Maltese Islands 
affords us a problem of unusual interest. 
From the natmo and condition of the remains 
it is evident that they are due to some great chan- 
ges that must have taken place in the physical 
conditions of the sea, in which the organisms lived, 
and which, by altering the conditions most fa- 
vourable to their existence, caused them to die off 
rapidly and leave their remains* distributed in 
thick regular masses over the sea-bed. Large 
quantities of the phospha tes have apparently been 
derived from the remains of the cetaceans, saurian, , 
and other sea-monsters that swarmed in the sea- 
t 
water. 
( To be continued .) 
THE MEDITERRANEAN NATfR AXIS'! 
~T1 
I 
avei 
ige height trorn troug 
waves of the Mediterranean di 
between 14 and 18 feet; but ii 
the waves that are driven in 1 
ers that are so common in tin 
often attain a height of 33 feel 
NOTES AND NEWS. 
The famous French Naturalist Professor Quat- 
ref ages has just died at the ripe old age of eight- 
two years. 
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LU OI 
All great eruptions of Vesuvius are 
M. Pahnieri, director of the Vesu 1 
to take place at new or full moon, am 
during eclipses. On the otl 
Montessus, who has collect 
than 60,000 earthquakes, fin 
bances are distributed unifc 
day and night, and that they have no relation + 
moon culminations and astronomical seasons. 
aughout 
In the course of the excavations that arc now' 
being carried out at Ortygia in Syracuse several 
wells were discovered, the contents of which 
have enabled the explorers to attribute their 
origin to a period between the 7th and the 2nd 
centuries B. G., and show that they wrnre abandon- 
ed by the people when the city was depopulated 
shortly after the Roman Conquest. 
A large prehistoric village w T as lately discovered 
at Arcevia in Italy, in which finely worked stone 
implements, stone — ware with handles, and stag- 
horn tools were found that evidently point to a 
more advanced state of civilization than is usually 
attributed to man during the stone age. 
A ‘weather lexicon” has been prepared from the 
records of the Hamburg Naval Observatory by 
Herr Seemann. The days are classified by baro- 
metric pressure and w T ind direction, the idea being 
to give a collection of daily weather charts in such 
a form that a condition of the air over Europe 
resembling that for which a forecast is desired 
may be found. The former sequence of weaHier 
may throw some light on the coming weather. 
