The crystals separated, having five molecules crystal water. attempt to produce a thallium compound like the silver one was not successful. With lead by adding to a hot saturated solution of sugar of lead in boiling alcohol, a strong alcoholic solution of potassium triiodide, the liquid deposited on cooling small well formed crystals, square prisms aggregated in clumps, strongly dichroic and permanent in the air. On analysis it gave the remarkable empirical formula Pb,CH,O,K ̧Ï, No rational formula for it has yet been obtained.-Jour. Ch. Soc., xxxiii, 183, May, 1878. 8 36 28 6 17 G. F. B. 6. On Two new Cyanogen Products, Ponsalion and Cyanone. -THOMPSON has observed that when coal gas containing a large proportion of CS, is passed for some days through a solution of mercuric cyanide in potassium hydrate, a white precipitate is formed, which finally becomes of a beautiful scarlet. To prepare it directly mercuric oxide is boiled with potassium cyanide, adding potassium hydrate in excess, agitating with CS, and gently warming. When washed and dried it resembles vermilion in color, but the tint is not as violet. It sublimes to a jet black mass on heating, becoming scarlet again on pulverizing it. It has the empirical formula HgS CH, and is attacked only by aqua regia and chlorine. Hydrogen sulphide does not affect its color. The author calls it ponsælion, from Pons Elii, the old name of Newcastle-on-Tyne. The white precipitate, which is at first produced, when collected, washed and dried, is a gray white powder which explodes violently when heated to about 400° F., depositing a substance like soot. It has not been analyzed but appears to be a mixture of two bodies, one containing sulphur the other cyanogen. To the latter the author gives the name cyanone. The mercury may be replaced by copper, forming an equally explosive body. The explosions in brass or copper gas pipes may be due to this copper compound produced by the CS, in the gas.-Ber. Berl. Chem. Ges., xi, 517; Jour. Chem. Soc., xxxiii, 404, May, 1878. G. F. B. 7. On the Atomic Weight of Gallium.-LECOQ DE BOISBAUDRAN has determined, at least approximately, the atomic weight of gallium by two different methods; i. e., by ignition of ammoniogallium alum, and by calcination of the nitrate, prepared from a known weight of the metal. The ammonio-gallium alum was prepared with the metal recently obtained by the author in conjunction with Jungfleish. By repeated crystallizations the last traces of zinc and of copper were eliminated. The alum was placed in a tared crucible of platinum and heated to bright redness, 3-1044 grams of alum gave 0.5885 gram of gallium oxide GO, losing nothing on further heating. From these data the atomic weight is 70-032. For preparing the nitrate, a fragment of gallium was used which came from the previous quantity. No foreign bodies could be detected in it with the spectroscope. It was dissolved in nitric acid containing a little hydrochloric, evaporated, treated with nitric acid, again evaporated, and finally calcined at bright redness, 0'4481 gram of gallium gave 0·60345 of oxide, from which deducting the impurities in the materials gave 0.6024 gram oxide corresponding to an atomic weight of 69 698. The mean of these two values is 69.865. This value is very near those deduced from the position of gallium in the chemical scale. That deduced from a classification of the elements based on their properties and atomic weights is 69-82; that based on the wave lengths of its lines is 69.86; and Mendelejeff's classification gives it 68.-Bull. Soc. Ch., II, xxix, 385, May, 1878. G. F. B. 8. On Hexoylene, prepared from Mannite.-By addition of bromine to hexylene prepared from mannite, and by treating the product so as to separate hydrogen bromide, a monobromhexylene results. HECHT has now observed that by treating this substance with alcoholic potash in closed tubes for 12 hours at 160°-170°, it gives up all its bromine and is converted into hexoylene. On adding water to the distillate from several tubes, two portions separated. The first a yellow liquid which floated on the surface, was hexoylene; the second, which fell to the bottom as a yellow oil was undecomposed monobromhexylene, in amount about onethird of the quantity used. The hexoylene distilled between 80° and 83°, and is a colorless mobile liquid of a penetrating disagreeable odor. It is optically inactive, has a specific gravity of 0-7494 at 0°, does not solidify in a freezing mixture and has the formula CH,0 It is not attacked by hydrochloric acid, but is dissolved by strong nitric and sulphuric acids. It does not reduce ammoniacal copper or silver solutions. Oxidized with chromic acid it yields acetic and butyric acids. Hence the author gives it the constitutional formula CH,-C-C-CH-CH-CH.. The diand tetra-bromides are described.-Ber. Berl. Chem. Ges., xi, 1050, May, 1878. 10 G. F. B. 9. On Phytosterin.