morning on the part recently burned, and no degree of pain induces the patient animal to refuse or throw it off. If it once sinks, however, overpowered, either by hunger or toil, it cannot be compelled to rise again.

GEOLOGY.

2. Subterranean Temperature.-As you lately, in conversation, expressed a wish to obtain some details regarding the experiments upon subterranean temperature, which have been carried on for some time back in some of the Freyberg mines, under the direction of M. Reich, professor of physics in the Mining Academy, I send you a few of the facts which I was able to collect during my late visit to that highly interesting district.—The mine to which my observations were confined, and in which the most complete series of experiments are going on, is the Kurprinz, distant about five miles south-west from Freyberg. It is one of the three largest in the district. There are four thermometers in this mine, in the Treibschacht, third, fifth and eighth galleries; of the results of whose indications the following is a synoptic Table, for the twelve months which preceded the date of my visit on the 19th October 1830. They are observed three times a-week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, either at 7 A. M. or 12 noon; and every observation is made and registered on the spot by Steiger Richter, the captain of the mine.

During my visit to the mine, I observed two of the thermometers, that in the Treibschacht and third gallery. The temperature of the first was 59°.79 Fahr.; air of gallery being 64°; -that of the latter was 62°.49; air of gallery 62°.-In the fifth gezeugstrecke, at a depth of 634 feet, is a chalybeate spring, nearly pure, strongly impregnated with a large volume

of free carbonic acid; I found its temperature 80°.25, from which, I was told by the captain of the mine, it never varied all the year round. Indeed, it had lately become more copious in quantity, which had been accompanied with a slight elevation of temperature. Air of gallery, in vicinity of spring, 77.22, being heated by radiation from the water.As the value of these observations is greatly enhanced by the precision and accuracy with which they are conducted, I shall briefly describe to you the thermometers with which, and the manner in which, they are made. The bulb, and more than 3 feet of the tube, which is altogether about 4 feet long, are enclosed in a brass cylinder about half an inch in diameter, and closed at the lower extremity. The upper part only of the tube, which projects scarcely a foot out of the cylinder, is graduated, but very delicately, so that th of a degree of Reaumur is clearly distinguishable, and smaller fractions may be correctly estimated. The space between the non-graduated part of the tube and the brass case is filled with fine sand, so as to exclude completely the action of the external air. With these precautions, the brass tube is sunk its whole length into a hole bored obliquely into the solid gneiss rock, forming the walls of the galleries, (in which little chambers have been previously hewn, closed by a door, the key of which is only in the hands of the steiger), leaving only the graduated scale above the surface, on which the temperature may be observed. The bulb of the thermometer is thus sunk 3 feet into the solid rock, and completely excluded from the air, both by the sand between the tube of the thermometer and the inside of the brass cylinder, and another layer of sand with which the interval between the outside of the cylinder and the walls of the bore is filled up. These thermometers are so delicate, that, notwithstanding these precautions, they are affected momentarily by passing currents of air, and even by the too long proximity of the observer. M. Reich proposes publishing his observations when he has collected a sufficient number. He observed to me, on our conversing on the subject, that he suspected many of the observations published on subterranean temperature were very deficient in the precautions taken to ensure accurate results. He places very little reliance on the observations of Professor Kuppfer of Kasan,

which, he says, are very superficial, and not carried on on a sufficient scale, or with sufficient precautions, to arrive at precise conclusions. I am not exactly aware of the mean annual temperature of Freyberg; its elevation, you know, was calculated by Charpentier at 1630 Leipzic feet. M. G.

3. On the Fossil Deer of Ireland; by Mr Hart.-In the autumn of 1828, while some workmen were employed in making preparations for planting the southern aspect of a hill of loam sand close to Enniskerry, they dug up several bones belonging to the fossil deer, C. megaceros, which lay buried in the loam at the depth of 3 or 4 feet below the surface, and at an elevation of about 40 feet above the level of the bed of the river which runs at the base of this hill. As the persons into whose hands these remains fell were not aware that any importance would be attached to their discovery, the occurrence attracted no particular notice at the time, in consequence of which the greater part of the bones were lost, or variously dispersed, when the above circumstances became known to the Rev. Robert Magee, who, after some search, recovered a few bones, and a fragment of an antler. This latter he presented to the Royal Dublin Society, in whose museum it is deposited. It consists of the root and part of the beam of the antler of the right side; its length is 11 inches, and its circumference at the base 10 inches; a portion only of the brow antler remains, and is much worn, apparently by attrition. The bones found in this place were not in that high state of preservation, for which the bones of this animal are so remarkable when found in marl; they had less specific gravity, were friable and powdery on the surface, and their projections or processes were generally worn off. Not being able to ascertain whether duplicates of any particular bone occurred in this instance, I have no means of determining whether these remains had belonged to one or to several individuals. The hill in which these bones were found is situated on the north bank of the river of Enniskerry, opposite the village; its height is about sixty or seventy feet above the river; it is one of a series of heaps of diluvial gravel, dispersed through an extensive valley, lying between primitive mountains. This gravel is composed principally of disintegrated granite, intermixed with clay, and contains round pieces of secondary limestone of various sizes,

