AT AUSTIN - LIB STORAGE 04399900 . 506 B656 V. 25 MAIN Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from IMLS LG-70-15-0138-15 https://archive.org/details/proceedingsofbo2518bost_0 PUBLISHING COMMITTEE. E. G. Gardiner, Alpheus Hyatt, C. S. Minot, John Ritchie, Jr. Samuel Henshaw. CONTENTS OF VOL. XXV. Page Annual Meeting, May 7, 1890 1 Prof. Alpheus Hyatt. Report of the Curator 1 Dr. J. Walter Fewkes. Secretary’s Report.. 19 Mr. C. W. Scudder. Treasurer’s Report 25 Election of Officers 26 Correspondence between the Council and the Park Commissioners 27 Election of Members 42 Dr. J. A. Jeffries. Lamarckianism and Darwinism 42 Prof. H. W. Haynes. A palaeolithic implement from the valley of the Tus- carawas, Ohio 49 Rev. W. J. Holland. Asiatic Lepidoptera (with Plates III-V) 52 Prof. Alpheus S. Packard. Notes on some points in the external structure and phylogeny of lepidopterous larvae (with Plates I, II) 82 General Meeting , May 21, 1890 115 Prof. W. O. Crosby. Composition of the till or bowlder-clay 115 Mr. Warren Upham. Geographic limits of species of plants in the basin of the Red River of the North 140 General Meeting, November 5, 1890 172 General Meeting, November 19, 1890 172 General Meeting, December 3, 1890 172 General Meeting, December 17, 1890 173 Mr. Thomas T. Bouve. Kame ridges, kettle-holes, and other phenomena atten- dant upon the passing away of the great ice-sheet in Hingham, Mass, (with Plate YI) 173 General Meeting, January 7, 1891 183 General Meeting, January 21, 1891 183 Prof. A. E. Dolbear. On chemism or the organization of matter (with figures) . 183 Prof. Jules Marcou. Geology of the environs of Quebec, with maps and sections (Plates YII-IX) 202 General Meeting, February 4, 1891 228 General Meeting, February 18, 1891 228 Mr. Warren Upham. Walden, Cochituate, and other lakes enclosed by modified drift 228 Prof. G. F. Wright. Additional notes concerning the Nampa image 242 Mr. J. Crawford. Notes on Central-American archaeology and ethnology 247 Mr. Charles L. Whittle. Genesis of the manganese deposits of Quaco, New Brunswick 253 General Meeting, March 4, 1891 258 Prof. N. S. Shaler. The antiquity of the last glacial period 258 General Meeting, March 18, 1891 268 General Meeting, April 1, 1891 268 General Meeting, April 15, 1891 268 Annual Meeting, May 6, 1891 269 Prof. Alpheus Hyatt. Report of the Curator 269 IV CONTENTS. Mr. Samuel H. Scudder. Report of the Board of Directors of the Natural His- tory Gardens and Aquaria 284 Dr. J. Walter Fewkes. Secretary’s Report 297 Mr. C. W. Scudder. Treasurer’s Report 302 Election of Officers 303 General Meeting , May 20, 1891 304 Election of Members 304 (General Meeting, November 4, 1891 305 Mr. Warren Upham. Recent fossils of the harbor and Back Bay, Boston 305 Election of Members 316 (General Meeting, November 18, 1891 317 Dr. George Baur. The Galapagos Islands 317 Prof. W. M. Davis. The Catskill delta in the post-glacial Hudson estuary (with figures) 318 General Meeting, December 2, 1891 335 Prof. A. Hyatt. Remarks on the Pinnidae 335 General Meeting, December 16, 1891 347 Dr. James C. White. Commemorative sketch of Dr. D. H. Storer 347 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Letter in memory of Dr. Storer 353 Mr. Samuel Garman. Dr. Storer’s work on the fishes 354 Mr. Samuel H. Scudder. The services of Edward Burgess to natural science.. 358 Prof. G. L. Goodale, Prof. N. S. Shaler, Prof. C. S. Minot. In commemora- tion of Samuel Dexter 364 General Meeting , January 6, 1892 369 Election of Members 370 General Meeting, January 20, 1892 370 Mr. Samuel H. Scudder. The tertiary Rhynchophora of North America 370 General Meeting, February 3,1892 386 General Meeting, February 17, 1892 386 Election of Members 387 General Meeting , March 2, 1892. 387 Dr. W. G. Farlow. Notes on collections of cryptogams from the higher moun- tains of New England 387 Prof. G. F. Wright. Glacial phenomena of northern France and England 391 General Meeting, March 16, 1892 392 General Meeting, April 6, 1892 392 Mr. Aug. F. Foerste. The drainage of the Bernese Jura (with Plates X, XI) . . 392 Prof. W. M. Davis. Note on the drainage of the Pennsylvania Appalachians. . . 418 General Meeting, April 20, 1892 421 Election of M embers 421 Mr. E. Adams Hartwell. The Pearl Hill pot-hole (with figure) 421 Annual Meeting, May 4, 1892 425 Prof. A. Hyatt. Report of the Curator 425 Mr. S. H. Scudder. Report of the Board of Directors of the Natui-al History Gardens and Aquaria (with Plate XII) 445 Mr. Samuel Henshaw. Secretar}’’s Report 448 Mr. Edward T. BouvE. Treasurer’s Report 452 Election of Officers 453 General Meeting , May 18, 1892 454 Baron Gerard De Geer. On Pleistocene changes of level in eastern North America (with Plate XIII) 454 Prof. William M. Davis. The subglacial origin of certain eskers 477 Prof. W. O. Crosby. Geology of Hingham, Mass, (with Plates XIV-XVI) 499 PROCEEDINGS ° 'of ' BOSTON SOCIETY pE NATURAL HISTORY. TAKEN FROM THE SOCIETY’S RECORDS. Annual Meeting, May 7, 1890. Mr. S. H. Scudder, in the chair. The following reports were presented : Report on the Museum. By Alpheus Hyatt, Curator. The subject which has been most prominently before the Society during the past year, and which has absorbed the time of the offi- cers outside of the routine duties of their positions, is the proposed establishment of Natural History Gardens. The greater part of the preparation for this work has necessarily fallen upon the shoul- ders of the Sub-committee on Grounds, which was required to pre- pare a scheme that would not only be thoroughly scientific and educational, but contain all the elements necessary to attract and hold the attention and interest of the public, and also be of such a character that it would harmonize with the views and plans of the Park Commissioners, and thus secure their hearty cooperation. All of these requirements and other difficulties and problems, which PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV 1 (1) OCTOBER, 189 0 Annual Meeting. 2 [May 7, arose during the course of the work, were successfully solved, and the principal result of these deliberations, the proposed plan of the Natural History Gardens, was printed and circulated among the members of the Society in the shape of a letter to the Park Com- missioners bearing date of December 31, 1889. A copy of this was sent to each member of the Society and is also now republished as an Appendix to this report together with the favorable reply of the Park Commissioners, dated Feb. 10, 1890. In this communication the Council asked the Commissioners to approve of a proposed modificatiau o£t,he original resolution, which enjoined the raising of the^nlife/sfam 3o£Wo ttundred thousand dol- lars before work could be begun upon any part of the gardens, and proposal had been received the Council reported to the Society at the meeting of April 2, 1890, and recommended the following res- olution which was passed by unanimous vote. “Voted — That in pursuance of the policy recorded in the vote of March 28, 1888, and adhering to the conditions therein required, the Society authorizes the Council, as soon as one-third of the final sum required for the establishment of its National History Gardens and Aquaria has been raised, to proceed with the establishment of the Aquarium at City Point, in accordance with the plans laid down in the letter to the Park Commissioners of December 31, 1889.” The slow pace of our preparations has been also in part due to prudential considerations. These have prevented the Committee from recommending that the Society should begin with the inau- guration of the New England Zoological Garden at Franklin Park, the only site now open for occupation, unless a large fund should be offered for that specific purpose. It has been felt after careful investigation that this would probably not be a self-supporting di- vision of the Natural History Gardens, whereas, the other two divisions, the Marine Aquarium and the Fresh Water Aquarium, will probably be not only fully as attractive to the public, but, if established first, help to make up deficiencies which might arise at Franklin Park. The reasons for this opinion were given in the last Annual Report and do not need reiteration. The site of the proposed Fresh Water Aquarium has been select- ed by the Park Commissioner with ample water privileges, but this will not be ready for occupation for some time. 1890.] 3 [An nual Meeting. The Park Commissioners assigned us an appropriate site for the Marine Aquarium which was shown on their map of the proposed Marine Park at South Boston, dated December, 1889, and pub- lished in the Report for that year. This site was, however, lo- cated upon Castle Island and unfortunately upon ground controlled by the United States government. When it was ceded by the gov- ernment to the city, the military authorities considered that the preservation of the efficiency of Fort Independence required the imposition of certain restrictions with regard to the erection of buildings, etc., which rendered our occupation of this island im- practicable. This is, however, only a temporary drawback. The Park Com- missioners have shown a sincere interest in the plans we have laid before them and they have already taken steps to provide us with a suitable location in another part of the same Park. The. Sub-committee on Grounds has now accomplished all that it is practicable to do, having even gone to the extent of settling upon the dimensions and general plan of a Marine Aquarial build- ing, and its furniture, including estimates of the cost of erection of the building, aquaria and so on, but their results cannot be taken by the Finance Committee and used in the public work of solicit- ing subscriptions until a location has been decided upon. The experiment, alluded to in the last annual report, of employ- ing a young man of scientific attainments to act as guide to the Museum was continued this year, but only for a short time. The gentlemen emplo3md in this capacity received an appointment to a more remunerative position and left us during the summer of 1889. This guide’s report for the two months spent in the Museum, al- though it only covers a few hours of each public day, shows, that persons often come in pursuit of information with regard to special subjects, or as students who have read more or less and wish to see the objects they have been reading about. It is interesting to no- tice that children seem to have regarded the guide’s invitation to come again as quite desirable, and in some instances visited the collections several times. A considerable number of school chil- dren were sent to look over the collections during the public days, either in classes accompanied by a teacher or alone, and the guide observed that some schools made use of the collections in this way quite frequently. The Curator has also this year begun to take some account of the Annual Meeting.] 4 [May 7, teachers and classes, who use the Museum upon the days during which the public are not admitted. Each applicant has been asked to fill out a printed blank which was filed for future reference. There have been sixteen teachers and three hundred and forty -six pupils admitted during the year. Although these numbers show that the entire number of schools and teachers who use our collections in this direct way is not a large proportion of the public and private schools in Boston, they are in reality very encouraging. They in- dicate the beginning of a very different state of affairs than that which obtained about ten years ago, when an application of this kind to study in the Museum occurred perhaps only twice or three times in a year. As a general result of these observations, it may be stated, that there is a notable increase in the number of teach- ers, students and well-informed people who come to our Museum in pursuit of information, and now a person at work upon the col- lections with a note book is frequently seen, whereas but a few years since such visitors were very rare. The Woman’s Education Association lectures referred to in the last report were successfully finished and the amounts earned in this ser- vice by the Association, the lecturer and Mr. Samuel Henshaw were devoted to the building up of the collection of Dynamical Zoology. With these funds a series of models illustrating the parts of a typi- cal flowering plant, and the different kinds of work done by the roots, stem, leaves and flower have been prepared by Mr. James Emerton from drawings kindly made for us by Mr. Frederick Le- Roy Sargent. We have also received a series of specimens of young bean plants in alcohol illustrating the effects of gravity upon the growth of roots. These were prepared by Mr. W. F. Ganong un- der the direction of Prof. Goodale and were donated to us by these gentlemen. All of these have been placed on exhibition in the ves- tibule in company with a series of preparations of insects intended to exhibit mimicry and protective resemblances obtained partly by purchase, and also a series of models illustrating the composition of the human body, and the relations of daily income and waste, kind- ly deposited by Mrs. Richards. A series of three transparent models illustrating the centre of gravity in inanimate bodies have been prepared by Miss Anna J. Bradley which, however, will not be placed on exhibition until the series is completed. The most notable addition to this department and also to our Museum is a collection of Achatinellinse purchased from Mr. Gulick. 1890.] 5 [Annual Meeting. The Rev. J. T. Gulick during his residence as a missionary at the Sandwich Islands had an unequalled opportunity to add a new chapter to the history of science, and fortunately knew how to avail himself of this privilege. The Achatinellinae belong to a group of highly colored land shells, which were known to be peculiar to these islands, and it was also known that many species were found there crowded together within comparatively narrow areas, and also that distinct species were not necessarily or proportionately separated by the physical features of the localities in which they lived. Mr. Gulick collected largely and succeeded in bringing together a very perfect representation of this fauna. He greatly enlarged the num- ber of species known to exist, but what was far more important ascertained that by far the larger part of all the species were con- fined to the northeastern island of the group, Oahu ; and farther, that seven-eighths of all these, about one hundred and seventy-five species with several hundreds of included varieties, were found only upon the longest of the two mountain ranges of this island, the one which occupies the shore of the island on the northeastern side. Mr. Gulick has struck one of the rarest of all places, an area in which not only distinct species occurred in great abundance, but also the intermediate variations leading from one of these into another, so that all the gradations from one species to another could be studied, and also the conditions under which the animals lived and their habits. He has had the precious privilege, never before accorded to any naturalist, of actually living and studying a centre of evolution, and has utilized his opportunity. We can- not, however, but regard it as unfortunate for him and for the his- tory of science, that the results have been made known only in a series of short papers, first describing the new species and then giv- ing his theoretical conclusions. These publications, although they are extremely interesting and embrace new views which we hope to speak of at some future time in connection with the specimens, do not do justice to his observations, and are altogether inadequate to the importance of his discoveries. These discoveries are of great value in the history of the hypothesis of evolution and they should be explained by a complete monograph of the Achatinellinae with colored plates containing full illustrations of every variety with tables and maps showing distribution of the varieties and species. Annual Meeting.] 