Georgia — a mound ten acres in area, and having an average height of five feet, chiefly composed of cast-away oyster shells, throughout which arrow-heads, stone axes, and Indian pottery are dispersed. If the neighboring river, the Alatamaha, or the sea which is at hand, should invade, sweep away, and stratify the contents of this mound, it might produce a very analogous accumulation of human implements, unmixed perhaps with human bones. Although the accompanying shells are of living species, I believe the antiquity of the Abbeville and Amiens flint instruments to be great indeed if compared to the times of history or tradition. I consider the gravel to be of fluviatile origin, but I could detect nothing in the structure of its several parts indicating cataclysmal action - nothing that might not be due to such river-floods as we have witnessed in Scotland during the last halfcentury. It must have required a long period for the wearing down of the chalk which supplied the broken flints for the formation of so much gravel at various heights, sometimes one hundred feet above the level of the Somme, for the deposition of fine sediment including entire shells, both terrestrial and aquatic, and also for the denudation which the entire mass of stratified drift has undergone, portions having been swept away, so that what remains of it often terminates abruptly in old river-cliffs, besides being covered by a newer unstratified drift. To explain these changes I should infer considerable oscillations in the level of the land in that part of France, — slow movements of upheaval and subsidence, deranging but not wholly displacing the course of the ancient rivers. Lastly, the disappearance of the Elephant, Rhinoceros, and other genera of quadrupeds now foreign to Europe, implies, in like manner, a vast lapse of ages, separating the era in which the fossil implements were framed and that of the invasion of Gaul by the Romans. Among the problems of high theoretical interest which the recent progress of Geology and Natural History has brought into notice, no one is more prominent, and, at the same time, more obscure, than that relating to the origin of species. On this difficult and mysterious subject a work will very shortly appear, by Mr. Charles Darwin, the result of twenty years of observation and experiments in Zoology, Botany, and Geology, by which he has been led to the conclusion, that those powers of nature which give rise to races and permanent varieties in animals and plants, are the same as those which, in much longer periods, produce species, and, in a still longer series of ages, give rise to differences of generic rank. He appears to me to have succeeded, by his investigations and reasonings, to have thrown a flood of light on many classes of phenomena connected with the affinities, geographical distribution, and geological succession of organic beings, for which no other hypothesis has been able, or has even attempted, to account. Among the communications sent in to this Section, I have received from Dr. Dawson, of Montreal, one confirming the discovery which he and I formerly announced, of a land shell, or pupa, in the coal formation of Nova Scotia. When we contemplate the vast series of formations intervening between the tertiary and carboniferous strata, all destitute of air-breathing Mollusca, at least of the terrestrial class, such a discovery affords an important illustration of the extreme defectiveness of our geological records. It has always appeared to me that the advocates of progressive development have too much overlooked the imperfection of these records, and that, consequently, a large part of the generalizations in which they have indulged in regard to the first appearance of the different classes of animals, especially of air-breathers, will have to be modified or abandoned. Nevertheless, that the doctrine of progressive development may contain in it the germs of a true theory, I am far from denying." One of the most interesting of recent contributions to Chemical Science, is a Memoir by the well-known Swiss Chemist, Schonbein, "On the result of twenty years study of oxygen.” The principal points which he desires to establish are as follows: He recognizes the existence of oxygen in three conditions. One, ordinary oxygen, that which we respire from the atmosphere; the two other kinds are two forms of ozone, which bear the same relation to each other that the two forms of electricity possess. In fact, says Schonbein, we form ordinary oxygen when we bring these two kinds of ozone together; and, on the other hand, ordinary oxygen is destroyed when, by any given chemical action, one of these two allotropic modifications that compose it is removed. The tendency, on the part of the two modifications, to be produced from ordinary oxygen, explains certain effects heretofore called catalytic, which have been unaccountable. Thus, peroxide of barium and oxygenated water, being acidified by nitric acid, are reciprocally decomposed, giving rise to the formation of water, protoxide