which is occasionally met with in such quantity, that it is profitable to collect and burn them. Through most of the valleys separating these gravel hills, small streams or rivulets run over beds which often contain marl; such is particularly the case with respect to the river of Enniskerry, from the bed of which marl, containing a large proportion of carbonate of lime, is sometimes raised as manure. The presence of these bones in the gravel, would seem to warrant the inference, that the destruction of the animal to which they belong was owing to the same causé which conveyed those large heaps of sand and gravel to the situation which they at present occupy; and that this was the work of a vast inundation or deluge, by which the surface of this country was once submerged, appears to be sufficiently evident from the very striking resemblance which these gravel hills bear on a great scale, to the smaller heaps of sand and gravel left in the beds of mountain rivers after floods. The bodies of animals overtaken and drowned by this inundation, after remaining for a short time under water, would naturally run into a state of putrefaction; and having become inflated by the gaseous fluids disengaged in their interior during that process, they would rise and float on the surface until the soft parts were completely decomposed, when the bones, having their connecting media destroyed, would descend by their own gravity: and should the surface on which they come to rest at the bottom consist of a soft material, they would sink into this to a greater or less depth. It was thus, in all probability, that the bones of the fossil deer came to be deposited in their usual position in the marl, at a time coeval with, or immediately subsequent to, the formation of that substance; while the bones found in the sand would seem to owe their position there to the circumstance of the animal they belonged to happening to have been overwhelmed by the enormous masses of gravel and clay which the water rolled before it in the violence of its first irruption.-From 2d edition of Description of the Fossil Deer of Ireland, by John Hart, Esq. M.R.I.A., &c.

4. New Volcanic Isle in the Mediterranean.-In a letter purporting to be from Lieut. St Lamert, of the frigate Armide, to the Russian admiral, inserted in one of the newspapers, is a short account of this curious island. The following passage in

the notice is worthy of attention.-" A platform, nearly above the level of the water, surrounds the isle, and renders it very easy of access. It is, however, not prudent to approach on the ENE. and SW., on account of some detached portions of earth, over which the sea has begun to beat, at less than half a cable's length from the shore. The isle is free from shoals on every side; there is, however, on the NE. a bank which extends for a mile out; but after sounding repeatedly on those parts of the bank where the yellowish colour of the water appeared more prominent, we found a bottom at fifty fathoms; therefore the isle may with safety be closely surveyed. Before the rising of this volcanic hill, this bank did not exist. It appears, then, that the volcano, before it made its explosion at the surface of the water, had raised up the earthy crust under which it roared, and has left behind it the long train of land which it had driven up. On coming to the level of the sea, it has vomited a prodigious quantity of calcined matter, and it is thus that the new isle has arisen."-Now, should this statement turn out correct, it will go far to decide a much controverted point between Humboldt, Von Buch, Daubeny, and others, on one side, and Necker, Scrope, &c., on the other, since it is evident that this is a case of a crater of elevation, the existence of which the latter geologists entirely deny. Not that the converse of this would follow; for Dr Daubeny, for one, has never questioned that there is also such things as craters of eruption, of which kind this may be an example.

D.

5. Fossil Forest discovered at Rome. An interesting discovery has been made by a pedestrian tourist (a physician) in the immediate vicinity of Rome, namely, that of a fossil underground forest, above forty feet in thickness, and extending for several miles. The petrific matter is a calc-sinter, and from the layers of ligneous debris being freely intermixed with volcanic dust, the discoverer of this interesting circumstance thinks there can be little doubt but that this colossal phenomenon was occasioned by an earthquake, of which the memory is lost. The description of it is thus given in a letter :-" Facing the northern extremity of the Pincian Hill, on the left of the new road near the Porta del Popolo, I was struck with the peculiar appearance of the ground, and, on approaching it, I was surprised