6 [May 7, We shall try to mount a selected series of these shells upon a model of the surface of the island of Oahu. The basis of this has been already furnished by the enlarged model of the topographical features of this island prepared by Mr. George H. Barton, and which was opportunely presented by him to the Society before the Gulick Collection was purchased. It will be necessary to enlarge this model considerably and to place it with the shells mounted in their appropriate locations under glass in a table case in the ves- tibule. With this arrangement and some other illustrations, it is, we think, practicable to solve the most difficult problem presented by the collection of Dynamical Zoology, which was to provide an opportunity for the study of the relations of species to the different physical features of the country in which they originated, and to give an objective illustration of what naturalists mean by the phrase, the origin of species by means of divergent evolution. Geology. The accessions to the collection in this department have not been large, about 300 specimens in all. But they consist almost wholly of selected material, obtained by purchase or exchange, and they fill some important gaps, especially in the New England collection of minerals, which is gradually becoming a creditable representa- tion of the minerals of New England. With the exception of the incorporation of this new material, the mineralogieal and lithologi- cal collections remain in the same condition as at the close of last year. Professor Crosby has, however, completed the manuscript of the guide to the lithological collection, and with the assistance of Miss Carter he has completed the arrangement and labelling of the pet- rological collection ; and has also written the explanatory text for this collection. The guide to the petrographic collections, includ- ing both lithology and petrology, is, therefore, now complete in manuscript and ready for publication. Although the general collection of minerals and rocks are thus finished, in the sense of being fully arranged, labelled, and pro- vided with an explanatory text, it is hoped that they will continue to grow through desirable accessions until eventually a revision of both the collections and the guides will become necessary. Mr. Crosby has given much attention to the New England geol- ogy, especially in collecting material and data for a very complete 1890.1 7 [Annual Meeting. representation of the geology of the Boston Basin. The Curator proposes to take advantage of the opportunity thus placed at the Society’s command to begin the accumulation of materials neces- sary for such a collection. Mr. Crosby proposes, if funds for this purpose can be obtained, to construct a model in relief of the Bos- ton Basin on a large scale. This will be colored to represent the geological structure, and will form the principal feature and cen- tre-piece of the exhibit. It should occupy a table-case in the mid- dle of a room ; the wall cases of which should be devoted to the exposition of the geology of the different districts of the Boston Ba- sin. This should include maps and plans and colored sections, as well as relief maps or models of the more interesting areas ; each illustration of this kind should be accompanied by a complete series of typical specimens, showing every phase of form and structure in the different districts. The great importance of such an exhibi- tion need not be enlarged upon, and it is extremely gratifying that this department has got to such an advanced stage of progress, that it can begin to explain for the beaefit of the public the struct- ure of the locality in which we reside. Such subjects require illus- tration of great size and so large an amount of original investiga- tion to perfect them in all their details, that they are very generally left until everything else is’completed. Botany. It is the pleasant duty of the Curator to state that Mr. John Cummings has continued to support this department during the past year, as in many previous years, and the Society is under ob- ligations to him for important assistance in this and other depart- ments of the Museum. Miss Carter under this gentleman’s direction has carried the final revision of the herbarium and the catalogue through the Gamopet- alse and Apetalse, thus completing the Exogens. The duplicates of these divisions have been picked out, properly arranged, and packed away for exchange. It is probable, that the remainder of the general collection will be completed next year, and a final sta- tistical report will then be made. The nomenclature of the specimens in the New England Collec- tion has been changed to correspond with the revised edition of Gray’s manual recently published. The revision and labelling of the Lowell Collection has been continued and also the work of poisoning the plants in the herbarium. Annual Meeting.] 8 [May 7, The following accessions have been recorded ; Prof. G. F. Atkin- son, two specimens of algae, Frank S. Collins, six specimens New England algae. Synoptic Collection. Considerable work has been done by Mr. Henshaw during the year in the way of mounting and labelling both new and old ma- terials. Anatomical Collection. A few specimens have been added to this collection among which may be mentioned the cast of the bust of the deceased Chimpan- zee, named Mr. Crowley, which was received from the American Museum of Natural History of New York. These additions have been labelled ; also some accessions received in former years. Paleontology. Mr. Newell’s collection of Indiana Ceplialopods (described in the Proceedings, Yol. 23, p. 466) has been catalogued, mounted and labelled. A small collection of Dakota leaves received from Dr. G. F. Waters, and a number of specimens identified by Prof. E. D. Cope and Mr. C. D. Walcott have been catalogued, mounted and labelled. From the President, Mr. F. W. Putnam, we have received a small collection of fossils from the Serpent Mound, Ohio. Radiates. Most of the Gorgonias and some of the starfishes and corals have been labelled during the year by Mr. Henshaw. Mollusca. A large amount of critical work has been done upon the Gulick collection of Achatmellinm by Mr. Henshaw, and a special report and catalogue have been prepared in manuscript which will be printed when a final report is made upon this collection after it is mounted in the way proposed above. The separation of miscella- neous materials and their more or less complete identification and arrangement for exhibition or study has also made considerable progress. Mr. C. J. Maynard has presented types of a number of his new species of Strophia ; other accessions have been received from J. W. Fewkes, R. T. Jackson and E. W. Roper. 1890.] 9 [Annual Meeting. Insects. The arrangement of the general collection of insects has been completed. The species are assorted, labelled and fully three- fourths of the species have been identified by Mr. Hensliaw. Many specimens have been added to the New England collec- tion by this gentleman, and others have been received from Messrs. C. B. Cory, J. H. Emerton, N. A. Hagen, J. Gr. Jack and F. A. S her riff. Mr. Cory has made an important contribution to the Museum by sending us several hundreds of specimens, chiefly Lep- idoptera, from Florida. Fishes. The New England collection has been revised by Mr. Hensliaw. About forty jars (15 species) have been added to this collection, and also a series of 55 species received from the U. S. National Museum. These are all valuable additions, because they were se- lected to fill gaps in our own collection. The whole of this collec- tion is now catalogued and labelled. The cataloguing and labelling of the general collection are about half done. A large proportion of the labels giving the scientific and common names of the families and their distribution has been prepared by Mr. Hensliaw. A large Tarpum ( Megalops thrissoides ) has been received from Mr. T. C. Felton, and a fine Porcupine-fish ( Diodon hystrix ) from Mr. Paul West. Birds. Mr. C. B. Cory, in addition to the general care of the collection, has identified and catalogued the North American birds of the fol- lowing families : Cmrebidse, Hirundinidse, Vireonidse, Laniidse, Am- pelidse and a portion of the Tanagridse, and has generously borne the expense of hiring an assistant to do the necessary clerical work. A leak which occurred in the roof on the Newbury street side of the building and the consequent dampness, obliged Mr. Hensliaw to remove a portion of the birds in Room 2, there was but slight damage done to the specimens, and these are now ready to be re- placed in their proper positions. New England Collection. The mammals, birds and reptiles received during the past three Annual Meeting.] 10 [May 7, or four years have been labelled by Mr. Henshaw. A number of invertebrates have also been identified and labelled by the same gentleman. Teachers’ School of Science. The liberal action of the Trustee of the Lowell fund in defraying the expenses of the lessons and also in granting the use of Hunt- ington Hall has enabled the society to continue its efforts to ex- tend the benefit of instruction in this school to teachers in all the neighboring towns as well as to those living in Boston. The agents who acted in the adjoining towns and villages last year continued their kind offices, distributing and receiving applications and also tickets according to the plan which was described in a former re- port. The Superintendent of Public Schools in this city has also kindly assisted us by attending to similar technical details in Boston. Prof. W. O. Crosby has given ten lessons upon the Physical His- tory of the Boston Basin. The comprehensive course given last winter formed a suitable preparation for this year’s work. The principal object of this second series of lessons was to apply the principles taught by the first series to a thorough and detailed study of the physical history of the Boston Basin. Each important lo- cality or natural division of the Boston Basin formed the subject of a separate lesson, in which its structural features and the more important events of its history were presented as fully as the time permitted. Special attention was given to tracing the relations of the existing surface features of each district to its geological struct- ure, thus connecting the physical geography and geology of the re- gion. The course was freely illustrated by specimens, maps and diagrams ; and at each lecture a very full printed synopsis of the preceding lecture was distributed to the audience. The following abstract of the last lecture is in large part a sum- ming up of the whole course and is of interest as showing the na- ture of these lectures, the amount of original investigation upon which they were based, and the results reached by Professor Cros- by in his studies of the Boston Basin. TENTH LECTURE. Geological History of the Boston Basin. Having in the preceding lessons gone systematically over the Boston Basin and made a somewhat detailed study of the phenomena 11 [Annual Meeting. relating to the composition and structure of the hard rocks, as well as to the drift deposits and other superficial features, we are now prepared to correlate the facts which have been observed and de- duce from them, so far as may now be possible, a connected and logical statement of the leading events in the history of this region. The oldest rocks which we have found are the Primordial slates and quartzites ; and the age of these is certainly and definitely known only at the Paradoxides quarry, in Braintree. We appear to be justified, however, in regarding them, provisionally at least, as all of about the same age, partly on account of a general litho- logic resemblance, but mainly because their relations to the different classes of eruptive rocks are everywhere the same. In Weymouth and Braintree, where we first met these rocks, they are either typ- ical clay slates or slightly calcareous ; but along the northern base of the Blue Hills occasional layers are distinctly siliceous. They probably underlie a large part of the Boston Basin, being covered by the conglomerate and the newer slate ; and north of the basin, as shown in the ninth lecture, they occur in isolated areas among the eruptive rocks. In some of these areas, especially in the Mid- dlesex Fells and Melrose, and in Woburn, clay slate similar to that in Quincy and Braintree is repeatedly inter stratified with quartzite ; while toward the southwest, in Natick, and also in Reading and Lynnfield, there are extensive developments of quartzite with little or no slate. It is very clear that the quartzite north and west of the Boston Basin is the source of the quartzite pebbles which play such a prominent part in the composition of the conglomerate, es- pecially in the central and northwestern sections of the basin. In general, the quartzite is more and the slate less abundant north- westward, indicating that the ancient shore-line along which these strata were deposited lay in that direction ; and originally the Primordial strata were probably spread continuously over all the region to the southeast of that line. The deposition of the Primordial strata was followed b}^ a period of disturbance of this part of the earth’s crust during which they were strongly compressed, being thrown into sharp folds having, in general, a northeast and southwest direction. This appears, also, to have been a period of intense volcanic activity. The quartzite and slate were shattered and isolated by great volumes of basic lava, which we now call diorite ; and, as indicated by the compact and scoriaceous diorite of the Middlesex Fells and other localities, Annual Meeting.] 12 [May 7, immense floods of lava were also poured out on the surface, conceal- ing the sedimentary rocks. In breaking through the quartzite and slate, the diorite has often followed the planes of stratification in those rocks, and thus appears in many cases to be regularly inter- stratified with them ; and this bedded appearance of the diorite is greatly increased by the very perfect flow-structure which was de- veloped in large masses of it, as well as by the distinctly schistose or foliated structure sometimes resulting from the subsequent action of both mechanical and chemical forces. We are thus able to ex- plain the fact that the diorite has been frequently mistaken for a stratified or sedimentary rock. The eruption of the diorite was probably followed by a prolonged period of quiet erosion, which was finally terminated by the advent of a second period of intense and long continued igneous action, during which only acid rocks, the granites and felsites, were formed. All over this region the granite has broken through the Primordial strata and the diorite in the most irregular and intimate manner, sometimes developing a flow-structure similar to that in the diorite, causing the granite to be mistaken for gneiss, and very often follow- ing the flow-structure or foliation of the diorite in thin layers or veins, thus producing an imperfect blending of the two rocks and heightening the stratified appearance of each. Over large areas the diorite and granite are so completely mixed in these various ways that it is impossible to represent them separately on the map. The granite embraces many different varieties and some of these are clearly older than others ; although all, so far as known, are newer than the diorite. Syenite is well developed in the vicinity of Salem Harbor and to some extent in other localities. It is newer than most if not all of the granite, forming dikes in the latter ; but it is very similar to the granite in its relations to the diorite. The felsite is less widely distributed than the granite, occurring mainly in the immediate vicinity of the Boston Basin. It not only occurs as dikes in the Primordial slate and quartzite and the diorite, but also in the granite. It is unnecessary, however, to suppose that it is widely separated from the granite in time ; but it seems best to regard it as in general the most superficial and newest part of the granitic eruptions. That the felsite was formed chiefly as surface flows of acid lava, resembling, when new, obsidian among re- cent lavas, is clearly indicated by the banding or flow-structure, the brecciation, and other structural features of the numerous varieties. 1890.] 13 [Annual Meeting. The different varieties of felsite, like the granites, afford evidence of having been erupted at several distinct but probably not widely separated periods. The granite and felsite are, next to the quart- zite, the principal constituents of the conglomerate, their greater durability placing them far ahead of the diorite in this respect. Probably every known variety of both the granite and felsite is repre- sented in the pebbles of the conglomerate ; and it is certain, there- fore, that the eruption of these acid rocks was followed by a long period during which this region was dry land and suffering erosion, before the deposition of the conglomerate began. General consid- erations with regard to the climate of that early epoch in the history of the Boston Basin, as well as the absence of pebbles of diorite from the conglomerate, indicate, as Mr. Bouve has so clearly point- ed out, that the wearing away of the hard rocks was due very largely then, as it is now, to chemical action. The diorite and other basic rocks, as is now so well illustrated by some of the dikes about Bos- ton, yield far more readily than the highly acid rocks — quartzite, granite and felsite — to the chemical agency of air and water, and are, therefore, more generally and completely reduced to the con- dition of an impalpable clay or soil. An important and long continued downward movement or sub- sidence of this part of the earth’s crust finally began ; and as the surface slowly passed below the level of the sea a thick bed of conglomerate was spread over this region, the products of the pre- vious chemical decay of the rocks being rapidly worked over by the waves and the fine silt or clay carried out into the deep water of the ocean, while the coarser materials were strewn along the ad- vancing beach. As has so frequently happened in geological history, this movement of subsidence and the rapid deposition of sediments was accompanied by volcanic activity. The eruptions of this period consist chiefly of surface flows ; and they are of a distinctly basic character, melaphyr being the prevailing type, although porphyrite and possibly still more acid lavas are also observed. These were probably mainly crater eruptions, occurring in and near the sea ; but we have not as yet been able to definitely locate any of the vents. It is certain, however, that floods of liquid lava were re- peatedly poured out over the sea- floor where beds of gravel and sand were forming ; and we thus find, as at Nantasket, Brighton, etc., beds of conglomerate and sandstone alternating with beds or flows of melaphyr and porphyrite ; but in some cases, as in Hing- Annual Meeting.] 