of barium, and ordinary oxygen; under similar circumstances, permanganate of potassa is reduced to manganic oxide, and chromic acid becomes oxide of chrome; that is to say, these compounds are deoxidized in the presence of an abundant source of oxygen, and precisely from the contact of that particular form of oxygen, or ozone, whose oxidizing properties are effective in the direct oxidation of the least oxidizable bodies, such as nitrogen, which is, as we know, directly transformed, under the influence of ozone, into nitric acid. These effects, so contradictory, are thus explained by Schonbein: A combination strongly oxygenous can be decomposed in the presence of a compound, rich in oxygen, whenever one of the compounds contains oxygen in the condition that may be called positive, and the other in that which may be called negative. The result of this decomposition is ordinary, or neutral oxygen. It is this, moreover, which is obtained, when we experiment with ozone obtained with phosphorus by the action of oxygenized water · the product being pure water and ordinary oxygen. Therefore, in order that ozone or nascent oxygen, obtained by phosphorus, should act as an energetic oxidizer, it is necessary that it should not be in presence of nascent oxygen produced from oxygenized water. Thus, an acid loses its acid properties in presence of a base, and reciprocally; and ozone, affected with a sign loses its oxidizing properties in the presence of ozone of the sign The new classification of Reptiles, as proposed by Prof. Owen, in a paper laid before the British Association at its last meeting, must be regarded as one of the most important of recent contributions to Natural History. The sub-class of Reptiles, which was formerly divided into four orders, the Professor now proposes to divide into thirteen. This revision has resulted from the study of the fossil forms which have been found in such abundance in the secondary strata of the earth's surface. At the head of the Reptile Orders he places an extinct form, Archegosaurus, — and in the lowest Order the Batrachian Reptiles (the toads and frogs). He still retains these amongst the reptiles, on account of the difficulty of distinguishing between them and the Chelonia, or tortoises and turtles. At the same time, the Professor acknowledges his inability to distinguish between the Batrachia and the next group of animals, the Fishes. The investigations of Prof. Faraday on Electricity, recently communicated to the public through the Royal Institution, seem to almost conclusively settle the question as regards the nature of this subtle agent, and must be considered as one of the memorable scientific incidents of the year. During the past year the Exploring Expedition, despatched in the spring of 1853, by Lady Franklin, under Capt. McClintock, R. N., has returned, bringing relics, and definite information respecting the lost navigators. The details of the expedition are briefly as follows: "After visiting Beachy Island where it was known Sir John Franklin passed his first winter, Capt. McClintock continued his course down Peel's Sound, in the direction of the magnetic pole, and established his winter position at the entrance to Bellot Strait, in a snug harbor, which he called Port Kennedy. To Lieut. Hobson he allotted the search of the western shore of Boothnia to the magnetic pole, while he himself went southward, toward the same point, in the hope of communicating with the Esquimaux, and obtaining such information as might lead us at once to the object of our search. His success was quite complete, and entirely justified his foresight. He started on the 17th of February, and in eleven days he fell in with a party of the natives, from whom he learnt that, several years ago, a ship was crushed by the ice off the north shore of King William's Island, but that all her people landed safely, and went away to the Great Fish River, where they died. From this band of Esquimaux he obtained many relics. On a second journey, a month later, he met with other natives, and from them received information of another ship having been seen off King William's Island, which drifted ashore in the autumn of the same year-1848; and that many of the white men dropped by the way, as they went toward the Great River. Continuing his search, he found, on the 24th of May, about ten miles eastward of Cape Herschel, on King William's Island, a bleached skeleton, around which lay some fragments of European clothing. Judging from his dress,' adds Capt. McClintock, this unfortunate young man was a steward or officer's servant, and his position exactly verified the Esquimaux's assertion, that they dropped as they walked along.' Lieutenant Hobson was even more fortunate than his commander. After parting from him, he made for Cape Felix, the northern extremity of King William's Island, where he found a cairn, about which were relics of a shooting or magnetic station, and among them a boat's ensign. A few miles to the southward, upon Point Victory, he came upon another cairn, where a