Editorial Comment. 249 
But time would fail to tell of the man}- objects of interest that 
cau be found in this museum, and we must limit ourselves to 
things geological. 
One peculiar feature in this collection, original with Prof. 
Ward, who himself once held the professorship of natural sci- 
ence in Rochester Universitj^, is the collection illustrating geo- 
logical phenomena, many fine specimens of which may be seen in 
the University Museum. Mud-cracks, stylolites, cone-in-cone, 
fulgurites or lightning tubes formed in sand, lavas of many kinds, 
dendrites, volcanic bombs, folded gneiss, etc. , are all illustrated 
by abundant and excellent specimens. Add to these the collec- 
tion of lithological specimens from the original localities, well 
labeled and showing on the back the geological section from which 
they each came, and its exact horizon in the section, and it is 
easy to see the great labor that has been spent in the preparation 
and elaboration of the material and its adaptation to the purpose 
of instruction. 
Prof. Ward is naturally full of experiences. No man could go 
about the world so far and so often as he has been and on such 
an errand, without meeting with these. A mass of "gres lustre" 
was snatched from the bank of the Uruguay during a momentary 
stop of the river steamer, hauled on board and saved, to the as- 
tonishment of the fellow-passengers who came to the usual con- 
clusion in regard to this "crank." The pumice gatherers of the 
Lipari isles laughed with undisguised contempt at the "fool" who 
drove down to the shore mules laden with obsidian, ' 'worthless 
stuff" and neglected the comimercially salable pumice. 
Man}' of the museums of this country have been enriched by 
the labors of Prof. Ward, notably the museum of Comparative 
Zoology at Cambridge, where are several almost unique skeletons 
of the gigantic fossil mammalia, especially those from the wide 
pampas of Argentina, whose Tertiarj' gravels have yielded so 
many huge fossil sloths, etc. , since the time when Darwin visited 
that country and made the world aware of the wonderful treas- 
ures that it contained. The Cambridge museum possesses Mylo- 
don, Glyptodon, Lestodon, Skelidotherium and Toxodon, the last 
secured for Agassiz by a costl}', urgent telegram sent by Prof. 
Ward from Buenos Ayrcs; $5,000 purchased the treasure in spite 
of the law against the exportation of these fossils, which was 
engineered through the Argentine Legislature by the well known 