14 [May 7, ham, Needham, etc., the successive flows of lava followed each other so rapidly as to form very thick sheets of volcanic rock without any intercalated sediments. Occasionally, also, the eruptions were ex- plosive and beds of volcanic tuff were formed, as at Nantasket, and in Brighton, Newton, Needham, etc. The igneous action was somewhat localized, continuing in some parts of the basin through the entire period of the formation of the conglomerate, while in other parts the lava is wanting or occurs only in the lower part of the conglomerate series. Alternations of the conglomerate with beds of both sandstone and slate are also of common occurrence, indicating oscillations of level during this period. But the downward movement prevailed, until finally the water became too deep and quiet and too remote from the shore, in this vicinity, to permit the formation of conglom- erate and sandstone ; but these coarse sediments were gradually replaced by slate during the dying out of the volcanic activity. These tranquil, deep-sea conditions must have continued for a very long time ; for the argillaceous sediments accumulate very slowly and yet the slate series has a thickness of from 500 feet to fully 1000 feet or more. The slates are probably somewhat thicker than the conglomerates and were doubtless several if not many times longer in forming. Of the life existing in the sea at this time we, unfortunately, know but little, as the slate is very generally desti- tute of fossils ; and the full chronologic significance of the few or- ganic remains that have been obtained from the layers of limestone in the slate at Naliant is still undetermined. The deposition of the slate did not end in the same quiet way in which it began, by the gradual elevation of the sea-floor to form dry land. That would have involved a repetition of the shore con- ditions and deposits ; and the conglomerate series below the slates is certainly not repeated above. But during that long period of quiet deposition of the slate the subterranean forces were slowly gath- ering strength for renewed activity ; and when the weakened crust below the still unconsolidated sediments could no longer resist the growing horizontal thrust or pressure, it yielded ; and thus inau- gurated an important geological revolution. The slate and conglom- erate were powerfully compressed in a north and south direction and thrown into a series of gigantic folds, having a general east- west trend. Although they have suffered enormous erosion, these folds, when not drift covered, are still distinctly traceable, the an- 15 [Annual Meeting. ticlines being marked usually by belts of conglomerate and the synclines by belts of slate. The great conglomerate anticline run- ning through the middle of the basin is the central arch in a some- what symmetrical series of folds. The Dorchester and West Rox- bury syncline on the south matches the Boston, Brookline and Newton syncline on the north ; and the complex and broken an- ticline of the Neponset Valley matches the similar Brighton and Newton anticline ; while the folds believed to exist in the drift-cov- ered area of slate between the Neponsite anticline and the Blue Hills correspond to those in the similar area of slate between the Brighton and Newton anticline and the highlands north of the basin. The strata were extensively broken and faulted, as well as folded ; and in some parts of the basin the displacements are a more im- portant structural feature than the plications. The sharply defined northern and southern margins of the basin, as previously stated, are best explained as due to profound faults along these lines. The downthrow in each case was on the side toward the center of the basin, and these two great displacements must be. regarded as of primary importance in the geological structure of this region ; for, virtually, they present on the upthrow side two solid walls of crys- talline rocks between which the great central area of sedimentary and volcanic rocks has first settled down and then suffered com- pression, as in a vise, by the approach of these north and south walls, producing the great folds already noticed and most of the minor faults of this region. This was also an epoch of great igneous activity, many of the fault and joint fissures being injected by high- ly basic liquid rock (diabase), forming the great network of dikes traversing not only the sedimentary, but also the crystalline rocks. In the slate, especially, the trap has often followed the bedding planes, producing intrusive sheets, sometimes of great magnitude, as at Nahant and the outer islands. If any surface flows or volcan- ic cones attended the formation of the dikes, they have been com- pletely effaced by subsequent erosion, leaving no sign of their former existence. Perhaps the most important result of this geo- logical revolution was the elevation of this region ; and so far as we have any evidence it indicates that the Boston Basin has been a land area, an erea of erosion, during all subsequent geological time. The sedimentary rocks have thus been greatly reduced in both volume and area. That they formerly extended far beyond the present sharply defined limits of the basin there can be no doubt, Annual Meeting.] 16 [May 7, but being there upon the upthrow side of the great marginal faults, they have been completly swept away by erosion. Quiet erosion, accomplished chiefly by chemical agencies, and finally reducing this region nearly if not quite to a base-level plain, is then, so far as we know, the whole story of the Boston Basin during the vast interval of time separating this period of great dis- turbance from the marked elevation of the continent which gradu- ally ushered in the glacial epoch. Mechanical erosion was then in the ascendant ; but it does not appear probable that the ice-sheet modified the topography so much by the erosion of the hard rocks as by the accumulations of drift which it left upon the surface in the forms of drumlins, sand plains, clay beds and kames. The high land north of the basin was, on account of- its elevation, an area, mainly, of glacial erosion ; while the detritus scraped from it into the basin made this mainly an area of deposition, as the drum- lins testify. During the period of maximum glaciation the ice-sheet extended far to the south and east of Boston, to Cape Cod and Nantucket and possibly much farther. A subsidence of the land finally brought back a milder climate and the margin of the ice-sheet retreated northward. It did not halt long enough in this vicinity to form any distinct terminal moraines ; and the ground moraine or till was left chiefly in the form of drumlins. Partly by subgla- cial streams, but mainly by the great torrents and the temporary lakes resulting from the final melting of the ice, the drift was very largely modified, that is washed, assorted and stratified in the sand plains, gravel ridges or kames and clay beds, which now so gener- ally occupy or fill the old valleys and form deltas where the valleys emerge from the high land bordering the basin. In the distribution of the drift, and especially of the modified drift, we have an ade- quate explanation of: (1) the ponds, lakes and swamps of this region, as well as the dry kettles or depressions of the sand plains ; and (2) the diverted and circuitous drainage and the resulting waterfalls. The elevation of the land during the advent of the ice age enabled the streams to deepen their channels to such an ex- tent that although subsequent subsidence has not, apparently, re- duced the land to its preglacial level, the rocky beds of the larger streams are, near their mouths, from 100 to 200 feet below the level of the sea. The fiord character of the shores in high latitudes is usually to be explained in this way. Since the close of the glacial epoch the streams of the Boston Basin, with their greatly reduced 1890.] 17 [Annual Meeting. slope and volume, have made but little progress in clearing out their drift-encumbered valleys ; but along the shore the sea has worked with its usual energy, cutting away the drift formations within its reach and forming extensive beach, bar and marsh de- posits. The superficial oxidation of the drift deposits, the chemical decay so marked in some of the dikes, and the organic deposits — peat andtripolite, as well as the bog iron-ore, now forming in many swamps and marshes are other phenomena which must be referred to the present or post glacial epoch in the history of the Boston Basin. The following statistics refer to these four courses : Teachers’ School of Science. 1889-1890. Number of tickets distributed. To teachers. To other Zoology, 49 38 11 Field Geol. 94 74 20 Physical Hist, of ) Boston Basin ) 555 327 217 698. 439 248 COURSE ON PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE BOSTON BASIN. GRADE Boston Public Schools. Tickets distributed to Principals, 3 Masters and Sub-masters, 14 Assistants, 171 OF TEACHERS. Out-of-town Schools. Tickets distributed to Principals, 22 Masters and Sub-masters, 5 Assistants, 112 Total, 188 Total, 139 LIST BY TOWNS. Boston 188 Everett 18 Needham 1 Brockton 7 Hyde Park 2 Quincy 7 Brookline 4 Marblehead 2 Somerville 28 Cambridge 63 Melrose 4 Wellesley 3 Total, 327 Complimentary 145 Miscellaneous, 72 Private Schools, 11 555 VOL. XXV 2 NOVEMBER, 1890. PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. Annual Meeting.] 18 [May 7, There has also been a special course upon zoology given to a lim- ited class in continuation of the course given last winter and the winter preceding b}' Mr. B. H. Van Vleck. The plan of this series was reported upon in 1888 and it only remains to add that it was carried out with regard to the Insects and Vertebrates, the subjects taught this year, in the same spirit and with equal facilities in the way' of specimens for study and dissection. The average attend- ance at each lesson was 26 persons. Field courses in Geology, carried on by Mr. George H. Barton, have been reported upon in these pages for several years. The ef- forts made in these courses has been to spread before teachers the whole range of geological phenomena so far as it could be illustra- ted by the studj7 of the neighborhood of Boston. No attempt was made to show all that could be seen, but rather to oblige the teach- ers to see for themselves and thus give them independence in their methods of study and enable them to apply their information and use proper methods in teaching their own pupils. The importance of such studies in the field, and the fact that they could not be charged for at remunerative and self-sustaining rates, was called to the attention of the Trustee of the Lowell In- stitute, and he generously consented to pay the expenses of the course for the winter of 1889-90. In consequence of this the charge formerly made for tuition was remitted and members of the class were required only to pay their own car fares, and other per- sonal expenses. The immediate object of the course being instruction and prac- tice in making observations in the field, localities of special geo- logical interest were visited and carefully studied. The principal objects of investigation were selected from among those that would best illustrate the lithology, petrology, glacial phenomena, and the relative age of the rocks in the neighborhood of Boston. A few excursions were also made to some more distant points ; such as Bolton, Clinton, Fitchburg and the Hoosac Tunnel in this state, and Smithfield and Newport, in Rhode Island, which were of ad- vantage in enabling the class to understand more clearly the geol- ogy of the vicinity of Boston. The course consisted of twenty lessons, ten given in the autumn of 1889 and ten in the spring of 1890. In addition to the above one other course was given which was not under the patronage of the Trustee of the Lowell Fund. 1890.] 19 [Annual Meeting* Applications having been made for instruction in Lithology and Petrology, a class consisting of thirty persons was formed and a course given by Mr. Geo. H. Barton consisting of twenty lessons. This series of lessons covered the same ground as that of the reg- ular course upon the same subjects given to the students of the Mass. Institute of Technology. In the lessons on Lithology a spec- imen of each variety of the commoner rocks was placed before each student thus enabling him to become fully acquainted with the characteristics of these rocks. The lessons on Petrology were il- lustrated by numerous charts and diagrams, and also by such speci- mens as could be exhibited in the class room. In consequence of the lack of funds sufficient to cover the ex- pense of this course, a fee of fifty cents per lesson, or ten dollars was charged. The class consisted of thirty persons and the average attendance was thirty. Laboratory. In addition to the class of teachers in zoology, mentioned above, the laboratory has been used by a class in zoology from the Boston University under the charge of the Curator and Mr. Van Vleck, one in botany and another in physiology from the same institution under the sole charge of Mr. Van Vleck. Lecture Room. It may be well also to notice that the use of this room is increas- ing. It has been hired during the past year by the Woman’s Edu- cation Association for a series of lectures, by the Psychological Society for several evenings, by the Folk Lore Society for several meetings and by other parties. This custom has grown up grad- ually, although not heretofore noticed in these reports. Report on the Secretary’s Department and the Library, by J. Walter Fewkes, Secretary. During the past year no important event has occurred in the departments under the charge of the Secretary and Librarian. Annual Meeting.] 20 [May 7, The usual information in regard to meetings, membership, li- brary and publications is given below. During the month of September in the summer vacation, the Sec- retary in company with three fellow students carried on zoological studies at Grand Manan, New Brunswick. Some of the results of this study have been presented at meetings of the Society and elsewhere during the winter. Membership. The present resident membership in the Society is three hundred and forty-six. There are two hundred and forty-three corporate members. During the past year four associate members have died, six have resigned and one has been dropped for non-payment of fees. One corporate member has died and one has resigned. Herman Brimmer Inches, a life member, has died. Mr. N. C. Munson, a life member and patron, died in 1885. No mention of his death is made in previous annual reports of the death of mem- bers. A new list of members is about to be printed. Meetings. Fourteen general meetings of the Society have been held during the past year. The two meetings in October were omitted by vote of the Society. The average attendance during the past year has been forty-three persons, the smallest eighteen and the largest ninety-three. These figures show an increase of attendance over that of last year, when the smallest attendance was thirteen, the largest seventy-six and the average forty. The average attendance at the meetings for the five years preceding 1888 was twenty-seven. During the past year twenty -three papers were announced on the cards. Twenty persons read papers thus announced, all of whom with one exception are members of the Society. Six members who had never before presented papers to the Society are among those who read communications during the year. Four of these were given voluntarily and without^solicitation. The following is a list of papers read after announcement by cards : Horace P. Chandler. The Spinning Work of Spiders. March 19, 1890. 1890.] 21 [Annual Meeting. W. O. Crosby. Discussion of the question of “The Climatic Con- ditions of the Glacial Period.” January 1,1890. A Large Granite Bowlder in Madison, New Hamp- shire. February 19, 1890. The Occurrence of Decomposed Granite in Bland- ford, Massachusetts. February 19, 1890. (Announced, read at next meeting. See following title.) Interesting Occurrence of Decomposed Granite in Blandford, Massachusetts. March 5, 1890. Prof. W. M. Davis. Geographic Development of Northern New Jersey. November 20, 1889. Dr. Thomas Dwight. The Joints and Muscles of Contortionists. November 6, 1889. J. H. Emerton. Remarks on the Spinning Works of Spiders. March 19, 1890. Dr. J. Walter Fewkes. A remarkable Instance of Rock Excava- tion by Sea-urchins. December 4, 1889. Some Rare Marine Animals from Cali- fornia. A. F. Foerste. The Palaeontological Horizon of the Limestone Beds of Nahant. The Fossils of the Clinton group of Indiana and Tennessee. May 1, 1889. Samuel Garman. Some Recent Discoveries in Caves. February 19, 1890. Dr. R. T. Jackson. Certain Points in the Development of the Mollusca. December 4, 1889. Frank Leverett. Glacial Studies bearing on the Antiquity of Man. April 16, 1890. Carl Lumholtz. tAn account of a long residence among the little- known Cannibal Aborigines of Australia. May 15, 1889. Prof. F. W. Putnam. Discussion of the question of “The Climatic Conditions of the Glacial Period.” Jan- uary 1, 1890. Early Man in America. February 5, 1890. M. H. Saville. Sanborn Bowlder. April 16, 1890. S. H. Scudder. Distribution of Insects in the Rocky Mountain Tertiaries, and the Discovery of New Localities for Collecting Fossils of this Group. November 20, 1889. Annual Meeting.] 22 [May 7, S. H. Scudder. Remarks on Fossil Plant-lice. December 18, 1889. Remarks on a small collection of Beetles from tlie interglacial clays of Scarboro’, Ontario. Feb- ruary 5, 1890. Prof. N. S. Shaler. Climatic Conditions of Salt Deposits. April 16, 1890. Dr. Frederick Tuckerman. Gustatory Organs of Mammals. De- cember 18, 1889. Warren Upham. Discussion of the question of “The Climatic Con- ditions of the Glacial Period.” January 1, 1890. Dr. H. V. Wilson. On the Formation of the Alimentary Canal and the Lateral Line in Teleosts. March 19, 1890. J. E. Wolff. Some Metamorphic Rocks in the Green Mountains. May 1, 1889. Prof. G. Frederick Wright. The Nampa Image. January 1, 1890. Two papers weie illustrated with the stereopticon. Two meet- ings were given up to a discussion of the “Climatic Conditions of the Glacial Period.” The attendance at this discussion was so large and the remarks of so much interest, that it might be a good plan to continue the plan of general discussion without announce- ment of special papers, in other departments of natural history. Five papers by four persons have been read by title. Numerous verbal communications have been made. The accompanying letter of the Council to the Park Commissioners was brought before the Society after formal announcement of the vote of recommendation by the Council, and was unanimously approved. Numerous meetings of the sub-committee of the Natural History Garden Committee have been held. The results of these meetings are considered by the curator in his report. The letter of the Coun- cil to the Park Commissioners, which was adopted at the meeting of the Society on April 2, meets the approval of the Park Commis- sioners. The section of Entomology is not in a very flourishing condition if we judge from the attendance at the meetings. No meeting has been held during the year, although regular calls for them have been sent out. It is to be hoped that this important section may continue its meetings in the future, but it might be well not to call meetings of the section for the coming year. It is interesting to notice that in 1870 the average attendance was exactly the same for the general and entomological meetings. 