the Emperor of all the Russias-once roamed the Prairies of Europe as his congener now does those of America. But he couldn't be tamed and made to plough like B. longifrons and B. taurus, and so the natives killed him off, and he would be soon extinct, like his old rival primigenius, but for the Emperor. The wild boar and the wolf were only killed yesterday. The former (Sus scrofa ferox) abounded in Henry II.'s time, whilst the latter (Canis lupus) survived in Ireland till 1710. Blood-money was put upon his head as upon the tiger in India at the present day. The present foxes are mostly re-introduced, and owe their existence to Protection. The Wild-cat, Badger, Marten, Pole-cat, and even the Otter, are becoming rare as British species. These all owe their extinction to man. The Red Deer, Roebuck, and Fallow Deer only exist by means of protective legislation. Of birds, the Capercailzie, or "Cock of the Wood," is extinct with us, though still occurring in Norway. The two Bustards (Otis tetrax, the little bustard, Otis tarda, the great bustard), are both exterminated. Formerly they could live on the wastes of West Norfolk and Wiltshire. The great Crested Grebe-Podiceps cristatus, the great Bittern-Botaurus stellaris, and the freckled Heron, Botaurus lentiginosa, once rejoiced in the Fens of Cambridgeshire and Dorset. The fen-lands are gradually becoming drained and cultivated, and these birds are mostly dead. The White Spoon Bill (Platalea leucorodia), the White Stork (Cicornia alba), and the little Glossy Ibis (Falcinella igneus), once were summer visitants of ours, now they come no more. The Herons are fast dying out, and require "Protection" like the Grouse and Partridges. The Golden Eagle and numbers of Falconidae and lesser birds of prey have also been lost. Among the interesting associations of the past, to the Naturalist, will always be counted the Great Auk, once an inhabitant of the Orkneys and the shores of Denmark, found in the KitchenMiddens of both, and also in the Indian Shell-heaps of New England. The last of his race is believed to have perished so lately as 1846. And no wonder! for the poor bird could not fly, so the old Danish sailors used to lay a plank from the ship to the shore, and compel their unfortunate victims to " Walk the plank," "single file," and fall into the ship's waist, where they were killed and eaten. One skipper boasted that he had brought off thirty boatloads in an hour. Once this bird covered the shores of the northLabrador, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Greenland, Iceland. Now we look in vain for a single one. The Dutch sailors were just as merciless to the Dodo in the Mauritius, and the Maories to the Dinornis and the Great Rail in New Zealand, and the people of Madagascar to the Epyornis. Changes (insensibly it may be, yet, nevertheless, surely) are going on year by year around us. We see but little in the lifetime of an individual; but the retrospect of a century shows vast changes in our condition as a race for example. Each step in retrogression will appear more and more marked. Go back a century, where are our railroads, our telegraphs, our steam-vessels, our rifled cannon? Still further, and we have not our colonies, and the world is only half-known. Further still, and we have not learned Christianity, and worship idols; we are ignorant, superstitious, and cruel. Still further, and behold the savage depending on the chase, trusting to his instincts to supply his wants. And now to ignorance, superstition, and cruelty, he has added dirt; for he is not at all particular about his abode, provided he be dry, warm, and his hunger appeased. His life was not one constant state of alarm-indeed, he was happier in this respect than his black representative of to-day. The Negro lives in a stockaded village in terror. Why? Because, although slavery is at an end in America, it is not quite at an end elsewhere; and the cruel passions that ardent spirits and vice have engendered in the slave-trading population of the coast, seek gratification in acts of cruelty and violence, often of a far more terrible nature than any pre-historic savage would have invented. There can be little doubt that the designation, “the noble savage,” belongs almost entirely to the past. If we except the New Zealanders, the savage races of to-day are probably, as a whole, less civilised than the men of the French caves and the Swiss pile-works. Witness the Andaman Islander, the Terra del Fuegian, and the Australian native. The old Cave-men represented the population of the less-civilised portions of the globe, as these aborigines do now in our own day; for there never was a time in the Earth's past history when a uniform condition of things obtained, unless in pre-Silurian epochs. Faunas slowly but constantly migrate, a part becoming extinct, some races improving, some remaining persistent. Peoples migrate-some are exterminated (witness the native races dying out before the over-mastering effects of a too-advanced white civilization)-the remainder in part improve (being, as individuals, capable of improvement) those which remain unchanged, do so because they are not exposed to the elements of change. There is little doubt that man has been upon the earth long enough to have witnessed many physical changes, and even considerable modifications in the climate of Europe. We can the more readily accept this, because from the brief portion of the record of our race embraced in the historic period, we know that many changes in physical conditions have come to pass, and some, indeed, are even now taking place around us. The duration of the Pre-historic period, as compared with the historic, may best be conceived when it is borne in mind that very old countries like India, whose history goes back further into the past than any other, have still a lost history apparently far longer than that handed down to us, evidenced by Megalithic and other monuments of unknown antiquity; and again, beyond that, Prof. Blanford; Messrs. King, Foote, Wynne, and other of the Geological Surveyors, have obtained evidence of a still earlier and barbarous race, whose only relics are their stone-implements, fashioned of the Neolithic and Paleolithic types, like those of the aborigines of Gaul and Britain. How many thousands of years must have been occupied in the gradual distribution of these earliest representatives of our race, whose implements have been found in almost every portion of the globe (formed in the same simple yet persistent types), can only be realized by the geologist who has learnt that many prior races of beings lived and spread out over the whole globe, and have been as gradually exterminated and re-placed with other races, who