-By extracting finely pulverized calabar beans at ordinary temperatures with petroleum ether, HESSE has succeeded in obtaining from them an oil, possessing their odor in a high degree, which on standing became filled with crystalline plates. These recrystallized from hot alcohol, are brilliant white in color and contain crystal-water. But from chloroform, ether or naphtha they separate anhydrous. It is not soluble in water or alkalies, fuses at 132° to 133°, and affords on analysis the formula CHO. Hesse calls it phytosterin. It was first noticed apparently by Beneke in peas and erroneously called cholesterin. It is optically active and rotates to the left, though less than cholesterin. Assuming that CHO is its correct formula, that of cholesterin being CHO, it would appear to be the next higher homologue of the latter. The author suggests that phytosterin as well as cholesterin may occur in the animal organism. The physiostigmin of Kennedy he regards as phytosterin.-Liebig's Ann., excii, 175, May, 1878. G. F. B. II. GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 1. On the Geological results of the Polar Expedition under Admiral Sir George Nares, F.R.Š.; by Captain Ĥ. W. FEILDEN, R.A., F.G.S., and C. E. DE RANCE, Esq., F.G.S.-The authors describe the Laurentian gneiss that occupies so large a tract in Canada as extending into the Polar area, and alike underlying the older Paleozoic rocks of the Parry Archipelago, the Cretaceous and Tertiary plant-bearing beds of Disco Island, and the Oolites and Lias of East Greenland and Spitzbergen. Newer than the Laurentian, but older than the fossiliferous rocks of Upper Silurian age, are the Cape-Rawson beds, forming the coast line between Scoresby Bay and Cape Cresswell, in lat. 82°40′; these strata are unfossiliferous slates and grit dipping at very high angles. From the fact that Sir John Richardson found these ancient rocks in the Hudson's Bay territory to be directly overlain by limestones, containing corals of the Upper Silurian Niagara and Onondaga group, Sir Roderick Murchison inferred that the Polar area was dry land during the whole of the interval of time occupied by the deposition of strata elsewhere between the Laurentian and the Upper Silurian; and the examination by Mr. Salter, Dr. Haughton and others, of the specimens brought from the Parry Islands have hitherto been considered to support this view. The specimens of rocks and fossils, more than 2,000 in number, brought by the late expedition from Grinnell and Hall Lands have made known to us, with absolute certainty, the occurrence of Lower Silurian species in rocks underlying the Upper Silurian; and as several of these Lower Silurian forms have been noted from the Arctic Archipelago, there can be little doubt that the Lower Silurians are there present also. The extensive areas of dolomite of a creamy color discovered by M'Clintock around the magnetic pole, on the western side of Boothia, in King William's Island, and in Prince of Wales Land, abounding in fossils, described by Dr. Haughton, probably represent the whole of the Silurian era and possibly a portion of the Devonian. The bases of the Silurians are seen in North Somerset, and consist of finely stratified red sandstone and slate, resting directly on the Laurentian gneiss, resembling that found at Cape Bunny and in the cliffs between Whale and Wolstenholme Sounds. Above these sandstones occur ferruginous limestones, with quartz grains, and still higher in the series the cream-colored limestones come in. The Silurians occupy Prince Albert Land, the central and western portion of North Devon, and the whole of Cornwallis Island. The Carboniterous Limestone was discovered, rising to a height of 2,000 feet, on the extreme north coast of Grinnell Land, in Feilden and Parry Peninsulas, and contains many species of fossils in common with the rocks of the same age in Spitzbergen and the Parry Archipelago, being probably continuously connected with the limestone of that area, by way of the United States range of mountains. The coal-bearing beds that underlie the Carboniferous Limestones of Melville Island are absent in Grinnell Land, but they are represented by true marine Devonians, established in the Polar area for the first time through the determination of the fossils by Mr. Etheridge. In America a vast area is covered by Cretaceous rocks. The lowest division, the Dakota group, contains lignite seams and numerous plant-remains indicating a temperate flora; overlying the Cretaceous series are various Tertiary beds, each characterized by a special flora, the oldest containing sub-tropical and tropical forms, such as various palms of Eocene type. In the overlying Miocene beds the character of the plants indicates a more temperate climate, and many of the species occur in the Miocene beds of Disco Island, in West Greenland, and a few of them in beds associated with the 30-feet coal seam discovered at Lady Franklin Sound by the late expedition. The warmer Eocene flora is entirely absent in the Arctic area, but the Dakota beds are represented by the "Atane strata" of West Greenland, in which the leaves of dicotyledonous plants first appear. Beneath