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Scientific Intelligence

II. Geology and Natural History.

1. Supplement to the Article on Dr. Koch's evidence with regard to the contemporaneity of Man and the Mastodon; by the Author.—Since the article on pages 335 to 346 was printed, I have come across another of Dr. Koch's pamphlets. It is a "second edition" of the New York pamphlet of 1843. In the main it is the same with the earlier one of that year. The most important difference is in the first half of the title page, which reads as follows:

"Description of the HYDRARCHOS HARLANI (Koch). (The name SILLIMANI is changed to HARLANI by the particular desire of Professor Silliman.) A gigantic FOSSIL REPTILE, lately discovered by the author, in the State of Alabama, March, 1845."

A second difference is in the appended matter of nearly 10 pages, which extends the pamphlet to 24 pages. This matter consists of (1) an extravagant article from "The New York Dissector;" (2) the article from the "New York Evangelist" about the Hydrarchos and Leviathan, alluded to on page 344, as occupying the inside pages of the pamphlet of 1853; and (3) a puff from the "New York Morning News."

A third novelty is a large wood-cut of the "Hydrarchos Harlani," covering the last page of the cover. The body of the pamphlet contains only some verbal changes.

These New York pamphlets of 1845 contain one significant discovery of Dr. Koch's, made during his "geological tour," which is worth citing. He says: When at Golconda, Illinois, "I discovered a large deposit of old red Sandstone or Devonian system, in which I found a great variety of non-described fossil fish of most wonderful forms, the spiral columns of many of them bearing a striking resemblance to a screw, so that they are called by the inhabitants of the country petrified screws."

The Doctor's "spiral columns" of "fossil fish" are the common Bryozoan corals of the genus Archimedipora, found there, and elsewhere, only in Subcarboniferous rocks.

2. Cold of the Glacial and other Geological epochs.—The idea that a high-latitude elevation making a partial barrier across the shallower part of the Atlantic Ocean from Scandinavia to Greenland, would produce a change of temperature in the North Atlantic, is brought out by Mr. Prestwitch [Prestwich] in his Presidential Address before the Geological Society of London, in 1871, to account for changes in the life of the ocean, during the latter part and close of the Cretaceous period; and the principle is recognized by Dr. W.B. Carpenter in his elaborate paper on Ocean Currents in connection with his Researches on board the "Shearwater" in 1871, read before the Royal Society in June, 1872, and published in No. 138 of the Society's Proceedings, xx 535-644. J.D.D.

3. Geological Survey of Wisconsin.—The present geological survey of Wisconsin was organized in the spring of 1873, with Dr. I.A. LAPHAM as chief geologist, and Professor R.D. IRVING,