have followed in successive eons, differing in form, yet modelled on types analogous to those now existing. IV. ON SOME RAISED SHELL-BEDS ON THE COAST OF LANCASHIRE. By GEORGE MAW, F.G.S., etc. SOME portions of the Lancashire coast in the Furness district give evidence of considerable changes of level since the first elevation of the Glacial deposits. The Boulder-clay formation of Cumberland and Lancashire exhibits a well-marked subdivision into a lower tough blue Boulder-clay, overlain, apparently on its eroded surface, by a redder silty clay of more variable composition. The same subdivision holds good along the coast of N. Wales; but I cannot satisfy myself that it can be definitely correlated with the succession of the Glacial series of the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts, or that the lower tough blue Clay can be traced inland much above highwater level. The superposition of these two clays is well exhibited on the coast, a little to the south of Workington, where (Fig. 1), the blue Clay (bb) from 25 to 30 feet thick, containing many transported boulders of considerable size is overlain by the reddish clay (a a), containing fewer blocks. FIG. 1.-BOULDER-CLAY CLIFF SOUTH OF WORKINGTON, CUMBERLAND. cc. Sea-Beach high-water mark. At Rampside, near Peel Harbour, Lancashire, isolated portions (a) of a reddish Boulder-clay, apparently identical with the Upper FIG. 2.-BOULDER-CLAY OVERLYING SHELL-BEDS, RAMPSIDE, PEEL HARBOUR, CUMBErland. cc Sea-Beach high-water mark. Boulder-clay of the Workington section, rise up as low cliffs along the coast and contain a large proportion of granite and other transported boulders. Here the subjacent blue clay is not visible, but it probably occurs below the sea-level. My attention has been drawn by Professor Harkness to the occurrence of extensive shell-beds (a) at this point above high-water mark. In some places, for example, behind the cottage near the beach at Rampside, it is difficult to determine that they are distinct from the Boulder-clay deposit, but a little to the east it is apparent that they are superimposed on its eroded surface. The Boulder-clay (a) rising up in isolated masses, and the evenly stratified sand and shell beds (a) lying between them. The shells Ostrea, Mytilus, Cardium, Pecten, Littorina, etc., are identical with those on the adjacent shore, and occur in profusion, unlike the shell-remains of any Glacial deposits. These beds may probably be of similar age, and represent the same elevation as the raised beaches occurring along the north and south Devon coasts, though from the absence of cohesion of the materials they have a different mineral aspect. The series at Workington and Rampside appear to imply several distinct oscillations of level, possibly one at the interval between the deposit of the lower tough blue Boulder-clay and the Reddish Clay, for an eroded surface seems to separate them. 2nd. Emergence after the deposit of the Red Clay, with an irregular erosion of its surface. 3rd. Re-submergence during the deposit of the Post-Glacial shell beds, and lastly a rise of the coast of at least ten or fifteen feet to place the shell beds above high-water-mark. V.-ADDITIONAL NOTE ON THE DISCOVERY OF BOS PRIMIGENIUS IN THE LOWER BOULDER-CLAY, AT CROFTHEAD, NEAR GLASGOW. By JAMES GEIKIE, Geological Survey of Scotland. IN my former note on the discovery of Bos primigenius in the Lower Boulder-clay, I stated that there was some "slight twisting and confusion" of the stratified deposits below the superincumbent Boulder-clay, which might have been caused by the pressure of glacier-ice. As the crumpling of sand, clay, and gravel, below Till, is by no means uncommon, and has frequently been described, I did not think it worth while at the time to give any drawing of the contortions exposed in the new railway cutting. But some geological friends having asked me about the character of these crumplings, it may not be out of place if I now add a few particulars. When my former note was written the disturbed portions of the stratified deposits were not very well exposed, and consequently I did not in my communication lay much stress upon their occurrence, although I had little doubt as to their origin. Úpon visiting the section some weeks later, however, I found the crumplings well displayed. In October last I saw them again, in company with my brother, Mr. A. Geikie. By that time the section had been still better developed, and the annexed sketch of a portion of the crumpled clays was made. [Stratified Beds in the Lower Boulder-clay, from which were obtained the remains of Bos primigenius.] L L W W Crumpled Clays in Railway Cutting near Crofthead, Renfrewshire, as seen on 22d Oct., 1868. The drawing represents a thickness of about seven feet, but as the cutting did not go down to the underlying Till, the depth to which the crumpling extends could not be ascertained. These crumplings have not been confined to one portion of the section, for during the progress of the cutting they were exposed in several places, and were noted at the time by one of my colleagues and myself; but when I saw the cutting in October it was quite evident that since my last visit in July the navvies had not been idle. A large part of the stratified beds had been removed, and the twisted and confused areas first observed had disappeared. In one part, since demolished, we could distinctly see that the crumpling had been caused by pressure from above, for underneath the crumpled beds (which were confined to the top of the section), the clay and sand were quite undisturbed. I have nothing material to add to the description of the stratified beds given in my former communication. The plant-remains, to which I referred, were only obtained after a careful search, and they were much too decayed for me to recognise them; but when I saw the section at a subsequent time there was a better exposure, the vegetable matter forming in places a dark peaty layer. I did not put this peaty matter under the microscope, but it appeared to be made up chiefly of grasses, and was just such a deposit as was likely to have accumulated in a lake.' A further examination of the glacial striæ of the Cowdon Valley has convinced me that instead of one there are three sets. The common direction of the ice scratches in that neighbourhood is from about north to south; and the Lower Boulder-clay contains fragments of gneiss, mica schist, granite and other north country rocks. Even as far south as the valley of the Irvine, such wanderers from the Highlands may be detected. The prevailing movement of the ice, 1 I understand that these plant-remains will shortly be described before the Natural History Society of Glasgow, by Mr. Mahony. |