it, in Greenland, is an older series of Cretaceous plant-bearing beds, indicating a somewhat warmer climate, resembling that experienced in Egypt and the Canary Islands at the present time. In the later Miocene beds of Greenland, Spitzbergen, and the newly discovered beds of Lady Franklin Sound, the plants belong to climatal conditions 30° warmer than at present, the most northern localities marking the coldest conditions. The common fir (Pinus abies) was discovered in the Grinnell Land Miocene, as well as the birch, poplar and other trees, which doubtless extended across the polar area to Spitzbergen, where they also occur. At the present time the coasts of Grinnell Land and Greenland are steadily rising from the sea, beds of glacio-marine origin, with shells of the same species as are now living in Kennedy Channel, extending up the hillsides and valley slopes to a height of 1,000 feet, and reaching a thickness of from 200 to 300 feet. These deposits, which have much in common with the "bowlder-clays" of English geologists, are formed by the deposition of mud and sand carried down by summer torrents and discharged into fiords and arms of the sea, covered with stone and gravel-laden floes, which, melted by the heated and turbid waters, precipitate their freight on the mud below. As the land steadily rises these mud-beds are elevated above the sea. The coast is fringed with the ice-foot, forming a flat terrace 50 to 100 yards in breadth, stretching from the base of the cliffs to the sea-margin. The wall of ice is not made up of frozen sea-water, but of the accumulated autumn snowfall, which, drifting to the beach, is converted into ice where it meets the sea-water which splashes over it.-Proc. Geol. Soc., London, April, 1878. 2. On the Paleontological results of the recent Polar Expedi tion under Sir George Nares, K. C.B., F.R.S.; by Captain H. W. FEILDEN, R.A., F.G.S., and ROBERT ETHERIDGE, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S.-In this communication the authors brought before the Society the paleontological results and details of the collection made by the naturalists and other officers of the late expedition to the Arctic Circle under Admiral Sir G. Nares. The purpose of the paper was to record the presence of Silurian and Carboniferous fossils in the highest latitude yet reached, 82° 45′ N. Of the former group 60 species have been determined, ranging from the Lower to the Upper Silurian, both Llandeilo and Wenlock types being present and numerous, notably in the class Heteropoda, two species of the genus Maclurea and Bellerophon, with Strophodonta and Raphistoma, &c., also the genus Receptaculites. Upper Silurian species of Actinozoa belonging to Halysites, Favosites, Heliolites, Favistella, Zaphrentis, Amplexus, Cyathophyllum, and Arachnophyllum were noticed, and correlated with British forms when possible; but, on the whole, the facies of the Cœlenterata is American rather than European. Among the Crustacea five genera were noticed-Bronteus, Calymene, Encrinurus, and Proëtus, all Upper Silurian; and the genus Asaphus, associated with Maclurea, of Lower Silurian age. Ten species of Brachiopoda belonging to the genera Pentamerus, Rhynchonella, Chonetes, Atrypa, Strophomena have been determined. Collections were made from twenty localities, ranging from lat. 79° 34' to 82° 40' N., notably the highest at Cape Joseph Henry, where Captain Feilden obtained a numerous Carboniferous-limestone fauna, numbering about thirty species, chiefly Brachiopoda and Polyzoa, all determined species, and American in character rather than British. Mr. Etheridge believed he had determined, through certain forms of Brachiopoda, the presence in a ravine at Dana Bay of the Devonian rock below the Carboniferous Limestone south of Cape Joseph Henry and Feilden Isthmus, the want of plant-remains preventing any correlation with the Ursa stage of Heer. It cannot now be doubted that an extensive Silurian fauna extends to, and is present, from lat. 79° to lat. 82° N., illustrating both the lower and upper divisions of this group of rocks, especially the equivalents of our Wenlock series. Again, north of these there sets in a clearly defined Carboniferous-limestone fauna, reaching the extremity of the highest latitude we know, and probably striking away beneath the Polar sea to Spitzbergen, where the same species have been described by Toula. The authors, through certain fossils, then endeavored to show that on the whole the facies of the Polar Paleozoic fauna was more nearly allied to that of America than to that of Europe, and thus must be correlated with it, although it was shown that a large number of species are common to the two areas, especially the British Islands. The absence of Lamellibranchiata in rocks older than the Tertiary was noticed as having special interest in the physical history of the Polar seas in Paleozoic and Mesozoic times. None have ever been detected in these rocks. The authors stated that they had sought also for evidence of Trias and Permian fossils in |