call attention to conflicting theories, the publication of which he thinks he has shown to be useless, even to professional readers, and certainly they are of no kind of service to any one besides. It would ill become the writer, and be directly against his wishes, to speak lightly of the promoters of science. The learned doctors already named want no praise from him for their scientific achievements: he trusts that they will continue their praiseworthy exertions; but at the same time he wishes to express a decided opinion that conjectural hypotheses on subjects entirely professional, however elaborate, would be more appropriate in publications altogether devoted to such discussions, than in works adapted and intended for general readers. However, if the learned doctors will not concur in the fairness of this opinion, they as a body have the power to decide and act accordingly; but at any rate it is hoped that hereafter they will start fair. In the case that has been discussed, they only agree to dispute. Merrick's "Chameleon," in the following lines, speaks so closely to the point, that he almost seems to have addressed the doctors prophetically:

"My doctors," the Chameleon cries,

(When first the creature found a tongue,)
"You all are right, and all are wrong.

When next you talk of what you view,
Think others SEE as well as you;
Nor wonder if you find that none
Prefers your eyesight to his own."

What microscopic philosophers see, or pretend to see, are realities or imaginary objects; they describe facts or fallacies. If they write about real entities, their descriptions of them ought to be alike, and when they differ, strong doubts must arise as to which delineation is correct, and the reader, who is incompetent to repeat the necessary experiments to get at a decided proof, and who does not know enough of either of the disputants to fix his faith to what he asserts, naturally concludes that the whole is too imaginary to be of any service, or to establish any fact. Such labours, wherever published, if they were properly classified, must come under the denomination of exceedingly useless philosophizing, or very learned trifling, well adapted to disappoint the countryfied philosophers, and fit only to increase the bulk of a publication without in the smallest degree adding to its credit.

Although the construction of microscopes and their application to philosophical inquiries have recently obtained much attention, still it is thought the same readers will not consider the preceding remarks entirely out of place.

FOSSIL ELEPHANT'S TOOTH.

BY P. O. HUTCHINSON.

(Local Secretary to the Society of Antiquaries of London.)

ON the 19th of March, 1869, a sailor brought me at Sidmouth a fossil elephant's tooth. As the sailors and fishermen frequently bring objects which they dredge up-sometimes of a worthless kind, which they recommend as curiosities-I received him with some reserve. He told me he had procured it from the bottom of the sea, at low water spring tide, at the latter part of the preceding month of February. It was full moon on the 26th, and he obtained it on the first or second day after, but was not certain which. This occurred opposite "Wind-gate," as the depression between Peak and High Peak Hills is called, and at about a mile or a mile and a quarter west of Sidmouth. He further added that a stranger, who had seen the object in his hand, had offered him four shillings for it, but that he would not close any bargain until he had first shown it to me, as I had bought things of him before, and feeling assured that it was a curiosity, he would not part with it under five. Though at first sceptical in respect of his story, I recollected that in the Torquay Museum there is the last lower left side molar of a mammoth, dredged up some years ago from the bottom of Torbay, and I thought it better to accept his offer, and secure the tooth at once. The height of the tooth from the root is five inches and a half, the crown is seven long and three wide, and the weight is four pounds. The colour is ochre, and various shades of reddish-brown, the hard ridges on the crown, extending partly down the sides, being black. Unlike the Torquay specimen, which does not appear to have lain long unburied at the bottom of the sea, as it is free from the attacks of marine polyzoa, this one is in several places incrusted with serpulæ and corallines. On submitting a coloured rubbing of the tooth to Professor Owen, at the British Museum, he was disposed to consider this as the fifth in succession, lower jaw, of the Elephas indicus, or of a species allied to it; that it had been much worn; and that it had been shed. But bearing in mind that the learned professor has not seen the original, we must be cautious not to fix upon him too confident an opinion. I destine this specimen to the Exeter Museum.

ON EXTRAORDINARY AGITATIONS OF THE SEA

NOT PRODUCED BY WINDS OR TIDES;

WITH A REFUTATION OF THE NEW THEORY THEREON.

BY RICHARD EDMONDS, PLYMOUTH.

(Communicated by C. SPENCE BATE, F.R.S., etc.)

ALTERNATING currents of the sea not produced by winds or tides have often been observed rushing out and in on our shores, falling and rising generally from two to six feet below and above the proper level of the water, and occupying in each efflux, as well as in each influx, from three or four to six or eight minutes; and they are always accompanied with earthquakes, thunderstorms, great maxima of the thermometer, or considerable minima of the barometer, and sometimes with all these together. Well known instances were observed on the day of the great earthquake of Lisbon in this and in other countries of Europe and Africa, and in the West Indies. Such as take place in the absence of known earthquakes are in all respects similar to those simultaneous with known earthquakes, so that the popular voice has always attributed them to earthquakes, either observed or unobserved. Scientific men, however, on both sides of the Atlantic, finding that they are generally attended with great thunderstorms, have ascribed them (when unaccompanied with known earthquakes) to mere atmospherical causes.*

Having witnessed one of these agitations in Mount's Bay on the 5th of July, 1843, I wrote a description of it in the Literary Gazette of the 15th of that month, from which Mr. Milne has quoted largely in his elaborate paper on the subject, read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in February, 1844 In my paper read before the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall in October, 1843, I ascribed them to submarine earthquake shocks occurring in the locality of the agitated

"Edinb. Phil. Trans.," xv. pp. 621, 635; "Silliman's Journal," quoted in the "Edinb. Phil. Journal" for January, 1847.

"Edinb. Phil. Trans.," vol. xv. pp. 609-638.

"Transactions of Royal Geological Society of Cornwall" for 1843, p. 117.