In December last M. J. Tolmatschow, Conservator of Geology in the Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, sent for my examination a quantity of two fossiliferous shales from the (Upper ?) Coal - measures in the Basin of Kousnetzk, thinking that specimens of Estheria might be found in them.

In the lower beds remains of a Sirenian are very common, and several more or less complete skulls associated with some portions of the skeleton were found. The skull in most respects resembles that of Halitherium. The snout is strongly deflected and bears a pair of downwardly directed incisor tusks. There are about seven cheek-teeth, resembling in pattern those of Halitherium. The roof of the skull between the temporal fossæ is flat. A cast of the braincase has been made, and in most respects it resembles that described by Owen as the type of Eotherium ægyptiacum, from the Mokattam of Cairo. Since this seems to have come from nearly the same horizon as our specimens, I believe that there is the highest probability that they are referable to this same species, in spite of some differences between the shape of the natural cast described by Owen and that artificially made from one of our specimens.

A Sea-Breeze is salt-laden in varying degree. On a fine dry day it may contain as much as 22 milligrams of salt per cubic metre of air (Armand Gautier, Bull. Soc. Chim., 1899 [iii], 21, 391–392). This invisible salt is washed out of the atmosphere by rains, and finds its way back to the sea.

Many are the attempts that have been made to discern some law in the occurrence of earthquakes, and to trace the influence of the sun, the moon, or even of the planets as a cause, if partial, of their origin. Many patient investigators have discovered, or thought they have discovered, periods of fluctuating seismic activity, varying in length from semi-diurnal to annual or even longer, but so conflicting have been their conclusions that little weight can be, or has been, attached to the results of their calculations; and one of the most industrious of all these investigators, the Commandante de Montessus de Ballore, has declared his conviction that no periodicity can be detected, and that the causes of earthquakes are purely terrestrial and in no way affected by any celestial body. Yet, in spite of this, the attempts and the calculations go on, and one of the most recent of these is a discussion by Herr M. Becke of some three hundred earthquakes recorded in the region round Karlsbad between 24th October and 25th November, 1897.