vast quantity of clothing and stores lay strewed about, as if here every article was thrown away which could possibly be dispensed with ; pickaxes, shovels, boats, cooking utensils, iron work, rope, blocks, canvas, a dip circle, a sextant, engraved 'Frederic Hornby, R. N.,' a small medicine-chest, oars, etc. But among them, and more interesting and precious than all, was a record, dated April 25th, 1848, from which, and from a duplicate found soon after, they learned that the Erebus and Terror passed their first winter at Beachy Island, after having ascended the Wellington Channel to lat. 77 deg. N., and returned by the west side of Cornwallis Island. When the spring opened, the hardy mariners struggled southward, making for King William's Island, hoping to reach beyond it the continent of America, and thus open the long-sought-for North-West Passage. Their efforts were, however, in vain. The ice-fields which flow down between Melville Island and Bank's Island, and block up the narrows about King William's Island, caught them on the 12th of September, 1846, in lat. 70° 5′ N., and long. 98° 23′ W. From this position the ships never escaped, except to drift a few miles further southwards. Here, also, on the 11th of June, 1847, Sir John Franklin died —not, we may hope, of starvation, or with any fearful foresight of the fate that was to befall his companions, but quietly and peacefully worn out with arduous labor, yet full of hope that his task was about to be accomplished, and with the cherished and consoling conviction that they who bore his last words to those he loved at home, would carry, also, the news of that success to the very brink of which he had led them. On the 22d of April, 1848, after another season of dreary waiting and suffering, which will never be told, the remainder of the officers and crew, one hundred and five in number, under the command of Capt. Crozier, abandoned their ships, five leagues N. N. West of Point Victory, on King William's Island, and started for the Great Fish River. The total loss by deaths in the expedition, up to this date, was nine - officers and fifteen men. In attempting to reach the Great Fish River, the whole party probably perished, as the natives said, 'dropping down by the way, one by one.' In their further journeys, Lieut. Hobson and Capt. McClintock fell in with a boat, which the sufferers had abandoned, with its bow turned toward the ship, and in it were two human skeletons, one in each end. Two guns stood against her side, loaded, and a barrel cocked in each. There was fuel in abundance about her, but no food, and no remains of any, except some tea and chocolate. They found in her, also, several watches, and some silver spoons and forks, and plenty of ammunition. But guns and powder were as useless as fuel and forks, where there was nothing to kill. And here their sad story ends. That wilderness is marked, perhaps, for many a mile with other bleaching bones, and tattered relics, as the wanderers fell, one after the other, in their horrible and hopeless march; but no pious hand will ever gather them together, and give them Christian burial no friendly and pitying eyes ever drop a tear upon them." Some years since, the Duke of Luynes, a distinguished French photographic amateur, instituted a prize, under the auspices of the French Academy, for the discovery of a method of producing photographs by the use of carbon alone (neglecting salts of gold, silver, and other metals), this being the only material which, submitted to the test of time, has transmitted to us, without change, records almost 3000 years old. The Commission of the Photographic Society, Paris, to whom the applications for the prize were referred, have recently reported that they are unable to announce a full success, and, therefore, adjourn the decision for three years. The desideratum is to obtain a coating of carbon in a manner analogous to that from silver or gold — namely, by reduction. But chemistry, as yet, has failed to discover a process for the reduction of carbon compounds, and photographers have resorted to animal-black, which they have applied, in any convenient manner, to plates previously exposed to the sun. From the many contestants of the prize, the Commission esteemed two memoirs presented as worthy of reward; and the following résumé of these is given by M. Nickles, in his correspondence with Silliman's Journal: Messrs. Garnier and Salmon, the authors of one of these memoirs, cover the face of paper with a film obtained from an intimate mixture of bichromate of ammonia and albumen. This coating is dried by heat, and exposed to the sun in a frame covered by a glass positive. The picture appears in a yellow-brown tint, which becomes more intense by a gentle warmth. The sheet thus prepared is fixed on a planchette, and covered with finely powdered ivory-black, the coating being made even by a stump of cotton. It is next detached and plunged in common water, the image uppermost, and there gently moved at intervals for a quarter of an hour. The water is then |