1890.] 23 [Annual Meeting. In 1880, the secretary reports that the meetings of the section of entomology were unusually well attended and interesting. Library. The library continues to grow crowding our shelf room far be- yond its limits. The congested state of the department must be met in the near future by additional shelf room if the society would continue its past usefulness. The funds for the library necessitate rigid economy, so that many important books and monographs lately published are not purchased. In many departments our library is defective. As this is the only purely natural history library of great size in Boston, it is desirable to make it as complete as pos- sible. The additions to the library number 2642. Last year the total number of additions were 2253. The number of books bound during the past year is very small. While circumstances have rendered it necessary to limit our expen- ditures, it is poor economy to economize on the bindings of our books. Additions to the Library : 8vo. 4to. Fol. Total Volumes, 225 62 . 3 290 Parts 1604 374 7 1985 Pamphlets 338 22 4 364 Maps 3 3 Total : 2642 Eight hundred and fifteen books have been borrowed by ninety- four persons. Thirty-six books have been bound. New exchanges : New York Microscopical Society ; Geological Survey of Arkansas; American Museum of Natural History, New York. The Society has subscribed to the American Anthropologist of Washington, and L’Anthropologie which succeeds a French journal formerly subscribed for. The library is indebted to Mr. Edward Burgess for a large num- ber of pamphlets, and to Dr. C. F. Crehore for sets of Revue d’Ethnographie, and Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Annual Meeting.] 24 [May 7, Publications. The following memoir has been printed during the past year : Vol. iy, No. 7. The Flora of the Kurile Islands. By K. Mi- yabe. The Society has printed and distributed parts i and n and ten sig- natures of part in, of Vol. xxiv, of the Proceedings. This vol- ume will be a large one with several plates and many cuts, and closes with the present official year. It is now in type and will be printed and distributed this summer. Although our proceedings have not been issued as promptly as could be wished the delays have been beyond control. Dr. R. T. Jackson’s Memoir on the Phy- logenyof the Pelecypoda is being rapidly pushed and will appear in the summer. The first edition of Prof. Crosby’s “ Guide to Mineralogy” hav- ing been sold, a new addition with slight corrections has been printed. There is a constant demand for this book. The demand from institutions and from private individuals for all the publications of the society is on the increase. Several sets of the proceedings, necessarily incomplete since some of early vol- umes are out of print, have been sold. The call from different quarters for exchange of publications is about as large as last year. An incomplete set of our publications, complete as far as possible, has been sent to the University of Toronto, the library of which was destroyed b}7 fire. Walker Prize. The Walker Prize Committee presented the following subjects for competition during the year. I. On the Adaptive Resemblances of Plants in Different Natu- ral Orders. II. On the Processes Involved in the Production of Soils. The announcement brought out a single essay on the second sub- ject, but no award was made. of Receipts and Expenditures, Boston Society of Natural History. [Annual Meeting, 1890.] 25 O K! ® ffl O M ie £ s o eo : © be K .5 ® .5 = p 3 m E3 feC co .5 S) g = ^ s - ^ 0) «-o a ^ e x O * H _ e On Si-1 Ph I O ~ Hi S P 5 w X3 «M 03 C s .a p £■ H fc P g H H ◄ H cc P ◄ p £ <1 o »o O O lO O 05 >C (M o O lO *o *£ tr os jo E3 P S • P ^ H = 03 03 ” £ P >> 0> B ^ P re •| P O ^ P 03 O £ ? P P P £ P H 5 ^ 0) 03 C XP os o \2 S ^ « H i ® fi „ c3 rn m © C5 S •- « -C S £ I « S <5 5 s § X> feC 03 0) P P : h . © : is . o : p • 00 H 3 II * s § £ si « w es •: a 5 S.O O _ H oj£ a . -r © £x: ISSg |s|s O 2 ©r£ r "C t*. O c © "C c3 B op 3 c gx: _ o *3'3'-S Or; ^ ® r- to 8 L_J O ^ PrH bC;-, 5^ © oc _, © o 2 535 V. >5 OJ •“ © ■£ * b ■Cs« = & O 03 C > >> 155® ®g pg pP pp ep P^ S5 <^o 031-S s © g ©££t» QP ~ © X! s ap >»> „ (£ ^2 ^ © =2 H ®5 Annual Meeting.] 26 [May 7, The Society then proceeded to ballot for officers for next year. Mr. Samuel Henshaw was appointed to collect and count the bal- lots. He announced that the following officers had received the majority of the votes and they were declared elected : PRESIDENT, F. W. PUTNAM. VIC K-PRESIDENTS , WILLIAM H. NILES. B. JOY JEFFRIES. CURATOR, ALPHEUS HYATT. HONORARY SECRETARY, J. C. WHITE. SECRETARY, J. WALTER FEWKES. TREASURER, CHARLES W. SCUDDER. LIBRARIAN, J. WALTER FEWKES. COUNCILLORS, Samuel Henshaw, John Amory Jeffries, Augustus Lowell, Edward S. Morse, Ellen H. Richards, William T. Sedgwick, N. S. Shaler, Charles J. Sprague, B. H. Van Yleck, Samuel Wells. MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL, EX-OFFICIO. Ex-President Thomas T. Bouvic, Ex-President S. H. Scuddeii, Ex- Vice-President D. Humphreys Storer, Ex-Vice-President John Cummings, Ex-Vice-President George L. Goodale. S. L. Abbot, G. H. Barton, Edward T. Bouvis, Henry P. Bowditch, William Brewster, Edward Burgess, J. H. Emerton, Edward G. Gardiner, Henry W. Haynes, APPENDIX TO THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE CURATOR AND SECRETARY. The following letters have passed between the Council and the Park Commissioners : To the Honorable the Park Commissioners of the City of Boston: Gentlemen, — The Society of Natural History has been earnestly and constantly engaged in work upon mat- ters connected with the foundation of natural-history gardens, since the receipt of the last letter of the Com- missioners, dated Dec. 30, 1887, and has finally concluded to offer the following as plans of what they deem to be best, hoping, if these are accepted, to follow up this first step very rapidly, so as to bring the matter speedily before the public. They propose to designate all the collections of living animals under their charge as the Natural History Gardens, and to establish under this title three different divisions, — one to be called the Marine Aquarium, a sec- ond the Fresh Water Aquarium, and the third the New England Zoological Garden ; these to be situated on grounds and to have buildings such as may be mutually agreed upon by the Commissioners and by the Society, in accordance with the provisions of the letter of the Commissioners above referred to. In compliance with your request to present a statement of the proposed policy of the Society in regard to the exhibits at the places designated by you, — namely, at City Point, near Jamaica Pond, and at Franklin Park, — the Council herewith offers for your consideration the following general statement and the outline of its plans with reference to each of the three divisions. (27) 28 The attention of the Commissioners is invited at the outset to the scientific and educational character of the plan of the Natural History Gardens. The three divisions of this department of the Society’s work, when regarded as a whole, form a connected series of exhibitions which will, it is hoped, illustrate more completely than has ever been done before the relations of organisms to the four great regions of their distribution, — the sea, the fresh water, the land, and the air. The principle underlying the whole, and to which each part, however small, has been made to contribute, is the illustration of the rela- tions of plants and animals to their surroundings. The Council believes that a full exposition of the laws gov- erning these correlations is the fittest use they can make of the opportunities offered by the Commissioners, and the most valuable contribution which they and the Com- missioners acting together can bring to the cause of public education. I. Marine Aquarium. In the maps of the proposed Marine Park the lands and ponds assigned for the use of the Society are admirably suited for the purposes of a large aquarial garden ; and the Council desires to express its satisfaction with these indications of the intentions of the Commissioners, for they confirm the Council in the opinion that it will be practicable to found a Marine Aquarium at this place which will be of unique excellence as an instrument of popular interest and education. 1. A collection of living organisms arranged and ex- hibited for the illustration of natural laws has a fuller effect, if the minds of the students and visitors have been prepared by previous study; or, in place of this, if they have at hand a brief explanation of the general structure 29 and relations of animals and plants to each other and to their surroundings. The Society proposes to supply this explanation by means of an epitome collection which, with a printed guide, shall explain the structure and relations of the more important subdivisions of animals and plants, the general adaptations of the structure of organisms to an aquatic existence, and the fact that under ordinary condi- tions, however diverse, the organisms retain their typical structures. This collection would consist of two classes of objects, — (a) a series of representative forms, including the principal types of animals and plants ; (5) such general dissections and other anatomical preparations of selected types, accompanied by diagrams, as may enable the ob- server to grasp the fundamental points of the structure, physiology, and correlations of the animal kingdom, but with special reference to those living forms which consti- tute the whole aquarial exhibit. These collections, being an introduction to the larger display, should occupy one room, serving also as the vestibule or entrance hall in the main building. 2. The correlations between certain structures and parts in animals, and their habits and natural surroundings, can be illustrated by placing plants and animals that live on muddy, sandy, gravelly, or rocky parts of our own shores in separate aquaria properly arranged and furnished. The suitability of organisms to the work they have to do could be illustrated in this and other ways, and clear ideas of one of the fundamental laws of organic modifications pre- sented to intelligent visitors and students. 3. The extraordinary modifications which have taken place in the structure of the descendants of air-breathing land animals, in ’order to fit them for life in the sea, would be illustrated in the aquaria and also in the salt-water 30 ponds. These would be used for such seals, cetacea, and other marine animals as are either too large to be accom- modated in tanks in the buildings, or which can be most appropriately exhibited in such enclosures. Adaptations equally fitting and instructive are found in birds which live upon the sea or its borders ; and examples of these forms would be shown in the same ponds, or in appro- priate places upon their margins. 4. It is well known that the distribution of plants and animals is limited more, perhaps, by temperature than by any other single cause. It is practicable to illustrate this great law of distribution with suitably constructed and properly arranged aquaria, stocked and kept supplied with animals and plants taken at moderate depths upon our own coasts. The problems connected with obtaining and hand- ling animals gathered at great depths present difficulties with which no garden should attempt to cope until it is completely organized. 5. Faunal collections would compose the greater bulk of the marine aquaria. It is intended to group these together in such a way as to represent the association of the forms in their respective habitats. No attempt, of course, would here be made toward systematic grouping, but very dissimilar forms would be associated together, bringing prominently into view the geographical distribution of t}rpes. In qne room of suitable size aquaria would be devoted solely to the marine plants and animals of the North Atlantic, from Cape Cod northward. As a part of this collection a series of aquaria would be maintained for the exhibition of the commoner plants and animals occur- ring on the coast of Massachusetts. These forms could be permanently supplied, and, being named and described in a proper guide-book, would be of great interest to all per- sons living on the seashore. The fauna south of Cape 31 Cod is in large part easy of acquisition, and could also be well represented in separate series of aquaria. The fauna south of Cape Hatteras and that of the western coasts of the United States, and other faunas, could also be exhib- ited, as opportunities presented themselves, either to a limited degree or more or less extensively, if the future progress and success of this division warranted the extension. II. Fresh Water Aquarium. It is obvious that an epitome collection is as desirable for the explanation of the relations of fresh-water plants and animals as of the marine. 1. The Society would therefore form an epitome col- lection similar to that planned above for the Marine Aqua- rium ; but this would necessarily differ in the details of its composition, fresh-water plants and animals being used instead of marine types. The adaptations of the structures of organisms to an aquatic existence would be exhibited by means of preparations of the gills, etc., as in the correspond- ing marine collection ; but special adaptations to a fresh- water existence, such as the mode of reproduction of sponges, bryozoa, and some crustaceans by means of winter buds, the effects of desiccation upon some of these, and their mode of transportation from pond to pond, the contrasted structures of corresponding fresh-water and marine shrimps, the peculiarities of the batrachians, showing the transitions from a purely aquatic to a terrestrial type, and similar classes of facts would be prominently illustrated. The fresh-water faunas of the globe are all secondary, or derived mainly from the marine faunas. This can also be approximately demonstrated in the epitome collection by placing side by side a certain number of marine and fresh- water animals in series or in pairs, including occasionally 32 some fossils, in order to compare the existing Amia, gar- pikes, etc., with their marine but now extinct ancestors. 2. Some of the most important results of research bear- ing upon the evolution of organisms have been attained by means of experimentation, and it is of the greatest impor- tance for educational purposes that illustrations of such facts should be made accessible to teachers and students. We would therefore aim at the repetition of some of these experimental observations, and make permanent exhibi- tions of the results. For example, a series of aquaria could be maintained showing the gradual modification of the brine shrimp in passing from a saturated solution of salt through ordinary salt and brackish waters to a final lodgement in purely fresh water, where it becomes trans- formed into a well-known fresh-water type of crustacean ; another series repeating Semper’s experiments upon the snail, Lymnsea stagnalis ; and still others showing the results of experimentation upon the development of the axolotl, salamanders, etc. This department would also include aquaria for the exhibition of the animals and plants now living in mineral or hot springs, the Caspian and Dead Seas, and other anomalous and more or less isolated positions, such as caves and subterranean rivers. 3. Fresh-water plants and animals are not wholly de- rived from the sea ; many of them are modified descend- ants of terrestrial organisms that have changed their habitat and become suited to an aquatic existence. Some of the ponds would be used to exhibit this important fact, since in them the larger air-breathing animals that live on or in the fresh waters (such as the swimming and wading birds; the batrachians, — frogs, salamanders, etc. ; the rep- tiles, — snakes, turtles, and alligators ; beavers, muskrats, and possibly larger representatives of the mammalia from the tropics, such as the hippopotamus) could be con- 33 fined. Some of these ponds would also be devoted to the exhibition of the Liliacese and other plants, which, although originally truly terrestrial and flowering plants, have become more or less modified and fitted for aquatic life. The huge leaves and flowers of the Victoria regia, and the lovely color of many of these annuals floating upon the glassy surface of the water and framed in a shore growth of rushes and grasses, would form pictures of rare beauty and attractiveness. 4. Insects, although as a whole purely terrestrial and aerial, contain a number of groups that pass either a por- tion or the whole of their lives in water. An Insectary would therefore be established, furnished with aquaria, placed in the midst of suitable plants, and surrounded by ample cages of netting for the confinement and display of the adults after the}^ have passed through their transfor- mations and have begun to fly. This part of the exhibit could be made exceedingly instructive by means of a printed guide explaining the transformations of the insects shown in the aquaria and cages. 5. The fauna of our own fresh waters is apt to strike one at 'first as uninteresting : but it contains sponges, espe- cially interesting to the public on account of their effect on the water-supply ; many microscopical plants that can be cultivated in masses so as to be seen by the unassisted eye ; large bryozoa, such as Pectinatella, growing in heads like a brain-coral ; bivalves and snails of respectable size ; several interesting species of batrachians, and many fishes of re- markable structure and habits. We would therefore bring together a series of aquaria exhibiting the animals of the fauna of New England and eastern Canada, and also keep in view the idea of explaining their more obvious relations to the water-supply of our cities. The fauna of the inland waters of the western and southern parts of 34 North America is accessible, and should be shown, in so far as the more prominent forms are concerned, in a separate series of aquaria. Opportunities will perhaps be offered in the future for the acquisition of the larger and more inter- esting organisms of other faunas ; these can be exhibited, provided the future success of this division justifies an extension of the plan. III. New England Zoological Garden. The grounds at Franklin Park assigned by the Com- missioners for the use of the Society are suited only to the third division of our Natural History Gardens, — the higher vertebrates or the larger terrestrial and aerial animals ; and here, better perhaps than anywhere else, would it be possible to carry out one of the favorite projects of the supporters of the Society, namel}7, such exhibitions as would familiarize the observer with the animals of New England. For in Long Crouch Woods we have not only a characteristic fragment of New England scenery and rock structure, but by the limitations of the surface and of the territory it would be impossible to make there any extensive display of foreign forms. 