is about an inch and three-eighths wide and the same length, and
is of very hard fine-grained black basalt. One side is ground to a very
smooth and regular surface, terminating in a well-formed cutting edge more
than an inch long, the return face of the cutting part being about a
quarter of an inch wide. The other side is a broken surface. The weapon
appears to have been an axe or tomahawk closely resembling that figured at
p. 335 of Lumholtz's _Among Cannibals_, from Central Queensland. The
fragment was discovered by Mr. Swinton and the late Mr. Mackworth Shore,
one of the discoverers of the gold-field, before any rush to it had taken
place, and it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that it was formed
prior to the deposit of the gravel drift and iron-stained sandstone under
which it lay. This would indicate a great antiquity of man in Australia,
and would enable us to account for the fossilised remains of the dingo in
Pleistocene deposits as those of an animal introduced by man.

[9] These facts are taken from a memoir on _The Mammals and Winter Birds of
Florida_, by J. A. Allen; forming Vol. II., No. 3, of the Bulletin of the
Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[10] The great variation in wild animals is more fully discussed and
illustrated in the author's _Darwinism_ (Chapter III.).

[11] See _Ibis_, 1879, p. 32.

[12] In Mr. Seebohm's latest work, _Birds of the Japanese Empire_ (1890),
he says, "Examples from North China are indistinguishable from those
obtained in Greece" (p. 82).

[13] _Ibis_, 1879, p. 40. In his _Birds of the Japanese Empire_ (1890), Mr.
Seebohm classes the Japanese and European forms as _E. schoeniclus_, and
thinks that their range is probably continuous across the two continents.

[14] Lyell's _Principles of Geology_, ii., p. 369.

[15] Mr. Darwin found that the large _Helix pomatia_ lived after immersion
in sea-water for twenty days. It is hardly likely that this is the extreme
limit of their powers of endurance, but even this would allow of their
being floated many hundred miles at a stretch, and if we suppose the shell
to be partially protected in the crevice of a log of wood, and to be thus
out of water in calm weather, the distance might extend to a thousand miles
or more. The eggs of fresh-water mollusca, as well as the young animals,
are known to attach themselves to the feet of aquatic birds, and this is
probably the most efficient cau