of M. Sidot, who has been carrying on successful experiments with it since 1877, and has made most excellent tubes, bottles, and retorts, of "phosphoric glass." Vessels of this substance are particularly useful in manipulating the fluorides, for phosphate of lime is not acted upon by fluorine. M. Henri de Parville foresees an interesting use to be made of phosphoric glass in connection with cremation. The ordinary part of that process having been completed, our ashes, instead of being deposited in a vase, will be reduced to phosphate of lime; this substance then converted into phosphoric glass; and the glass molded into a vase, a medallion, or a memorial statuette of the person from whom it has been derived.
Advantages of Woolen Underclothing.—The advantages of woolen underclothing, besides its warmth, and the closeness of its application, depend upon its better adaptation in respect of temperature to the requirements of climates and to changes of season than any other material for dress. It also has a special faculty for absorbing and distributing moisture that makes it particularly salutary next to a perspiring skin. A linen garment will absorb the products of transudation till it is wet and becomes sticky upon a moist and clammy skin, while flannel will rest upon a skin which it has nearly dried, and be only damp itself. Hence, the body wearing flannel is in the best condition to resist the after-chills that follow great perspiration. The irritation caused by flannel, which is brought up as an objection against it, is an accompaniment only of new flannels and coarse ones, and is generally a merely transient condition.
Patagonian Geology, and a Former Southern Continent.—Señor F. P. Moreno has communicated to the Argentine Scientific Society the results of geological explorations which he has made in Patagonia, beginning in 1876. In the ascent of the Santa Cruz, at five degrees above where Darwin had given up a further exploration of that river, he came upon a country roughly cut up by canons, and presenting most of the peculiar features of our "Bad Lands." About halfway between the mouth of this river and the Andes, he discovered a region "forming the base of a high terrace, surmounted by high peaks that gave it the aspect of a half-ruined Gothic cathedral, exceedingly rich in tertiary mammalia. In the upper part of this formation, which was about two hundred and fifty metres high and one hundred and fifty metres broad, were discovered, beneath the superficial layers of glacial détritus, several alternating lacustrine and marine beds indicating successive immersions and emersions. In them the three divisions of the Tertiary period were represented by very distinct mammalian fossils corresponding with ancient forms of marsupials, pachyderms, edentates, rodents, and carnivores. Perhaps one of the most curious features of these fossils was the number of transitional forms among them; an animal combining features of the marsupials, the land carnivores, and the pinnipeds, in such a way "that, if the remains did not exist and we should describe an animal possessing all their characteristics, we should be thought to be imagining some fabulous monster"; animals of an order intermediate between the ungulates and the rodents; and a molar, "which can be attributed only to a gigantic cabiai, or a dwarf elephant." This fauna is more ancient than the Argentine mammalian fauna, and is probably quite as comprehensive. The discoveries have thrown a new light on the geological history of South America; for Patagonia was formerly regarded as of marine origin, but they prove much of it to have been terrestrial and lacustrine. They also lend some weight to the opinion expressed by Señor Moreno that, at the beginning of the Tertiary period, a vast continent, of which Patagonia was a part, extended east and west. The rich fauna and the luxuriant vegetation, evidences of which are also found, could not have come down from regions nearer the equator, as has been supposed, that is, from more favorable to less favorable conditions, but must have originated in this region, and pushed up toward the tropic under the influence of the growing cold that came upon the country. The southern part of the continent still shows signs of oscillation. An elevation of one hundred and fifty metres would consolidate the land with Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands into a continent as wide as Africa at the Orange River
