Professor Anderson has lately delivered at Glasgow an interesting lecture on recent laboratory results, in which he called attention to the state of the guano trade, the superphosphate manufacture, the quality of oil cakes, and of drinking water-all of them important agricultural subjects. He informs us that the guano on some of the Chincha islands is already exhausted, and that recent imports are of inferior quality-containing considerably more water and considerably less ammonia than the qualities which have hitherto been common- —a difference capable of correction only by the artificial addition of at least 20 shillings-worth of sulphate of ammonia to the ton-" and to this extent the price of the guano is practically enhanced by this diminution of its quality." Of recently manufactured superphosphates Professor Anderson reports an improvement. They are indeed no longer manufactured from bones, but the process by which the mineral phosphates are converted is more completely carried out, and new supplies, of excellent quality, are from time to time discovered. Thus it has been lately met with in nests in a particular kind of dolomite in the valley of the Lahn, a tributary of the Rhine. The mines of Staffel yielded last year 2,500 tons of a quality containing 55 to 65 per cent. of phosphates. It is here in a new and unexpected geological formation, and there can be little doubt that by an extended search many similar deposits will be found.

During the past year Professor Anderson has found bran, grass seeds, carob beans, French nutcake, and other adulterations in oilcakes of British manufacture. And we are informed of the offer in the market of inferior mixtures containing mustard and other small seed, with the avowed purpose of "reducing high quality linseed." A dealer in cakes, we are told, has sold at 117. a ton an article, which he stated was of the highest quality, under the name of the "Simon Pure." It was found on analysis to contain bran, and since then he has supplied his customers with the real Simon Pure at 117. 10s., "so that in commerce as well as in comedy there are a real and counterfeit Simon Pure."* Professor Anderson touched lastly on the character of the drinking water given to cattle. He has lately examined the water from wells on several farms, and has found them to contain nitrates obviously derived from the infiltration of animal matters. The presence of such matters is injurious to human beings, and is in all probability also mischievous to the live stock of the farm.

One of the more remarkable features of the annual show of the

* For the guidance of analysts and of our agricultural readers, we may mention that the following substances are used for the adulteration of linseed cake: wheatbran, ground rice-husks, inferior rape-cake, inferior groundnut-cake, Niger cake, damaged cotton cake, cake made from damaged linseed, Dodder cake, Sessame cake, Indian corn meal, locust beans, &c.; but the worst, and most valueless substance used is ground rice-husks, known as "shudes."

English Agricultural Society at Bury last July, was the illustration given of the economical application of steam-power to light-land cultivation. By means of two engines, one at either end of the cultivated field, two tools are worked at once; and when the widest tools were used-Fowler drags a 13-tine cultivator which takes a width of 4 yards at once-the cultivation was accomplished at the rate of 50 acres in a day. It seems plain that on light-land farms as well as clays, wherever the area has been properly laid out for steam cultivation there need in future be no more horse-power provided and kept throughout the year than will suffice for the harvesting and marketing of the crops; in fact, for all the work of carriage. With Fowler's or with Howard's double engines, each with double drum working two tools simultaneously, there is no reason why a square of 20 acres, or even more of land which had been ploughed by steam-power before winter, should not be grubbed or cultivated, and receive a thorough harrowing all at once in a single day in spring, or why a thorough fallowing after a winter's frost upon the autumn tillage of stiff clays should not be thus accomplished almost at a blow.

The hot and variable weather, accompanied by thunderstorms, of the current season has been greatly against the dead-meat trade; and some easy preservative of quality is under such circumMessrs. Medlock and Bailey have patented stances greatly needed. the use of their solution of bisulphite of lime for this purpose. Two quarts of this solution, one pint of common salt, and four gallons of water, constitute the wash, by which it is said that a joint of meat may be preserved fresh in the hottest weather. A dip night and morning into such a mixture will keep meat sweet for any length of time; and when afterwards dipped in cold water for a few minutes and then dried thoroughly with a cloth it is ready for cooking, unaltered in any detectable way from the day it was slaughtered. Such are the assertions of the patentees; and they are sufficiently striking to deserve examination."

The weather of the past spring and summer has proved on the whole better for succulent growth than for the formation and ripening of seed, and the reports of the grain harvest are not satisfactory. More than half the reports of the wheat crop supplied to the Agricultural Gazette' declare it to be under average, and that is a larger proportion than was similarly returned last year, when The crops of springthe crop was undoubtedly an inferior one. sown oats and barley, and especially of beans, are believed, on the other hand, to be generally good.

2. ARCHEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY.

YIELDING to the desire of the Belgian Minister of the Interior, M. Dupont has collected into a small octavo volume the first series of his papers on the Belgian caverns, under the title of "Notices préliminaires sur les fouilles exécutées sous les auspices du gouvernement Belge dans les cavernes de la Belgique." It contains notices of the caverns on the banks of the Lesse explored up to the month of April, 1866; of the caverns on the banks of the Meuse explored up to October, 1865; and of the author's researches into the Quaternary deposits of the valleys of both those rivers. These memoirs having been originally published in the Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of Brussels are now tolerably well known, and require no further notice at our hands; but their publication in a compact form will be welcome news to the many English ethnologists and geologists who are interested in the progress of M. Dupont's researches.