1. We would exhibit fully the animals of the North Temperate zone of the New World, limiting this zone to about eight or ten degrees of latitude on the parallels of New England, and thus display those which one might see at any point within the northern United States. All these animals could be cared for in such a place at the minimum expense, for their habits in a wild state have accustomed them to brave all the severities and vicissitudes of our climate. It being easier to obtain and to maintain the animals of this zone which are nearest home, it would fol- low that the great bulk of the collection at all times would be made up of animals characteristic of New England. 35 But as we thus necessarily touch upon one of the prime features of life upon the globe, — its geographical distri- bution, — so we may make the lesson far more telling if we add to this assemblage just those animals (and no others) which in other faunas specially represent our indigenous animals. Thus, to instance one or two points, we would exhibit side by side with the Rocky Mountain goat the chamois, structurally allied, adapted for and dwelling in similar mountain regions, characteristic of the Old as our own is of the New World; beside the cougar, or Amer- ican panther, we would display the jaguar of South America ; beside the black, the brown bear ; while to correspond with the opossum, we would seek a rela- tive, not in the more nearly allied marsupials of South America, but in the distinctive home of marsupials, among the strange forms which occur in Australia. As it would not be necessary to seek this counterpart for each animal, but in many cases only one for an entire series, as with the mice, hares, foxes, and so on, it will be seen that the collection would not be ver}^ largely increased, while its increase would be strictly limited, and its educational value greatly enhanced. It might be de- sirable to extend the collection in one or two instances, but in these only, in the case of great groups, not repre- sented in our own fauna, such as the ornithorhynchus of New Holland, and one, possibly two (or even three), of the quadrumana. Under such restrictions, which seem to be absolutely required by the extent to which our grounds at this point are limited, there would be a coherency and meaning to the collection which it would be difficult to find duplicated elsewhere, and it would be a means of exhibiting the characteristic features of the New England fauna and its relationships not easily accomplished in any other way. 36 We are constrained to say, however, that the principal difficulty in carrying out even this limited plan is the in- sufficient surface suitable for such an exhibition. This is nowhere more manifestly true than as regards the rumi- nants, for within the limits of Long Crouch Woods itself it would be entirely impossible to display in any pleasing or profitable manner those largest forms among our quad- rupeds which excite, perhaps, greater interest than any other, — the bison, moose, elk, caribou, deer ; for this pur- pose it is absolutely essential .that more ground be had, at least so far as a range is concerned. And this we hope the Commissioners will grant, whenever needed, — perhaps in the ground which has been set apart as a deer-park, in which it would be quite possible, by lines of wire fence practically invisible, to separate such bands as could not be brought into a common enclosure. 2. What has been said thus far relates principally to the terrestrial animals. Another mode of exhibition for the freer-moving, aerial creatures may be advantageously pur- sued. Thus it might be possible in a series of outdoor aviaries, sufficiently large to enclose good-sized trees, to bring together at their proper periods the characteristic summer or winter birds, so that one might see for himself what was the avifauna of New England at any given time. In others might be placed, as a permanent exhibition, such of our native breeding birds as would bear association, where they might find room enough*, and suitable places, for all purposes of nesting and bringing up their young. The headlong flight of some birds might prevent their exhibi- tion here. Similar aviaries for the exhibition of birds found in our North Temperate zone west of New England should be placed side by side with those of New England itself; while the exhibition of foreignbirds for comparative purposes, limited in the same way as those of the less .37 freely moving vertebrates, would be more naturally dis- posed in the mode common in foreign gardens. 3. Long Crouch Woods, then, would be par excellence a New England exhibit ; and such a display would naturally lose much of its interest in the winter time. If, however, we could combine with this a Winter Garden situated in Sargent’s Field, adjoining, cost alone would prevent it from becoming so attractive as to make it a constant place of re- sort at all times, and particularly during the colder months of the year. Here, in a large but simple structure of glass and iron, handsome rather in its proportions than through decorative attachments, warmed so as to have a very con- stant but not too high temperature throughout the winter, one would walk upon the unfrozen ground in a garden where varied and luxuriant vegetable forms would enable him to imagine himself in the midst of the tropics. The loftier vegetation, like the bamboos and certain palms, could be grouped in a higher central portion; while miniature ponds and fountains, reached by winding walks, would everywhere afford special nooks for aquatic or spray -loving plants. We could enliven this still further with a very few of the more brilliant-plumaged birds and songsters in aviaries, aquatic birds on the ponds, and with here and there an enclo- sure containing some small creature, specially pleasing by its form or attractive by its habits, — a gazelle, a jerboa, perhaps a spider monkey ; a chameleon, a Surinam toad,' or a garter snake. The possibilities of such a scheme are fascinating; and the structure should be so arranged and situated that extensive additions could be made to it, and that it could be approached directly by conveyance to the door. An ordinary greenhouse would, of course, be ne- cessary as an adjunct of the Winter Garden for forcing plants for ornamental purposes. 4. An Insectary should be built; and both for econo- 38 mic reasons in construction and heating and for the con- venient proximity of the necessary food-plants, it should he an annex to the greenhouse. Colonies of striking and curious insects, especially the social insects, undergoing their transformations, might be exhibited in a small, single-storied structure of glass and iron, like an ordinary conservatory, with no more flooring than would be re- quired for passage-ways between the plants and shrubs. Such a collection would be inexpensive and attractive, and without in any way curtailing its public use, would afford ample opportunity for scientific experimentation of an important kind. Pedigree breeding, for instance, or breeding in constant temperatures, whether high, low, or average, might here be carried on upon a large scale. Indeed, the opportunities are so great that the choice of subjects would be difficult, so many would claim atten- tion ; and it would be quite possible to display a changing round of attractive and instructive sights from week to week throughout the year. The educational use that can be made of these three different divisions of the Natural History Gardens, form- ing one connected whole, — one in principle, but varying in details to suit the special needs of each division, and the adaptability of the separate locations, — will undoubt- edly meet the requirements of the present, and also give the necessary freedom for enlargement or modification needed by future generations. It will be seen, also, that the New England element enters into each division in varying proportions, as circumstances permit, and to the greatest degree where the objects concerned are more commonly known, being most developed among the higher animals, with which, from their size and their relations to man, the public is more familiar. 39 The difficulties which surround the whole project, — in many respects so novel as to offer no precedents, wholly new to those on whom the burden of the execution of the plan must fall, — as well as the great expense of the under- taking, have been subjects of long and thorough considera- tion by the Council. These difficulties account for the delay in replying to the last communication of the Com- missioners. Its deliberations have finally brought the Council to the assured conviction that it would be neither feasible nor wise to attempt to begin the three proposed divisions at the same time ; and yet it is obvious that the work of the Society in building up the department of Nat- ural History Gardens should not be delayed. Althougli the sites proposed for the Marine Aquarium and the Fresh Water Aquarium will not be ready for occupation for some time, nevertheless it is the unanimous opinion of the Coun- cil that the undertaking should begin with the Marine Aquarium. The proposed site of this division, the less proportionate expenditure for installation and mainte- nance, and its general interest to the public combine to make it likely that it can be made a financial success, and thus contribute to the foundation and maintenance of the other departments. In order to meet these difficulties and make a beginning without unnecessary delay, the Council suggests the propri- ety of starting a temporary Marine Aquarium on grounds already under the control of the Commissioners, and would therefore respectfully inquire of the Park Commissioners whether the establishment of a temporary aquarium at the Marine Park in South Boston would meet with their ap- proval ; and if so, what part of the grounds and water- front, now at their disposal, could be allowed the Society for that purpose. L The pumps, piping, and specimens would of course be 40 serviceable for removal to the buildings and grounds of the permanent establishment ; and if thought advisable, it might be practicable to construct even the temporary building so that it could be taken down and rebuilt in another place, or easily removed to a new site. A temporary garden of respectable proportions would require only a limited sum for buildings and machinery, and would probably prove remunerative ; the Society could also begin operations sooner, if a limited sum devoted to such uses could be asked for, and it could thus effectively start the work of exciting public interest in favor of its plans for the establishment of a Fresh Water Aquarium and a New England Zoological Garden, and probably ad- vance with surer steps toward the establishment of these two divisions of the Natural History Gardens. In view of these considerations the Council of the Bos- ton Society of Natural History asks the approval of the Park Commissioners to the following proposition, namely, that it shall be allowed to begin operations as soon as it has raised a third part, more or less, as may be needed, of the proposed sum of two hundred thousand dollars, for the purpose of erecting and equipping a building for a tempo- rary aquarium at Marine Park, on land to be granted by the Commissioners of Parks ; said sum to be ultimately in- corporated with the two hundred thousand dollars to be raised by the Society for the establishment of the Natural History Gardens ; but for the present, and as long as the temporary aquarium exists, to be considered as belonging to an independent foundation. Little has been said about buildings in this communi- cation, because it has been considered essential first to set- tle what we as scientific men and the Commissioners in their official capacity, both being equally interested in the cause of public education, would deem it best to’ do ; and 41 secondly, because in all such undertakings the true basis should be sought in the exposition and teaching of princi- ples.. As will be seen, however, by all those who have followed the history of this undertaking, our plans have been made with due consideration of the advantages offered by the localities proposed for the three divisions ; and their unique character and extent are fully justified by the unequalled opportunities offered by the Commis- sioners for the founding of these great institutions, devoted to the entertainment and instruction of the people in the system of parks under their jurisdiction. For the Council, J. Walter Fetvkes, Clerk . Boston Society of Natural History, Boston, Dec. 31, 1889. In response to the above letter the following was received from the Secretary of the Board of Park Commissioners : Board of Commissioners, 85 Milk Street, Boston , February 10, 1890. J. Walter Fewkes, Esq., Clerk of the Council of the Boston Society of Natural History : Sir: At a meeting of the Park Commissioners held this* day it was u Voted , that the Board of Park Commissioners, having con- sidered the letter of the Boston Society of Natural History, dated Dec. 31, 1889, which embodies the Society’s plans for the estab- lishment of a Marine Aquarium, a Fresh Water Aquarium and a New England Zoological Garden, and appreciating the governing principles of these plans, desires to express its disposition to co- operate with the Society in canying them into effect for the bene- fit of the public, reserving for future consideration the extent to which the ground in the parks can be devoted to the same.” Respectfully, Geo. F. Clarke, Secretary . Jeffries.] 42 [May 7, Dr. H. V. Wilson, Mr. J. A. Thompson, Mr. C. J. Maynard, Dr. Selah Merrill, Dr. Flagg, Mr. George F. Topliff and Mrs. C. H. Ramsay were elected Associate Members. The following papers were then read : — LAMARCKIAN ISM AND DARWINISM. BY DR. J. A. JEFFRIES. The theory of evolution of animals and plants, as expounded by Charles Darwin, has so filled the world with admiration, that the ideas of other, older authors, notably Lamarck, have been lost sight of by the public. Indeed, many a professional naturalist has not read Lamarck’s “Philosophic Zoologique.” Of late, the fol- lowers of a new school, the so-called Neolamarckian, with an occa- sional supporter of Lamarck, have brought the name of the once famous French naturalist into literature again. Lamarck was not .simply a philosopher, a maker of theories, a class of late so often held in contempt ; he was a great natural- ist, a keen observer, profoundly learned and the founder of many advances in natural history. He classed animals^by their systems and structure, that is, on a natural basis ; steadily opposed any em- pirical classification based on a few arbitrary features and insisted that species blended, ran into one another, and thus could not be separated. This all seems very simple and commonplace to-day ; but in the time of Cuvier and Geoff roy Saint-Hilaire it was far oth- erwise, as is shown by these two men of undoubted genius oppos- ing him. Indeed, it is to-day rare to find the man who has tom himself away from species and who recognizes the individual as the true unit in biology. But Lamarck went farther ; not content with showing that ani- mals changed in the course of time, he endeavored to show why and how they changed. His doctrines may be brought together into three great laws, the first of which is rather tacitly assumed than expressed in his works. First, that there is an underlying law inherent in life by which, in the course of ages, animals slowly grow in structure and com- plexity from generation to generation. If life began once for all time, according to this law the world would now be tenanted by only higher forms, the descendants of by-gone lower forms. But 1890.] 43 [Jeffries. here comes in Lamarck’s belief in spontaneous generation, a doc- trine quite generally held during the early part of the century. The descendant of the more recently spontaneously generated forms giving the various lower stages in the series. Lamarck saw that this serial order was only partly followed and that here and there along the line changes and excursions in other directions came in. These he explained by his second law. Bec- ognizing that the physical geography of the globe was slowly but steadily changing, Lamarck formulated as follows : Each permanent slight change in the conditions of life of an an- imal may produce a real change in the needs of the animal. Each change in the needs of an animal necessitates other ac- tions to satisfy the needs, that is, other habits. “ Every new requirement, necessitating new actions to satisfy it, demands of the animal experiencing it (the requirement) , either the more frequent employment of some of its parts of which for- merly it made less use, which develops and increases it (the part) considerably ; or the employment of new parts which the new needs produce insensibly by the efforts of its (the animal’s) internal 4 sen- timent.’ Plants having no wants, according to Lamarck’s meaning, are held subject to their surroundings, as moisture and temperature, which, altering nutrition, slowly produce changes in the form and proportion of the parts. Lamarck’s first idea of an inherent law by which life is forced to advance is, of course, beyond the reach of demonstration, by its nature cannot be proved. It is allied to Spencer’s theories of ev- olution and the steady progress from the simple to the complex and seems to be the centre around which the Neolamarckians cluster. That such a progression, evolution, has taken place, there is no doubt ; all the branches of biology show it. But the existence of progression does not make it a law inherent in life. Such progres- sion can be explained by Darwinistic views or indeed by Lamarck’s other laws. The survival of the best adapted or the constant change with changed habit and surrounding is sufficient. Spontaneous generation being denied, the presence of so many simple forms is impossible of explanation if an inherent law of 1 Sentiment is here used as indicating animal vital force rather than implying mind as in the usual use of the word, yet has some connection with habit as shown by the context. The word does not seem susceptible of a definite interpretation. Jeffries. J 44 [May 7, progress exists in life. To-day, spontaneous generation is not ac- cepted. Certainly no atom of proof has ever been adduced in its favor ; yet it cannot be denied life must have begun once and un- der much the same conditions as at present exist, or it would have died at its birth. This law of advance, not distinctly formulated by Lamarck, can hardly find a place in science. Although no tendency to evolve can be accepted as inherent in life, there is nothing which precludes the idea that a change once induced may involve others and thus by the aggregated momen- tum of many changes the animal become subject to forces causing it to continue evolving regardless of outside changes. That changes in surroundings produce change in habits is self- evident. Our common rat and mouse and domestic animals have all changed their habits. That changes in habits with resultant change of use produce marked changes in the system of the indi- vidual is also well known. The legs of the postman, the arms of the blacksmith and the muscles of the thumb and index finger of the dentist are examples. With the play and pressure of the parts follow changes in the joints, for instance, the flexible fingers of the pianist. That disuse promptly brings atrophy every one who has worn a splint knows. But all these changes are or appear to be confined to the indi- vidual and not transmitted to the offspring. Here Lamarck fills the gap by demanding that both parents must be like developed and that the descendants for many generations must have like hab- its. Given an indefinite number of generations where male and female were blacksmiths, and, finally, the powerful arms would become engrafted on the young. Very likely, he might have thus explained the gorilla’s arms and man’s legs. But, proof ! cries the skeptic ; yet in the nature of things proof is not easily to be adduced. Man cannot keep any set of conditions for a sufficient length of time to allow of any reasonable hope of change ; for this years must become as days. Perhaps the best example of this law is that given by Darwin, namely, that the leg bones of domestic ducks are longer and heav- ier in proportion to the rest of the bird than in wild ducks. We do not, however, know if the stronger legs would continue for a time if the ducks diminished their use of them. Darwin’s text in explanation of the ostrich and other birds unable to fly is parallel 1S90.] 45 [Jeffries. with Lamarck’s. It can also be shown by palaeontology and mor- phology how an organ has slowly increased and developed and logically can be attributed to use. Curiously enough the converse has been universally accepted, that disused organs abort. This can only occur if the atrophy produced by disuse is transmitted to the young as such it is ad- vanced by Lamarck and adopted by Darwin. In this case, as with most of Lamarck’s laws, Darwin has taken them to himself wher- ever natural selection, sexual selection and the like have fallen to the ground. Darwin’s natural selection does not depend, as is popularly sup- posed on direct proof, but is adduced as an hypothesis which gains its strength from being compatible with so many facts of correla- tion between an organism and its surroundings. Yet the same writer who considers natural selection proved will call for positive experimental proof of Lamarck’s theory and refuse to accept its general compatibility with the facts as support. Almost any case where natural selection is held to act by virtue of advantage gained by use of a part is equally compatible with Lamarck’s the- ory of use and development. The wings of birds of great power of flight, the relations of insects to flowers, the claws of beasts of prey are all cases in point. The essential difference between Lamarck and Darwin is that the latter has added on the factors of death and failure to propa- gate. Lamarck says outside conditions cause organisms to vary, hence new species. Darwin says the same with the addition that the less adapted forms are killed off. This is clearly so of mon- strous variations, but the majority of deaths are either from vio- lence, when coincidence as regards condition must play an over- whelming part over slight bodily differences, or from parasitism which barring a few peculiar breeds as white rats and highbred hogs pays no attention to variations in the species. Cases of adaption for passive concealment or passive protec- tion obviously cannot be explained by habit. If, however, the or- ganism must receive from the outside the force which first causes it to vary in such a way as to enjoy protection why is the advan- tage of protection called for to explain the new variety ? Favor- able or unfavorable, driven by Fate, the change must pursue its course. The belief in the power of physical causes to affect an organ- Jeffries.] 46 [May 7, ism is gaining ground ; though, as a rule, the cases brought for- ward presuppose an idea of heredity. What is needed if physical causes are to be accredited with a material part in the development of organisms is, first, proof that outside physical changes directly change an organism ; second, that the changes are hereditary. That changes of condition may produce change in an organism is known by direct evidence. Schmankewitsch has shown that the crustacean Artemia varies greatly, as it is grown in fresh or salt water. But is the change hereditary ? here two stumbling blocks come in the way : the lack of time in the salt water and the fact that we cannot assume the fresh water to be without effect. If the physical conditions of the presence of certain salts force growth in one way, why should not their absence necessitate a change obverse in nature? In this case we should expect the change to be slow in either direction accord- ing to the amount of heredity attained under the previous condi- tions which should vary according to the time elapsed under the condition. Thus, individuals, the progenitors of which had been in salt water for ten generations might be expected to change back more quickly than those which represented a hundred generations in the saline mixture. So far as the writer knows, it is only known that the change in either direction requires several generations. Another set of changes occur with change of climate, which seem fairly attributable to physical causes and appear to be hereditary. The people of mountainous countries are as a rule large, strong men with great lung capacity, and their children born in the low- lands certainly hand down these peculiarities for some time. This can easily be explained by assuming that the strains with an he- reditary tendency to these features have been preserved by selec- tion. There are, however, objections to this assumption, since it is not by any means the large men that make the best climbers. Neither are the best guides in Switzerland of this type, nor are the best climbers among the tourists to be found among them. This is easily explained by the great amount of lifting to be done and the law by which the weight increases with the cube and the mus- cular strength only with the square. It is well recognized that light men of medium stature have a material advantage as opposed to large men when leg work is to be done. Another fact which points to the change being due to physical causes is that the same class of change occurs in the first individual 47 [Jeffries. who moves from the lowlands to the highlands. The change can- not be explained by the assumption that the physiological powers are, so to speak, latent in the organism, and only need to be called upon to come into play. Were this the case the emigrant should at once take on the type of breathing of the mountaineer ; that is, a full, long, deep breath. This he does not do. The first change is in the direction of rapid, shallow breathing, then comes a long period of rapid pulse and lastly the respiration becomes deep, the heart slows up and the final type of respiration is reached. This change is not according to Lamarck’s law of habit, since the change of habit induced by the change of surroundings, that is, quick breath and rapid pulse, should survive and must be accred- ited to direct physico-chemical forces. Lamarck’s idea that a new necessity can call a new organ into existence by any sort of effort of the organism is to the writer’s mind untenable. Yet outside forces must cause the first formation of new organs if laws to evolve inherent in life are denied. They are probably evolved under the law laid down by Lamarck for plants. Among plants Lamarck held that the changes were the result of changes wrought by the surroundings on nutrition, and cites the case of Ranunculus aquatalis which has totally different shapes ac- cording as it grows on water or on land. No proof is given that the character is hereditary ; the point is assumed. Just as among animals we need a case (one case is worth a hun- dred coincidences, where change wrought by change of surround- ings is constant) when the descendants are brought back to the first conditions. Can any such case be cited, proved? Most say no, and proceed to refute every example suggested. Yet there is a class of phenomena, much talked of during the last few years, which look strangely like the desired example. The methods of preventive inoculation and the increase and decrease in the viru- lence of bacteria according to the conditions of growth seem to fill the requisites. The anthrax bacterium, which normally kills a great variety of animals, can by changes in the conditions of growth be made harm- less. Thus the bacterium may be isolated from an animal dead of the disease and two cultures made and continued on the same me- dium, one at the temperature of a room and the other at a higher temperature. Now inoculate two sets of animals with the cultures ; Jeffries.] 48 [May 7, those inoculated with the culture grown in heat will live ; the oth- ers will all die. This is not a lone example ; there are many forms of bacteria which undergo like metamorphoses, as the bacillus of chicken cholera, and swine plague and rabbit septicaemia, perhaps identical with the first, swine erysipelas and false charbon, also certain bacteria of fermentation. This cannot be ascribed to in- dividual change not transmitted, since in several of the cases the plant multiplies in the body, and again in cases the plant after be- ing weakened in virulence can be cultivated without reversion under conditions where its virulence is maintained. Koch has thus kept a variety of anthrax for two years. Some may object that since many of the species of bacteria mul- tiply only by division, all are really only separated parts of one organism and think that the spore would not vary. This is not the case ; the spores have the grade of virulence of the culture in the case of anthrax. Certainly the individuals grown from spores must be regarded as distinct descendants ; indeed, those produced by simple division must be so regarded, or the whole of the large and variable group of non spore-forming bacteria regarded as one being, a reductio ad absurdum. It is customary to class this loss of power-virulence next to death, a sort of partial death. Perhaps it may be, and certainly is pro- duced by conditions which if too intensely forced produce death ; but in this case we have the strange phenomenon of a dying organ- ism propagating its kind in the same stage of death for a great num- ber of generations. Making the small allowance of two generations a day, at the end of two years Koch would have had the 1460th generation. Whether such harmless forms varieties can be altered back into virulent ones is doubtful. Pasteur, on inoculating animals in a series, from the most susceptible up, got positive results, but Koch in a second effort failed. Many will doubtless be inclined to reject the “ weakened ” kinds on the ground that the difference is physiological. It must, how- ever, be borne in mind that form is nothing but the result of the processes of growth ; that is, the result of physiology : that the mass of recognized characters of bacteria are physiological, that the form is often the result of the nutrient on which the bacteria grow. We thus see that of Lamarck’s laws the first is of such a nature as to be incapable of proof and not compatible with the present 49 [Jeffries. accepted laws of life. Yet the more evolved forms maybe subject to evolved laws producing the same result. The second law, that constant change of habit may produce per- manent change in animal organisms, has not as yet been proved, but may fairly be said to rest on the same kind of probability as natural selection ; indeed that natural selection rests upon it. Wi- dening the law to constant change of surrounding, or habit may pro- duce permanent change of organism, simply strengthens the law, includes changes due to habit and also direct changes. The third law, that constant change of surroundings produces permanent changes in plants by means of changes in nutrition (used in a very wide sense) , is supported by the same kind of reasoning as natural selection and apparently by experimental proof in the case of “weakened ” bacteria. If Lamarck’s law or the widened law that organisms take on hereditary changes owing to changes of condition be accepted, a change must be made back towards the old idea of species. The older naturalists held that there really were such things as species. The modern ones look to the individual in theory, the species in fact. Now as species occur in definite regions they must, if sub- ject to Lamarckian laws of varying from outside conditions, vary together. They are almost alike, and like things under like con- ditions must give like results. The more ample recognition of physico-chemical laws is by no means incompatible with Darwin’s views. Indeed the latter starts off from Lamarck’s two formulated laws, though he only mentions his name to condemn him. Natural selection, sexual selection, se- lection for protection, in short all kinds of selection, necessitate a basis of hereditary variation to work upon. The only question is the source of the variation. The objections previously pointed out negative the idea of their being inherent in life ; if not inherent, they must be due to extraneous causes. Do we not rank Darwinism, that is the principle of selection, too highly ? Have we not put the turtle on top of the world ? The paper was discussed with warmth by Professors Hyatt and Morse. Remarks were also made by the secretary on the importance of the observations. Prof. H. W. Haynes then spoke as follows on the “Palaeolithic PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV 4 DECEMBER, 1890. Annual Meeting.] 50 [May 7, implement recently discovered by Mr. W. C. Mills in the valley of the Tuscarawas, Ohio.” At a meeting of this Society, on March 7, 1883, Prof. George Frederic Wright of Oberlin, O., described and illustrated, b}7 means of a large map, the line of the terminal moraine which marks the limits of glacial action in Ohio, extending from a point on the bor- der of Pennsylvania southwesterly to that of Kentucky, a little east of Cincinnati. After commenting upon the similarity of the ex- tensive gravel and terrace deposits of southern Ohio to those of the Delaware valley, near Trenton, N. J.,in which Dr. Charles C. Ab- bott first discovered the well-known palaeolithic implements made of the argillite of that region, Professor Wright predicted that similar discoveries of palaeolithic implements would be made in the gravel-beds of rivers in Ohio, flowing out of the glaciated region, if proper search were made for them. It will be recollected that this prediction met with a speedy fulfilment, and that Prof. Frederic W. Putnam exhibited at a meeting of this Society, on Nov. 4, 1885, such an implement which had been found by Dr. C. L. Metz at a depth of eight feet below the surface, in the gravel-beds of the Lit- tle Miami river, at Madisonville. This was made of black cheit and was of the same material, size and shape as one found by Dr. Abbott in the Trenton gravels. In the spring of 1887, Dr. Metz discovered another palaeolithic implement in the gravels of the Lit- tle Miami, near Loveland, at the depth of some thirty feet below the surface. I have now to exhibit a third implement of the same character, discovered by Mr. W. C. Mills, Oct. 27, 1889, in undisturbed strata fifteen feet below the surface, in a glacial terrace of the Tuscara- was river, at New Comerstown. The valley of the Tuscarawas is one to which particular attention had been directed by Professor Wright, as presenting specially favorable conditions for such dis- coveries ; and he has just given a detailed account of the physical character of the locality of the discovery in a letter to the New York Nation, April 24, 1890. Professor Wright has requested me to bring this new evidence of the existence of the palaeolithic man in North America to the con- sideration of this Society, and at the same time to express my opin- ion in regard to the genuineness and age of the object in question. I have accordingly brought here for comparison some half a dozen palaeolithic implements, from my own collection, all coming from 1890.] 