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attention and challenging the admiration, of an arrangement after the method of Mohs. This is certainly a novel claim ofthat method to philosophical consideration. Mineralogy itself does not appear to be, at the present moment a popular science in England, and this may be attributed to several combining causes: among which stand prominent the fact, that the chemical method has never been efficiently made known in this country; secondly, that many of the leaders of the more popular pursuit of geology are but indifferent mineralogists, and consequently pay little attention to mineralogical geology; and thirdly, that our keepers of museums, more especially our national one, should not, for the adequate salaries which they enjoy, give, at least, short summer courses of lectures.

If geology does not rank first among the sciences, it certainly enjoyed the advantage of the greatest popularity, and of the largest attendance.

The most important contribution in this branch of inquiry—although, perhaps, not the most important to the progress of the science—was, decidedly, the memoir communicated by Dr. Dale Owen, on the Western States of North America. The country to which the paper referred embraced Illinois, Indiana, a portion of Kentucky, and Ohio. In this large portion of country there were two coal-fields, one of which was nearly as large as Great Britain. It was truly remarked that such resources, placed by Providence in the hands of an intelligent and industrious community, had promise of power and opulence in store which exceeded anything that the imagination dare picture to itself. As the special object of the author, however, in bringing the communication before the English public, was to have the identification established between those lower rocks on which the coal-fields rest, and those which support our great carboniferous series, much discussion ensued upon these topics. Next in importance came the memoir of Mr. Griffiths, on the fossils of the mountain limestone of Ireland. The exact succession of the different members of the great formation which covers so large a portion of the sister isle, to the unfortunate exclusion of its associated rich coal-fields, has long been a desideratum to geologists, the more especially as it was hoped that the details would fill up certain lacunæ existing in the perfect understanding of our own carboniferous limestones.

As the association met in the heart of a great coal-field, it was natural to expect that much attention would be devoted to the subject, and it eliminated, in the first place, a most valuable and accurate paper from Mr. Binney, on the Lancashire coal-field, which supplied almost everything that could be desired for an accurate acquaintance with that formation. Some gigantic fossil trees, which had been found broken, but in an erect position, in cutting the Manchester and Bolton railway, had been carefully preserved for examination; and it was the general opinion of visitors that they were not, strictly speaking, dicotyledonous plants, as advocated by Mr. Bowman, but that they had decidedly grown in situ. In connexion with the same subject, Mr. Williamson read an argumentative paper on the formation of coal-fields.

The next important subject was the theory of elevations and disturbances, which was ably brought forward, in a memoir on the physical structure of the Appalachian chain, by Professors H. D. Rogers and W. B. Rogers. It excited much discussion, and caused many interesting facts to be eliminated.

The report of the committee for registering shocks of earthquakes in Great Britain states, that sixty shocks had been observed at Comrie, in Perthshire, during the last year, and recommended that a person be employed, at that remarkable station, to observe further. The nature of the instruments used were described. The places most liable to earthquakes were situated along the lines of elevation, as at Falmouth and Chichester, and at Swansea, in South Wales. The two leading geological reports were those of Professor Owen, on the fossil mammalia of Great Britain, the publication of which will be a subject of congratulation to all geologists, and that of Professor Johnson, on chemical geology.

The glacial theory, the hobby of the day, was not passed over in silence. Dr. Stark communicated a memoir on the structure and mode of formation of glaciers, in which he overlooked the artificial divisions of firn névé, &c., and argued that there existed no constant differences in the crystalline structure of ice in different parts of glaciers; a view of the case which must, in theory, be correct, if we consider the elementary form of ice, as shewn by the researches of French and English crystallographers, to be an octahedron, and the common form a superinduced rhomb. The author's views, concerning the origin of the superinduced ribbon structure, were also very interesting.