curious oblong crystals of albitic feldspar. Our guide to their source-the trusty ice-grooves-point to Peaked Mountain, a peak lying perhaps half an hour's walk in a direction north 10° west. Under their guidance, and by occasionally following the paths made by bears. through the stunted growth of spruce, we find the parent rock from which they had been torn, on the summit of Peaked Mountain, which is composed of this peculiar porphyry.

Passing through Evans' Notch into the valley of the Androscoggin, in the town of Gilead, we find marks on a ledge near the river, which follow a general north-west and south-east direction. This is the general course of the Androscoggin River at this place. Following this river to its mouth, where it empties near the sea-shore into the Kennebec River, the traces of glaciers observed at Bethel, Lewiston, and Brunswick show that a stream of ice once filled the valley throughout its whole length, from the mountains to the sea.

There was also a Peabody River glacier, which joined the Androscoggin glacier, as we may call it, at the junction of those two rivers near the Alpine House, at Gorham, N. H. A geological friend has detected on the north-east side of Mount Washington, on the carriage road, glacial grooves which point down the Peabody valley.

Thus we see the traces of five distinct ancient glaciers, filling as many river valleys, descending from the higher peaks of the White Mountains. In rounding off the tops of the mountains, scooping out the valleys, and levelling with their moraines the deep depressions in the surface of the earth, they were important agents in preparing the way for the advent of man, who should till the soil they

have borne down from the mountains and spread out in fertile plains.

Such are the lessons to be learned of drifted boulders, ice-marks, and moraines. Now looking back through the past, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of years, when an ice-dome capped these mountains, then probably rising much higher above the sea, and sending a glacier down each broad valley into the ocean, where their huge icy cliffs were laved by the waters of a frozen sea, we have to imagine ourself as if on the present coast of Greenland or Spitzbergen, and, looking inland from some mountain peak upon the coast, behold a vast sea of ice with jagged peaks rising up through the broad expanse, cleaving and throwing aside the slowly, imperceptibly moving currents of this inland sea of ice. Near the sea, partly warmed perhaps by the remote influence of the Gulf Stream, whose powers upon the coast of New England were greatly lessened during this period of intense arctic cold, were sunny valleys, carpeted with moss and sprinkled sparingly with lovely arctic flowers,-whose descendants still linger upon the summit of Mount Washington,—halfhidden beneath the snows, or clinging to the cliffs as if shrinking from the icy embrace of the glacier. Here the Reindeer and the Bison* met in herds, the arctic Foxes barked, and the arctic Hare nibbled the short summer's growth; while upon the drifting ice-cakes the Polar Bear sat watching for some stray seal, and the Mammoth, found fossil over the northern part of both hemispheres,

*The teeth of the Walrus and the Bison were discovered by Sir Charles Lyell in the clay-beds at Gardiner, Maine. These are still preserved in a private collection. The association in the glacial clays of the remains of the Bison with those of the Walrus, and the mingling of other arctic animals and plants with those now confined to British North America and New England, show that the climate, during the glacial period, was a little warmer than that of Southern Greenland at present. Though New England was covered with land ice, the climate of the Middle and Southern States, so far as indicated by fossils, did not differ greatly from what it is at present. Even while the Walrus and other arctic animals inhabited New Eng. land, the coral reefs of Florida were forming.

stalked over the plains. The Gare Fowl, or Penguin of the north (Alca impennis), probably reared its young, fattening them on the Caplin, which has been found fossil in our clay-beds; and the smaller Auks, the Gannet, the Puffin, and Eider Duck filled air and water with their hosts. Through the waves, schools of Narwhales may have disported and waged war with that Bull-dog of the northern seas, the Killer; while the Walrus and Greenland Seal thrust their half-dog, half-human face above the waves, and with angry bark, crowded and jostled each other off the smooth-backed skiers skirting the coast.

Did man gaze upon this scene? Did the forefathers of the Mound Builders or of the ancient Copper Miners of the Great Lakes ply these waters in their kayaks, and build their winter huts of snow amid these arctic scenes?

REVIEWS.

AN INQUIRY INTO THE ZOOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE FIRST DISCOVERED TRACES OF FOSSIL NEUROPTEROUS INSECTS IN NORTH AMERICA; WITH REMARKS ON THE DIFFERENCE OF STRUCTURE IN THE WINGS OF LIVING NEUROPTERA. By S. H. Scudder. From the Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History. Vol. I. pp. 20, 4to. 1867. With a plate.

