564 Scientific Notes. [October 
Under the title of “ Preliminary Report of the United States Geological 
Survey of Wyoming and Portions of Contiguous Territories,” we find a 
general review of the geology of the country from Omaha to Salt Lake Valley. 
Now that catastrophism is again attempting to raise its head, and now that 
outsiders are hugging themselves with the notion that the “ guns of geology 
are being turned upon biology,” one passage in this review becomes doubly 
important. We may parenthetically point out the inconsistency of the 
“rump” of the Cuvierian school, who one moment declare that Evolution 
must be a myth because certain species still surviving can be traced back to 
the earlier geological epochs, but the next pronounce it baseless because from 
time to time every living being has been swept away by some violent and 
general convulsion ! The writer of the work before us remarks : — “ We have 
already obliterated the chasm between the Permian and the Carboniferous era, 
and shown that there is a well-marked inosculation of organic forms, those of 
supposed permian affinities passing down into well-known carboniferous strata, 
and admitted carboniferous types passing up into the permian. We believe 
that the careful study of these transition-beds is destined to obliterate the 
chasm between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, and that there is a 
passing down into the Cretaceous period of tertiary forms, and an extending 
upwards into the Tertiary of those of cretaceous affinities. ... If there is a 
stridt uniformity in all the operations of Nature when taken in the aggregate, 
as I believe there is, then this is simply in accordance with the law of progress, 
which, in the case of the physical changes wrought out in the geological his- 
tory of the world, has operated so slowly that infinite ages have been required 
to produce any perceptible change. The position I have taken in all my 
studies in the West is that all evidences of sudden and paroxysmal move- 
ments have been local, and are to be investigated as such, and have had no 
influence on the great extended movements which I have regarded as general, 
uniform, and slow, and the results of which have given to the West its present 
configuration.” In a chapter on the fossil plants with reference to our present 
civilisation, the difference of origin between coal and petroleum is thus ex- 
plained : — “ Petroleum is, like coal, the result of slow maceration of plants ; 
with this difference, that in the formations of the coal the plants which entered 
into the composition of the matter were woody or fibrous, and the woody 
tissue cannot be destroyed by the process of slow combustion any more than 
it is in burnt charcoal. The plants which concurred to the formation of pe- 
troleum were sea-weeds. These have no fibre, no wood in their tissue, which 
is merely cellular, and in their decomposition all trace of this tissue has been 
destroyed and pure bitumen preserved, either by impregnation of shale or sand- 
stone or by accumulation in subterranean cavities.” It is to be regretted that 
matter so interesting should be conveyed in a style so cumbrous and feeble. 
Near the junction of the White and Green Rivers, on the borders of Colorado 
and Utah, is an immense tertiary deposit, consisting of petroleum shales 
abounding in the impressions of leaves and of various insedts ; — “ Between 
sixty and seventy species of insedts were brought home, representing nearly 
all the different orders : about two-thirds of the species were flies, some of 
them the perfedt insedt, others the maggot-like larvae ; but in no instance did 
the imago and larva of the same insedt occur. The greater part of the beetles 
were very small. There were three or four kinds of Homoptera, ants of two 
different genera, and a poorly preserved moth. Perhaps a minute Thrifts, be- 
longing to a group which has never been found fossil in any part of the world, 
is of the greatest interest. It is astonishing that an insedt so delicate and 
so insignificant in size can be so perfedtly preserved in these stones : the wings 
remain uninjured, and every hair of their microscopic fringe may be counted.” 
Here, as in other parts of the world, we notice among the fossil Mammalia 
forms which combine the charadteristics of what are now distindt species, or 
even genera, and are thus important evidence in fayour of the dodtrine of 
Evolution. From the Bridger Rocks Prof. Leidy reports the former existence 
of an animal possessing an affinity to the hysena and the panther. It was 
larger than the couguar (the so-called “ panther” of the United States), and 
was a predaceous animal of great strength, and doubtless of equal ferocity. 