51 [Annual Meeting . the classic locality in France, of St. Aclieul, near Amiens, in the valley of the Somme. Two of them were given to me by Dr. John Evans, the eminent author of “ The Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain the others I procured myself at St. Acheul, where I had come without any previous notice, and where I saw two sim- ilar implements taken from the gravel by laborers employed in sift- ing it for ballast. At the same time I procured one of the best ex- amples I have ever seen of the forgeries of similar implements, for which that locality has obtained an undesirable notoriety. This I have also brought here for comparison, together with a genuine specimen found by myself, in 1874, in a gravel-pit at Levallois, just outside of Paris. I have brought also two specimens from Eng- land, given to me by Dr. Evans, one from Wangford, on the Suf- folk side of the valley of the Little Ouse, the other from lower down the same valley, at Shrub Hill, Feltwell, Norfolk. It will be apparent upon careful examination and comparison that this implement from New Comerstown exhibits one of the recognized tests of genuineness applicable to such objects. As it is made of the black chert, occurring in the “ Lower Mercer” limestone of the vicinity, it does not possess the fine, compact grain of flint from the chalk, in France and England, but it plainly displays what Dr. Ev- ans describes as “ the glossiness of surface • • • which appears to be partly due to mechanical and partly to chemical causes” (p. 575) and which characterizes genuine flint implements found in the beds of river drift. All these European specimens, besides this glossi- ness, show a peculiar structural alteration of the surface, techni- cally known as the patina , due to the infiltration of water which has partially dissolved the substance of the flint. Although this is wanting in the New Comerstown specimen, it will readily be seen how different is its glossy appearance from the dull, lustreless hue which freshly broken flint exhibits, as is shown by the forgery from St. Acheul. It will be found also*that the genuine implements give to the touch a waxy or greasy sensation, differing sensibly from the raw feeling of the forgery. I desire, therefore, to express most emphatically my belief in the genuineness and age of this New Comerstown implement, as well as to call attention to the close resemblance in all particulars which it bears to these unquestioned palaeolithic implements of the Old World and to the additional light it sheds upon the question of the antiquity of man in North America. The following papers were read by title by Mr. S. H. Scudder, Holland.] 52 [May 7, who announced that he would speak on the last mentioned at the next meeting of the Society : “ The insects of the triassic beds at Fairplay, Col.” “ New carboniferous Myriapods from Illinois, including the dis- covery of an interesting Chilopod.” “ Illustrations of the carboniferous Arachnida of North America of the orders Anthracomarti and Pedi palpi.” “The variety of Myriapodal life in the carboniferous period.” The Secretary read the following paper by title : — ASIATIC LEPIDOPTERA. List of the Diurnal Lkpidoptera taken by Mr. William Doherty of Cincinnati in Celebes, June and July, 1887, with descrip- tions OF SOME APPARENTLY NEW FORMS. BY REV. W. J. HOLLAND, PH.D., D.D. The insects received from Mr. Doherty were contained in six boxes, and represent a portion of the collection made by him. Three boxes, which were to have been sent me from Surabaya, never were received. The contents of the boxes had received rough usage in transit, and, in some instances, the specimens were badly damaged. The butterflies were collected “in various parts of the southern peninsula of Celebes, principally at Munjung Loi Bulu, Masala, in the low country ; Tanete, 3000 ft. above sea level ; and Bara, 2000 ft. above sea level in the centre of the peninsula, fifty miles north of Macassar.” Mr. Doherty, who is one of the most indefatigable, as well as intelligent, students of insect life residing in the East, deserves all praise for the manner in which he has contended with difficulties in prosecuting his researches. At the risk of possibly offending his great modesty, I cannot forbear giv- ing an extract from the letter which he sent me at the time the in- sects were forwarded. “I believe if I could have found a single locality with a good path, I should have been more successful ; but the terribly inaccessible nature of the country prevented me. Most of my captures were made in the beds of the mountain torrents, where I acquired a quite goat-like facility in jumping from boulder to boulder. The numerous waterfalls were my great resource. Here I got nearly all my moths, and nearly every day fresh bruises, for my strong iron-heeled boots were quite unsuited to the smooth 1890.] 53 [Holland. stones. Every day in the ardor of pursuit I would get up to some place from which I could not get down, or else a shower would come along and make the rocks slippery, and the descent enough to turn one’s hair white. I shall never try the Macassar country again. All the virgin forest is cut down except in the most un-get- at-able places, and elsewhere there is nothing but those horrible meadows of alang-alang grass, eight or ten feet high, through which it is impossible to make one’s way. As for the paths they do not at all compare with those made by the wild pigs and deer. This, however, can be said of many parts of the East where the paths are much better. No native race of the East makes roads half so well as the wild elephants do Excuse this little outburst of bile. I have been suffering for the past month with acute pains in the lips, tongue and gums, a curious disease, caused by unnutritious food. I was travelling with a Rajah’s brother and a half a dozen men, but I could not get the people to understand that I could not live without animal food, and it was only now and then, as a great favor, that they sold me a poor little chicken for a dollar or so. If it were not for the coffee and palm- wine produced everywhere, and half a wild pig that I once luckily shot and salted, I really think I should have died.” EHOPALOCERA. Fam. NYMPHALID.iE, Swain. Sub-fam. Danain^e, Bates. Genus Hestia, Hiibn. 1. H. Blanchardii , March. Rev. Zool. 1845, p. 168. Genus Ideopsis, Horsf. 2. I. vitrea , Blanch. Voy. Pol. Sud. p. 385, PI. n, fig. 2. Genus Danais, Latr. 3. D. Cleona, Cram. Pap. Ex. iv, PI. 377, F. 4. D. Ishma , Butl. Cist. Ent. i, p. 2 ; Lep. Exot. i, PI. xx, fig. 3. 5. D. Melissa , Cram. Pap. Ex. iv, PI. 377, figs. C, D. 6. D. leucoglene , Feld. Reise Nov. Lep. ii, p. 347, PI. xliii, fig. 2. Holland.] 54 [May 7, Genus Euploea, Fabr. 7. E. viola , Bntl. Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 1866, p. 295, PI. xxx, fig. 3. E.Westwoodii , Feld. 1. c., PI. xl, figs. 1-3. There is a fine series of this noble species in the collection, rep- resenting two or three possible varieties. In this connection Mr. Doherty’s note to the author is worthy of consideration. “In this, the Salpinx-Pademma group, the butterflies vary in a surprising manner, and that in the same locality. Mr. DeNiceville has shown me a large series of Pademmas from Lower Bengal, in which every specimen might easily be described as a separate species. This fact seems not generally known at home, and so naturalists keep on forming species in this group on the same grounds as in Crastia, or Calliplcea, which are remarkably constant.” 8. E. Mniszechii , Feld. Wien Ent. Mon. hi, p. 181, PI. iii, fig. 3. 9. E. Inyacinthus , Butl. Proc. Zool. Soc. 1866, p. 296, PI. xxix, fig. 5. 10. E. Eupator , Hew. Ex. Butt, ir, PI. i, fig. 1 ; in, PI. ii, fig. 1. 11. E. Horsfieldii , Feld. Reise Nov. Lep. n, p. 333, PI. XL,fig. 4. Sub-fam. Satyrin^e, Bates. Genus Lethe, Hiibn. 12. L. Arete, Cram. Pap. Ex. iv, PI. 313, figs. E, F. Hopffer, Stett. Ent. Zeit. vol. xxxv, p. 38. L. arcuata , Butl. Cat. Satyr. Brit. Mus. p. 114, PI. ii, fig. 3. This is the local Celebesian race of L. Europa , Fabr., and is characterized by the larger size and the strongly arched costa of the primaries, a phenomenon specially common in Celebesian forms, and to which Mr. Wallace most instructively calls attention in his work upon the Malay Archipelago, pp. 287-8. Genus Melanitis, Fabr. 13. M. Leda , Linn. Syst. Nat. i, 2, p. 773, No. 151. There are a number of specimens in the collection which I can- not do otherwise than refer to this widely distributed and variable species. They are all, however, darker in color than any spec- imens I have from other localities, and the males have the external 1890.] 55 [Holland margin of the anterior wings even, or slightly convex, without any tendency to falcation. Mr. Doherty in his notes writes of these, “I suppose the Melanitis with the falcation obsolescent is obsoleta , Feld.” I have carefully examined Felder’s description, and find that the obsolescence to which he refers is not that of the falca- tion of the primaries, but of the apical spots. His description points to another form not represented in the present collection. 14. M. velutina , Feld. Reise Nov. Lep. nr, p. 463, No. 784. The specimens of this species, unfortunately both females, agree thoroughly with Felder’s description. They were taken at an ele- vation of more than 2000 ft. above sea level, and were nowhere else seen. 15. M. hylecoetes,n. sp., or variety, PI. IV, Fig. I, mas. ; Fig. II fem. Male. Primaries strongly arcuate, apex slightly rounded at ex- tremity, external margin feebly concave below the lower radial nervule. The upper surface of the wings is broadly dark fuscous ; a broadly suffused black spot is situated on the costa of the ante- rior wings at the end of the cell, and extends outwardly along the third submedian nervule until it fuses with a large subapical spot of the same color, which upon its apical edge is marked by a cir- cular white spot. At the point of fusion between the two broad black spots the ground color of the wings becomes sensibly paler. The under surface of the wings resembles that of M. Gnophodes , Butl. in color and markings. The anterior wings are ornamented by two small submarginal spots pupilled with white, the upper- most situated between the two radial nervules ; the lower, which is the larger, between the second and third submedian nervules. The posterior wings are adorned with a submarginal row of simi- lar spots of white, which are all more or less obsolescent, except the first, situated near the apex, which is large, oval, black, pu- pilled with white, and surrounded by an ochraceous ring, margined externally by fuscous, and the second from the anal angle, which is smaller than that at the apex, but similar in form and coloration. Female. Form of wings as in the male, except that the apex of the primaries is more produced, truncate at apex, and broadly ex- cised below the lower radial nervule, giving the wing a falcate shape. The ground color of the primaries is bright fulvous, darker at the base ; of the secondaries dusky brown. The apical area of Holland. 1 56 [May 7, the primaries is broadly black, interrupted near the costa by a sub- triangular spot of bright fulvous, which is followed toward the mar- gin by an oval spot of pure white. The under-sides of both wings are pale gray, shading on the posterior margin of the primaries into a warm fulvous. The wings are profusely mottled with minute striations of a rich brown tint, which are compressed into a dark band extending across the cell of the primaries and continued as a curved band just beyond the cell upon the secondaries. A similar band crosses the primaries just before the outer third. The white apical spot of the upper surface of the primaries faintly reappears upon the lower surface. The two large spots found on the under- surface of the secondaries of the male are conspicuous on the un- der-surface of the secondaries pf the female. There are no traces of any others of the series of submarginal spots in the female specimen before me, though in a larger series of specimens they might be found. Expanse of wings : $ 70 mm., 9 75 mm. Described from $ and 3 9 9 in Coll. Holland. At first sight the feipales of this species suggest its identity with velutina, Feld., the coloration of the upper surface resembling that of Felder’s species. The male shows some points of resemblance on the under surface to M. Gnophodes , Butl., the costal area of the secondaries being light and comparatively free from maculations, and the spots and striae being arranged somewhat as in that species. Genus Bletogona, Feld. 16. B. Mycalesis , Feld. Reise Nov. Lep. in, p. 465, PI. lxviii, figs. 6, 7, 9 ! ! F. Erebia , Snellen, Tijd. voor Ent. xxi, p. 7, PI. i, fig. 1, . /Sena, Moore, 7 c., p. 245, Lep. Ceylon, p. 160, PI. lxv, figs. 3, 3a, $ . Genus Matapa, Moore. 144. M. Celsina , Feld. Reise Nov. Lep., 111, p. 512, PL xci, fig. 12. Holland.] 80 [May 7, 154. P. Goloides ?, Moore, Lep. Ceylon, p. 171, PI. lxxi, figs. 3, 3a, Dist. Malay., p. 382, PI. xxxv, fig. 12. ♦ The solitary specimen before me does not agree either with Moore’s description, or figure, but agrees closely on the under sur- face with the figure given in Mr. Distant’s work. The oblique dis- cal fascia of the anteriors is not united with the outer margin, and the color of the spots is a deep red. The insect may prove to be a distinct species. $ . Genus Cupitha, Moore. 155. C. Purreea , Moore, Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1877, p. 594, PI. lxiii, fig. 10, ; Wood-Mason and DeN. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, l, p. 261, ? . S , 9 • Genus Taraetocera, Butl. 156. T. Mcevius , Fabr. Ent. Syst., hi, p. 352. The specimens have the ground color on the under side of the wings yellower and brighter than in Indian examples. $ , 9 . Genus Halpe, Moore. 157. H. Beturia , Hew. Descript. Hesperid., p. 36. Mr. Hewitson gives as the habitat of this species, which he briefly diagnoses, u Neilgherries and Macassar.” I find a very marked difference between the examples from the Himalayan re- gion and those sent me by Mr. Doherty. In the Sikkim and Ten- asserim specimens in m}^ collection there are two translucent spots at the end of the cell, three small subapical spots arranged in a curve, two subquadrate spots located respectively on the second and third median interspaces, and a very small spot near the middle of the posterior margin ; all these upon the upper surface of the prima- ries. There is also in the female a faint submarginal band of ochre- ous spots upon the primaries. The fringes are futhermore white, checkered with fuscous at the end of the nervules. In the speci- mens from Macassar the spots at the end of the cell are wanting, as also the small spot near the middle of the posterior margin of the primaries. There is no trace of the submarginal band of ochre- ous spots in the female, and the fringes are uniformly concolorous. The Macassar specimens agree most nearly with Mr. Hewitson’s description, and I am inclined to think that the Indian form should be separated as a distinct variety, or species. $ , 9 . 1890.] 81 [Holland, Genus Satarupa, Moore. 158. S. Celebica , Feld. Reise Nov. Lep. hi, p. 528, PI. lxxiii, fig. 8. oard of Health. The first column gives the sources of the waters, commencing with those farthest from the coast ; the second, the number of monthly determinations of the chlorine ; the third, the average of all the determinations ; and the fourth, the highest and lowest determinations. The results are expressed in parts per 100,000 : — TABLE OF NOHMAL CHLORINE FOR MASSACHUSETTS. SOUBCES OF WATER. NO. MONTHLY DETERMINATIONS. AVERAGE CHLORINE. EXTREMES OF CHLORINE. North Adams, Notch Brook. 11 .00 .02- .09 Lenox, Brook Reservoir. 12 .07 .04— .09 Pittsfield, Sackett Reservoir. 6 .08 .07— .10 Montague, Lake Pleasant. 21 .10 .07— .16 Greenfield, Glen Brook. 12 .11 .05— .16 Leominster, Haynes Reservoir. 21 .12 .08— .16 Springfield, Ludlow Reservoir. 23 .12 .08— 20 Worcester, Tatnuck Brook Reservoir. 23 .12 .08— .16 Southbridge, Reservoir. 24 .13 .06— .21 Fitchburg, Scott Reservoir. 24 .14 .10- .19 Clinton, Lynde Brook. 13 .16 .13— .19 Hudson, Gates’ Pond. 24 .20 .16— .23 Wayland, Snake Brook. 20 .23 .17— .30 Ashland, Reservoir 4. 24 .23 .19— .28 Haverhill, Kenoza Lake. 20 .34 .30— .39 Danvers, Middleton Pond. 24 .35 .24— .47 Fall River, Watuppa Lake. 24 .52 .48— .63 New Bedford, Acushnet Reservoir. 24 .53 .46— .67 Plymouth, Little South Pond. 7. .62 .56— .68 Nantucket, Wannacomet Pond. 8 2.16 2.03—2.25 Crosby.] 140 [May 21. It is evident at a glance that a perfectly pure and wholesome water in the eastern part of the State contains a proportion of salt which, farther west, w’ould indicate very serious contamination, and hence that the normal chlorine map is absolutely essential to the proper san- itary classification of the waters of the State. The table also reveals very clearly the source of the salt. The extremely rapid increase in the immediate vicinity of the sea makes it impossible to question the conclusion reached by Dr. Drown and Mrs. Richards that it is sim- ply the salt spray carried inland by the east winds. This virtually deprives the salt in the natural waters and, presumably, in the drift, of geological significance and relegates it to the fields of meteorologic and sanitary investigation. It is interesting, how- ever, to reflect that the salt air from the sea is a possible source of the salt found in areas of inland drainage when these are not too remote from the coast or cut off from the coast by mountain ranges. The following communication was made to the Society : — GEOGRAPHIC LIMITS OF SPECIES OF PLANTS IN THE BASIN OF THE RED RIVER OF THE NORTH. BY WARREN CPHAM. No strongly defined line of division can be drawn between dif- ferent portions of the flora and fauna of the country from the Atlan- tic to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Sea. But great contrasts exist between the eastern region with its plentiful rainfall and the dry western plains, as also be- tween the almost tropical southern margin of the United States and the tundras beneath the Arctic Circle. In travelling from the once wholly forest-covered country of the eastern states, across the prai- ries, to the far western plains bearing cacti and sage-brush, there is observed a gradual change in the flora, until a very large propor- tion of the eastern species is left behind, and their places are taken by others capable of enduring more arid conditions. Likewise in going from St. Augustine or New Orleans to Chicago, St. Paul, Winnipeg, and Hudson bay and strait, the palmettoes, the ever- green live oak, bald cypress, southern pines, and the festooned 1890.] 