Lyell went to see the skeleton, brought by a German named Koch from the Missouri, of a very large mastodon, and was wonderfully amused to notice how this savant had made it up out of fragments. “He has turned the huge tusks the wrong way—horizontally, has made the first pair of ribs into collar-bones, and has intercalated several spurious dorsal and tail vertebræ, and has placed the toe-bones wrong to prove, what he really believes, that it was web-footed. I think he is a mixture of an enthusiast and an impostor, but more of the former, and amusingly ignorant. His mode of advertising is a thousand dollars reward for anyone who will prove that the bones of his Missourium are made of wood. He is soon to take them to London, when you will have a treat, and see a larger femur (thigh-bone) than that of Iguanodon.” He was delighted with the Americans. Lyell revisited America in 1845, and on returning across the Atlantic in 1846, narrowly escaped shipwreck on an iceberg; but he made an interesting observation about one great berg. “It had a large rock, twelve feet square, on the top, and much gravel and sand on its side. The bergs were from fifty to four hundred feet in height, pyramidal, pinnacled, dome-shaped, single-peaked, double-peaked, flat-topped, and of every form and most picturesque, and only a quarter of a mile off us.” The lesson was not lost, for Lyell had thus ocular proof concerning how stones of huge size and gravity, can travel far from their proper location. And as these icebergs capsize or melt he was confirmed in his views that many deposits of huge stones and gravels in the form of “drift” have been produced in this manner. Having now attained great eminence, Lyell began to write and agitate about the scientific teaching of the Universities, and his opinion of the decidedly unprogressive character of them was proved to be correct when only four heads of houses out of twenty-four were at Oxford to receive the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He urged strongly the necessity of placing the lay teacher on the same pecuniary level as the clergy. Moreover, he made a vigorous attempt to have truly scientific presidents of the Royal Society, and not only noblemen of high and royal standing. The Queen honoured Lyell with her regard, and Prince Albert used to get him to talk about America and the Americans, listening always with great interest. He was knighted for his distinguished services to science, and the conferring of this dignity pleased the whole scientific world. In 1849 Sir Charles Lyell was re-elected president of the Geological Society, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Sumner, attended at the annual dinner given on the occasion. After the expiration of his presidency, Lyell again went to the United States, and, returning, visited Teneriffe, the Grand Canary, and Palma, arriving in England in 1854.