It

Mr. J. S. Moore has recorded, in the Journal of the Royal Geological Society of Ireland, the finding of a stone hatchet, under interesting circumstances, at Kilbride, County of Wicklow. was found imbedded in hard clay, and carefully covered by a large stone, fourteen inches broad, eighteen inches deep, and two feet long, perfectly flat on the under side, and weighing about 3 cwt. This stone was firmly imbedded, and wedged in by five other large stones, varying in weight from one to three hundredweight. About two loads of smaller stones were firmly and closely packed upon these. Stiff hard clay rose around the base of the large stones to the height of six inches, and from that up to the surface of the ground lay about 18 inches of bog. The author speculates on the means-natural and artificial,-whereby the hatchet may have been placed in the position in which it was found, and the most probable of his suggestions seems to be that it was hidden there by a native previous to the growth of the bog, and the accumulation of the clay around the base of the large stones.

A controversy on the subject of certain submarine forests on the shores of Liverpool Bay and the River Mersey has been carried on for some time past between the Rev. Dr. A. Hume and Mr. Joseph Boult. The latter gentleman in several papers, and especially in one recently published in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire,'* upholds the idea that the peat of this district has been derived from other localities where peat pre-existed, e. g. Chat Moss, and that the remains (Roman) found in it "are appurtenant to the original localities from which the peat is derived, and may furnish a clue to identify those localites wherever they

* New series, vol. vi., p. 89.

may be." Dr. Hume in the same publication (p. 1) advocates the belief that the forests and peat are the result of growth in situ, and that in some cases there are successive beds of forest-remains separated by strata deposited by water. The Roman remains found near Great Meols he considers the proof of a Roman settlement; and the evidences of encroachments of the sea show that the land has been submerged since the growth of the forest. Mr. Boult's opinions being diametrically opposed to these, the two authors have brought together all the evidence they could obtain, and have thus produced two papers of considerable interest to local archæologists and historians.

In the Comptes Rendus,' * M. Guérin has recorded the finding of a core and some flakes of obsidian in the neighbourhood of Lunéville, the material being the curious element in the discovery. For some time this remained an isolated fact, but the perseverance of M. Guérin has since been rewarded by his detecting near Aingeray-a small commune in the Department of the Meurthe,some fragments of a vase remarkable for its shape and material; and very near it a chipped flake consisting of a vitreous substance. On putting together the fragments of the vase, M. Guérin recognized the shape to be the same as that of some found in accumulations of the Bronze-age in Alsace.

Sign. Gualterio has recorded† the discovery of a fossil human cranium in the Quaternary travertin of Viterbo, associated with bones of Ox, Goat, and a species of Emys. No opinion as to its more precise age is hazarded by Sign. Gualterio, but the probability is that it belongs to a very recent period, possibly within historic times.

The Archæological Institute, the British Archæological Association, and the Cambrian Archæological Association have held their annual meetings during the past quarter at Hull, Ludlow, and Hereford, respectively. Several churches, castles, and other buildings were visited; but little was done in reference to the Prehistoric period. We must mention, however, that a large tumulus, supposed to belong to the Roman period, was opened at Thruxton, near Hereford, during the meeting of the Cambrian Association.

In our last Chronicle we described some of the ancient inscriptions (Oghamic, Runic, &c.) of Ireland and Scandinavia, and we have now to record the publication of Mr. John Stuart's work, entitled The Sculptured Stones of Scotland,' in two volumes, illustrated by more than 200 plates. Our space will not allow us to describe the contents of this work; but we may mention that the sculptures include representations of men and animals, symbolical figures, and Pictish, Runic, and other inscriptions.

Two numbers of the 'Anthropological Review (Nos. 18 and 19, *Vol. lxv., No. 3 (July 15, 1867), p. 116.

† Atti della Società Italiana di Scienze Naturali, vol. viii., fasc. 4, p. 285

for July and October), have been published during the past quarter. Their contents are for the most part remarkably speculative and general, rather than descriptive, which latter, in the youth of a science, we venture to think they ought to be. We shall therefore select only a few papers more especially worthy of notice.

Mr. Carter Blake's paper "On the Human Jaw from the Belgian Bone-caves," is here published in full; but as we discussed the abstract of it in our last, we need do no more here than record the fact.

in

Mr. E. B. Tylor has a paper "On the Phenomena of the Higher Civilization traceable to a rudimental Origin in Savage Tribes,' which he attempts to show that certain customs still practised in civilized communities are traceable to a barbarous origin. For instance, "The astrology of Zadkiel's Almanac does not appear to me to differ from the old rules; the ordeal of the key and Bible is very old and widely spread; country people still make a heart and run pins into it to hurt the heart of some person with whom they choose to associate it, as any savage might do." All that Mr. Tylor writes is worth reading, and this paper is not an exception, for in many instances he shows how curious customs still extant amongst the superstitious crowd of a country fair have got their origin. But we take the liberty of asking, Can these exhibitions of superstition be dignified with the title of "the phenomena of the Higher Civilization?" Ought the author not to have said, rather, the Lower Civilization? It seems, however, that the term "savage" is sufficiently distinctive from "civilization" to render the use of any comparative adjective unnecessary. But Mr. Tylor may possibly regard the savage condition as a rudimentary stage of civilization, and has some name more glittering than civilization for the habits, customs, and modes of thought of the educated people of the present generation.

Dr. J. Thurnam has a paper in support of his theory that long skulls are found in long barrows, and short skulls in short barrows; but he qualifies it by admitting that while he considers the first part of his proposition to be strictly true, the second he concedes is subject to exceptions, and that the round skull is simply the prevailing type found in the round barrow. We cannot enter into the details of measurements, &c., by which the theory is supported, but for them must refer our readers to the paper, which is entitled "Further Researches and Observations on the two principal Forms of Ancient British Skulls." We may also mention that Mr. C. Carter Blake, in the next paper, "On certain Skulls from Round Barrows in Dorsetshire," endeavours to show that no such distinctions exist; but we have seen that Dr. Thurnam himself states that the "round barrows, round skulls" is not an absolutely rigid proposition.