68 (Personal and Scientific News,. 
and New England. He stole from one professor two bound 
volumes of Chenu's Conchyliologie; two unbound numbers of 
the colored edition of Tryon's Manual of Ccnchology; a $20 
microscopic objective (Geo. Wales' No. 50) and some fossils. 
From another college he stole lately a $150 Hartnack micro- 
scope. He is said to be well informed and ready. He has 
been passing lately under the name of L. P. Gratacap, of the 
"Amer. Mus. of Nat. Hist;" also, in different places as "Ellison" 
and "Vasile" and "Vasilieff," He pretends sometimes to be 
a Russian savant, and at other times assumes the role of a deaf 
mute. American geologists will be secure against such imposi- 
tions if they adopt the old and good English rule of requiring 
credentials as a basis of confidence and trust. 
Prof. G. Frederick Wright delivered a course of eight 
lectures in December before the Lowell Institute at Boston, on 
"The ice-age in North America." They were presented with 
plentiful stereopticon illustrations and a large map of North 
America. Prof. Wright is not satisfied with the evidence that 
has been adduced to prove that there have been two glacial 
epochs, and is inclined to believe that man existed in America 
before the close of the ice-age, which he thinks mav be as re- 
cent as ten thousand years ago. 
At the conclusion of the report of Mr. J. M. Hodge, as- 
sistant on the geological survey of Kentucky, on the coal fields 
of the upper Kentucky river, is the following description of a 
"pounding mill," now in use on Lick branch, Red river. Clay 
county, Kentucky. "This grist mill is probably the last of its 
kind in the state, the hand mills, and home-made four-bladed 
turbines cut from solid wooden blocks, and now in common use, 
having generally superseded them. The mill consists essen- 
tially of a mortar and a pestle; the mortar a short section of a 
tree in one end of which a hole is scooped out for the reception 
of the grain; the pestle a straight stick about four feet long, at- 
tached to one end of a lever supported in the middle. A weight 
is hung with the pestle in order to balance the opposite end of 
the lever, which end has cut in it a hollow place with a capacity 
of about half a barrel. Water is lead to this trough from the 
rapidly falling stream by a conduit some 100 feet long, made of 
the bark of trees, five or six inches in diameter. When the 
trough is filled with water the added weight causes it to descend, 
until its inclination is sufficient for most of the water to run out. 
The greatest weight being then on the other end the pestle falls 
and lifts the trough into position to be refilled. This see-saw 
motion continued, it is said, will crush into very nice meal a 
half bushel of corn left over night in the mortar; and also any 
stray field mice, or other hungry small animals which may ven- 
ture into the mortar, left open and unprotected in the forest." 
