144 Scientific Notes . [January, 
never find a drop of water on the road, our animals have enough to carry 
those who have to bear the whole journey to their goal, and as the animals 
succumb they will be shot or turned adrift.” The event showed Belt’s 
sagacity. The unfortunate Government Expedition left Melbourne loaded with 
camp followers and impedimenta , and by the time they reached a few stages 
beyond Cooper’s Creek were well-nigh exhausted. Burke, the leader of the 
expedition, in desperation started with his two men, Wills and King, and 
bravely struck out for the Gulf of Carpentaria. Through desert and fertile 
plains, not altogether destitute of water, they reached in safety the northern 
shore of Australia ; but the energy, the courage, and the strength that took 
them this long, weary journey did not suffice to carry them back over double 
the distance to their camp. Brave hearts ! they struggled on, but King only, 
and as a worn out man, ever saw Cooper’s Creek again. Belt’s plan would 
have solved the problem without loss of life, and at a tenth of the cost. His 
ideas were in advance of his time, and he had that belief in his own powers 
which should have won his plan the attention its merits deserved. The writer 
knows the fadt, that had Belt then possessed the means, he would have spent 
them all in his endeavour to carry out this scheme of crossing the Australian 
continent. 
In 1862 Belt returned to England, and his professional engagements led him 
to North Wales, Nova Scotia, Central America, and Chontales Nicaragua. 
At the latter place his entomological collection has made him famous. Many 
hundred species of coleoptera and lepidoptera attest his energy and' labour; 
and his charming book, “ The Naturalist in Nicaragua,” whilst illustrating 
his great powers of observation, has endeared him to every lover of nature, 
and proved the painstaking truth with which he collected his fadts. 
The succeeding years of his life were spent in almost continued travel : 
to North and South Russia, Siberia, the Kirghese Steppes, and many times to 
the United States. In these journeys he, from time to time, made those ob- 
servations upon glacial adtion, upon which he built up his theories of the Ice 
Age. These became the ruling passion of his later years. Much of this work 
will be found in the “ Quarterly Journal of Science ” and in the “Quarterly 
Journal of the Geological Society.” How much of it will stand the test of 
time the future only can tell ; but all this special work of his is, at least, a 
careful and elaborate argument, advocating the theory that the extraordinary 
changes of climate in past ages, over large areas of the earth’s surface 
which are now temperate regions, during the period called by geologists the 
glacial epoch, may have been brought about by other causes of less intensity 
than the submergences and emergences of the land, even than by the dis- 
placement of whole continents, which theories have been advanced by some 
to account for the phenomena in question. 
Mr. Belt advocates the agency of ice, and ice dams, and great lakes — to use 
his own words — in place of “ great upheavals and depressions of the earth’s 
surface within a comparatively short period,” and he questions the hypothesis 
by which “ we are taught that an immense area in Europe and America has 
been a sea bottom, and every part of it a sea beach as the land rose again, 
without any evidence of marine life having been left behind;” and he claims 
that his theory of glacial adtion “ explains all the phenomena by one great 
advance southwards of the ice of a single glacial period .” — Quarterly Journal 
of Science , “ Loess of the Rhine and the Danube,” January, 1877. 
The immediate cause of his death was brain fever, following a long attack 
of mountain lever. He died at Kansas City, United States, on the 22nd day 
of September, 1878, in his 46th year. 