The study of the fossil remains of insects is attended with great difficulty. Indeed less is known, perhaps, of the Insect Fauna of former geological periods, than of most other classes of animals, with the exception of the worms and jelly-fishes (acalephs). From the fragments of wings, legs, and other hard parts of the insect crust, the fossil entomologist has to reconstruct the insect form of a by-gone period, by comparing these few fragments with their allies of the present day, just as Cuvier restored the quadrupeds of the Paris Basin, delineating their often rude, embryonic forms, from hints afforded simply by pieces of bone and disjointed parts of the skeletons, in some

cases, however, quite complete, discovered by the quarrymen of Montmartre.

The descriptions here given are of the remains of two insects found in the Coal Formation of Morris, Illinois, in company with various coal-plants and amphipod crustaceans, which latter are related to our little beach fleas. These insects were described and figured by Prof. J. D. Dana, in the "American Journal of Science and Arts," in 1864. Each of the two insects is supposed by the author to form the type of a new family of the Neuroptera, both of which are described and compared with the other families. For such comparisons the author finds the neuration of the wings indispensable as a guide in tracing their affinities, and in limiting the different groups of the Neuroptera generally, of which the Dragon Fly, Forceps-tail, and Ephemera are examples. These two extinct families afford instances of a "synthetic type," a term applied to those animals which combine the characters of other groups, and which are added to their more essential points of differences. An example of the synthetic or comprehensive type is the Garpike, which retains the more essential characters of the fishes, while mimicking the scaly reptiles.

The plates contain partial restorations, one of the right upper wing of Hemeristia occidentalis, an insect allied remotely to the Goldeneyed, lace-winged fly, so common in our fields in summer, and the other (Miamia Bronsoni) still more distantly, to the gigantic Corydalus, found not uncommonly flying lazily and feebly at twilight in summer. ON THE PARALLELISM BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT STAGES OF LIFE IN THE INDIVIDUAL, AND THOSE IN THE ENTIRE GROUP OF THE MOLLUSCOUS ORDER TETRABRANCHIATA. By Alpheus Hyatt. From the Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History. Vol. I. Part 2. 1867. pp. 16, 4to.

In this paper, the author makes a comparison between the old age, or period of decline, and the adult forms of allied species of animals, represented at present by the Nautilus and Argonaut. During extreme old age the shell, so to speak, falls into its "second childhood," as stated, though in a more scientific way, by the French naturalist D'Orbigny. This idea is, in the present article, still farther extended to include the collective life of this order of the class of Cephalopods, during the geological periods in which the order came into existence, culminated, and then declined and went out in forms both reminding us of the embryos of the Nautilus, etc., as well as of the earliest generic forms of the order. Thus the different stages of the life of the individual Nautilus or Ammonite accord with the collective life of the entire order. A. S. P.

AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL MONTHLY.- Devoted to Popular Instruction and Literature. June, 1867. J. W. Schermerhorn & Co., New York. $1,50 per annum.

This lively and independent monthly does good service in the cause of education. Every number contains an article on Natural History, besides a special department containing gleanings in Science and the Arts. The present number contains valuable hints on the importance of the study of Natural History in Schools.

NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY.

BOTANY.

ROTTENNESS OF FRUITS.-The experiments of M. Devaine, recorded in the “* Comptes Rendus,” Aug. 20, 1866, prove that the rottenness of fruits is the result of the attacks of fungi, the different varieties in the form of the decay being produced by generic differences in the attacking fungi by the spores of which the fruit has been inoculated. Thus the rottenness determined by a Mucor or a Penicillium differs in density and color as well as in rapidity of development, and all the other Mucedineæ produce a rottenness so characteristic, that the name of the fungus which produced the mischief may be at once determined; for example, a Helminthosporium which attacks the carrot, produces a black putridity; a Selenosporium? Corda, which M. Devaine observed upon the cucumber, and which he propagated on this fruit, gives a beautiful red color to the flesh of the cucumber, whilst the rottenness of the same fruit, resulting from the invasion of a Mucor or a Penicillium, has no particular coloration. — Quarterly Journal of Science.

ZOOLOGY.

THE RED-LEGGED GRASSHOPPER.- This terrible pest has been for several years immensely destructive in the far West, especially in Kansas, as we learn from a correspondent, who states that it "covered the country last August and September, destroying all the late crops, fall wheat, etc., and deposited its eggs all over the country. Now the farmers are in a quandary, and some are in despair, not sowing or planting, believing that it would be labor spent in vain, while others run the risk." It used to swarm at certain times in the Eastern States. Harris enumerates its visitations in New England in the last century, when it devoured every green thing, so that "days of