141 [Upham. Tillandsia or “Spanish moss,” are left in passing from the south- ern to the northern states ; and instead we find in the region of the Laurentian lakes the bur or mossy-cup oak, the canoe and yellow birches, the tamarack or American larch, the black spruce, balsam fir, and the white, red, and Banksian pines ; while farther north the white spruce, beginning as a small tree in northern New Eng- land and on lake Superior, attains a majestic growth on the lower Mackenzie in a more northern latitude than a large part of the moss-covered Barren Grounds which reach thence eastward to the northern part of Hudson bay and Labrador. Thus although no grand topographic barrier, like a high mountain range, impass- able to species of the lowlands, divides this great region, yet the transition from a humid to an arid climate in passing westward, and the exchange of tropical warmth for polar cold in the journey from south to north, are accompanied by gradual changes of the flora, by which in the aggregate its aspect is almost completely transformed. In the central part of this large area, the basin of the Bed river of the North has been the field of my geologic exploration during a half dozen summers, in which careful attention has been given also to the geographic limits and relative abundance of both native and introduced plants. It has been interesting to find there the intermingling and the boundaries of species whose principal homes, or geographic range, lie respectively in the directions of the four cardinal points, east and west, south and north. We may conven- iently arrange these notes in several parts, first considering the di- vision of the district into forest and prairie, and the limits of spe- cies of trees and shrubs ; second, the herbaceous flora, including the flowers and grasses of the prairies ; and third, the weeds troub- lesome to agriculture, noting those of the eastern states and prov- inces winch have become equally abundant in the Red river valley, others of the east which are more tardily establishing themselves there, and especially weeds native to the country and immigrants from the plains, some of which are rapidly spreading eastward along railways, by roadsides, and in cultivated fields. A brief preliminary statement of the geographic position, altitude and contour, the diverse rocks and soils, and the climate of this district, will enable us to understand the circumstances which have controlled the development of its flora. The basin of the Red river Upham.l 142 [May 21, of the North, so named to distinguish it from the Red river of Louis- iana, lies in the middle of the North American continent, between 45° and 52° north latitude, and between 95° and 106° west longi- tude, comprising parts of Minnesota and North and South Dakota in the United States and of Manitoba and Assiniboia in the Domin- ion of Canada. Its altitude rises from lake Winnipeg, 710 feet above the sea, to the Riding and Duck mountains in northwestern Manitoba, respectively about 1,800 and 2,000 feet above this lake, or 2,000 and 2,700 feet above the sea, while similar elevations are reached on and south of the international boundary by the Turtle mountain, the Coteau du Missouri, and the Coteau des Prairies. In general the country is a smoothly undulating and rolling, or in portions almost perfectly flat, expanse of glacial drift, overlain on certain areas by lacustrine and alluvial beds. Along the Red river valley and on its east side in northwestern Minnesota, the superficial deposits are from 100 to 300 feet deep, and rest on Archaean gneisses and on Cambrian and Silurian lime- stone and sandstone strata. West of the Red river, on the plateau- like area stretching westward from the top of the Pembina mountain escarpment in North Dakota and southwestern Manitoba, the drift is comparatively thin, being commonly from 10 to 50 feet in depth, and lies upon Cretaceous shales which are penetrated about 1 ,400 feet by artesian wells at Devil’s Lake and Jamestown. A consid- erable proportion of magnesian limestone boulders, gravel and de- tritus is present in the drift of the whole district, and westward the sulphates of lime, magnesia, and soda are supplied to the drift by its ingredient of the Cretaceous shales. The water of springs, streams, lakes and sloughs is therefore hard, and contains, espec- ially westward, much alkaline matter, favoring the growth of nu- merous species of plants which can thrive* only on alkaline soil. The low plain bordering the Red river, commonly denominated the Red river valley, which was covered by the deep central part of the glacial Lake Agassiz during the recession of the ice-sheet, and is now the most fertile wheat-producing district of this conti- nent, has a width of 40 to 50 miles and a length of about 300 miles from lake Traverse north to lake Winnipeg. The climate of this valley and of the entire basin is mostly cool and invigorating through the six or seven months in which the land is worked and its har- vest gathered. The warmest days of summer have a temperature 1890.] 143 [Upham. of about 90° Fahrenheit ; and the greatest cold of winter is — 30° or sometimes — 40°. The annual precipitation of moisture as rain and snow is from 20 to 30 inches. It is distributed somewhat equally throughout the year ; damaging droughts or excessive rains seldom occur. In winter the snow is commonly about a foot deep during two or three months, and very rarely it attains an average depth of two or three feet. Forest and 'prairie. — The Red river basin is crossed by the south- western boundary of the forest that overspreads the greater part of British America and nearly the entire eastern half of the United States. This boundary between forest and prairie, having an al- most wholly timbered region on its northeast side, and a region on its southwest side that is chiefly grassland, without trees or shrubs, runs as follows. From near the junction of the South and North Saskatchewan rivers, it passes southeasterly by the sources of the Red Deer and the Assiniboine, and over the southwestern slopes of Duck and Riding mountains, to the south end of lakes Manitoba and Winnipeg. Thence it turns southward and holds this course along the east side of the Red river and approximately parallel with it, at a distance increasing from fifteen to fifty miles from the river, for about three hundred miles, to the upper part- of this stream where it flows from east to w'est in Minnesota. Groves of a few acres, or sometimes a hundred acres or more, occur here and there upon the prairie region beside lakes, and a narrow line of timber usually borders streams, as the Red river and its principal tributa- ries ; but many lakes and creeks, and even portions of the course of large streams, have neither bush nor tree in sight, and occasion- ally none is visible in a view which ranges from five to ten miles in all directions. The contour of the prairie is as varied as that of the wooded region. Within the Red river valley the surface is al- most absolutely level; but the adjoining prairie1 country is undulat- ing, rolling and hilly, having in some portions a very rough surface of knolls, hills and ridges of morainic drift, that rise steeply 25 to 100 feet or more above the intervening hollows. The sheet of drift covering the greater part of all these areas, whether forest or prai- rie, is closely alike, being till or unmodified glacial drift, showing no important differences such as might cause the growth of forests in one region and of only grass and herbage in another. The absence of trees and shrubs in the prairie region has been Upham.] 144 [May 21, often attributed to the effect of fires. Through many centuries fires have almost annually swept over these areas, generally de- stroying all seedling trees and shrubs, and sometimes extending the border of the prairie by adding tracts from which the forest had been burned. Late in autumn and again in the spring the dead grass of the prairie burns very rapidly, so that a fire within a few days sometimes spreads fifty or a hundred miles. The groves that remain in the prairie region are usually in a more or less sheltered position, being on the border of lakes and streams and sometimes nearly surrounded by them ; while areas that cannot be reached by fires, as islands, are almost always wooded. If fires should fail to overran the prairies in the future, it can hardly be doubted that much of that area would gradually and slowly be changed to for- est. Yet it does not appear that fires in the western portion of our great forest region are more frequent or destructive than east- ward ; and our inquiry must go back a step further to ask why fires east of the Appalachian mountains had nowhere exterminated the forest, while so extensive areas of prairie have been guarded and maintained, though not apparently produced, by prairie fires here. Among the conditions which have led to this difference, we must undoubtedly place first the smaller amount, and somewhat less equa- ble distribution throughout the year, of rain in the prairie region. The comparatively shaded and moist southern bluffs of valleys, as of the Minnesota and Assiniboine rivers, are generally wooded, while the opposite northern bluffs, exposed to the drying sunshine, are prairie or have only bushes and scattered small trees. On the western and southwestern plains, a still more arid climate sets a limit to the grassy prairies, and in their stead dreary wastes of sage- bush and cacti cover the parched soil, which yet in many portions needs only irrigation to give it fertility and cause it to yield boun- tiful harvests. Trees and shrubs. — Many species of trees, which together con- stitute a large part of the eastern forests, extend to the Red river basin, reaching there the western or northwestern boundary of their range. Among these are the basswood, sugar maple, river maple, and red maple, the three species of white, red, and black ash, the red or slippery elm, and the rock or cork elm, the butternut, the white, bur, and black oaks, iron- wood (Ostrya Virginica, Willd.), the American hornbeam (Carpinus Caroliniana, Walt.), the yellow 1890.1 145 [Upham. birch, the large-toothed poplar, white and red pine, arbor vitas, and the red cedar or savin. A few species of far northern range find in this district their southern or southwestern limit, namely, our two species of mountain ash, the balsam poplar, Banksian or jack pine, the black and the white spruce, balsam fir, and tamarack. Some of the eastern shrubs, which make the undergrowth of our forests, also attain here their western limits ; but a larger propor- tion of these than of the forest trees continues west along the stream -courses to the Saskatchewan region, the upper Missouri, and the Black Hills. Among the shrubs that reach to the borders of the Red river basin, but not farther westward or at least southwest- ward are the black alder or winterberry and the mountain holly, staghorn sumach, the hardhack, the huckleberry, the dwarf blue- berry and the tall or swamp blueberry (Vaccinium Pennsylvani- cum, Lam., and V. corymbosum, L.), leatherwood (Dirca palus- tris, L.), and sweet fern. Shrubs and woody climbers that have their northern or northwestern boundary in this basin include the prickly ash, staff-tree or shrubby bitter-sweet, frost grape, Virgin- ian creeper, and the four species of round-leaved, silky, panicled, and alternate-leaved cornel (Cornus circinata, L’Her., C. sericea, L., C. candidissima, Marsh. [C. paniculata, L’Her.], and C. alter- nifolia, L. f.). On the other hand, shrubs of the north which reach their southern or southwestern limits in the Red river basin include the mountain maple, the few-flowered viburnum and withe- rod, several species of honeysuckle (Lonicera ciliata, Muhl., L. cserulea, L., L. oblongifolia, Hook., L. involucrata, Banks, L. hir- sute Eaton), the Canada blueberry, the cowberry, Andromeda polifolia, L., Kalmia glauca, Ait., Labrador tea (Ledum latifo- lium, Ait.), the Canadian shepherdia, sweet gale, the dwarf birch, green or mountain alder, beaked hazel-nut, Salix balsamifera, Barratt, and S. myrtilloides, L., var. pedicellaris, Anders., black crowberry, creeping savin, and the American yew or ground hem- lock. No tree of exclusively western range extends east to the Red river basin, and it has only a few western species of shrubs, of which the most noteworthy are the alder-leaved June-berry or ser- vice berry (in Manitoba commonly called “saskatoon”), the sil- ver-berry (Eheagnus argentea, Pursh), and the buffalo-berry (Shep- herdia argentea, Nutt.). To these are also to be added the shrubby PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV 10 Upham.] 146 [May 21, (Enothera albicaulis, Nutt., which occurs chiefly as an immigrant weed, and the small-leaved false indigo (Amorpha microphylla, Pursh), which abounds on moist portions of the prairie. The silver-berry (usually called “wolf willow” in the Red river val- ley) is common or abundant from Clifford, North Dakota, and from Ada, Minnesota, northward, forming patches ten to twenty rods long on the prairie, growing only about two feet high and fruiting plentifully, but in thickets becoming five to ten feet high. Its silvery whitish foliage and fruit make this shrub a very con- spicuous and characteristic element of the Red river flora. The single species of true sage-brush belonging to this basin (Artemisia cana, Pursh) extends east in North Dakota to the Heart Mound, six miles northwest of Walhalla or thirty-five miles west of the Red river at Pembina, and to a hill close west of the Sheyenne river about eight miles south of Valley City, growing in both places on outcrops of the Fort Pierre shale. It attains a height of one to three feet, and the tough wood of its base is one to one and a half inches in diameter. Artemisia frigida, Willd., called “ pasture sage-brush” by Macoun, is abundant throughout a wide area westward, extending east locally to “ the ridge” east of Emerson, Manitoba, the falls of St. Anthony, and lake Pepin. Herbaceous plants. — Among the fifteen hundred, more or less-, in- digenous species of herbaceous plants inhabiting the Red river ba- sin, probably half are deserving of note for attaining their geo- graphic limit upon this area, or at least the limit of their abundant or frequent occurrence. But thorough and detailed botanic explo- ration of all the great interior region of our continent westward to the Rocky Mountains and far northward will be requisite before we can speak with certainty concerning many of the less conspicuous species of our flora. The most that can be attempted in this es- say is to notice those plants whose geographic range seems to be best known, especially such as are abundant in some part of the Red river basin, or are attractive by their beautiful flowers, or use- ful for pasturage and hay. The following species of northern range, some of them plentiful beneath the Arctic circle, are known to extend south of the 49th parallel in the Red river valley, or on the east to the Lake of the Woods or into northern Minnesota, but not to the southern end of this valley at Lake Traverse. 1890.] 147 [Upham. NORTHERN SPECIES EXTENDING TO THE BASIN OF THE RED RIVER. Anemone multifida, DC. Ranunculus affinis, R. Br. Caltha natans, Pall. Aquilegia brevistyla, Hook. Cardamine pratensis, L. Draba incana, L., var. arabisans, Watson. Hypericum ellipticum, Hook. Oxalis Acetosella, L. Hedysarum boreale, Nutt. Rubus Nutkanus, Mo§ino. Rubus arcticus, L. Rosa Eugelmanni, Watson. Parnassia palustris, L. Ribes Hudsonianum, Richardson. Cicuta virosa, L. Adoxa Moschatellina, L. Linnaea borealis, Gronov. Aster modestus, Lindl. angustus, Torr. & Gray. Erigeron hyssopifolius, Michx. Adenocaulon bicolor, Hook. Achillea multiflora, Hook. Tanacetum Huronense, Nutt. Petasites palmata. Gray. sagittata, Gray. Arnica Chamissonis, Less. Senecio aureus, L., var. borealis, Torr. & Gray. Hieracium umbellatum, L. Lobelia Dortmanna, L. Campanula rotundil'olia, L., var. arctica, Lange. Pyrola rotuudifolia, L., var. incarnata, DC. Primula farinosa, L. Mistassinica, Michx. Gentiana Amarella, L ., var. acuta, Hook. f., and var. stricta, Watson. Halenia deflexa, Griseb. PhaceliaFranklinii, Gray. Mei tensia paniculata, Don. Physalis grandiflora, Hook. Euphrasia officinalis, L., var. Tartarica, Benth. Rhinanthus Crista-galli, L. Pinguicula vulgaris, L. Plantago major, L., var. Asiatica, De- caisne. Chenopodium capitatum, Watson. Polygonum viviparum, L. Comandra livida, Richardson. Orchis rotundifolia, Pursh. Habenaria obtusata, Richardson. Allium Schoenoprasum, L. Tofieldia palustris, Hudson. J uncus stygius, L. alpinus, Villars, var. insignis, Fries. Luzula spadicea, L., var. parviflora, Meyer, and var. melanocarpa, Meyer. Soirpus caespitosus, L. Eriophorum alpinum, L. Carex Houghtonii, Torr. alpina, Swartz, atrata, L., var. ovata, Boott. lenticularis, Michx. capillaris, L. arctata, Boott, var. Faxoni, Bailey. Saltuensis, Bailey, livida, Willd. scirpoidea, Michx. Novae-Angliae, Schwein. obtusata, Liljeblad. rupestris, All. canescens, L., var polystachya, Boott. Deyeuxia Langsdorffii, Kunth. Triseturn subspicatum, Beauv., var. molle, Gray. Danthonia intermedia, Vasey. Poa alpina, L. laxa, Haenke. Agropyrum dasystachyum, Vasey. tenerum, Vasey. Elymus Sibiricus, L., var. Americanus, Watson, mollis, Trin. To these we may add Androsace septentrionalis, L. , which extends south to Winnipeg and is found on the road from that city to the Lake of the Woods ; and Scolochloa festncacea, Link, reported by Macoun as very abundant in ponds throughout the prairie region of Manitoba and northward to the Peace river, found by Burgess on the Lake of the Woods, and as yet identified at only one locality Upbam.] 148 [May 21, in the United States, this being by Mr. R. I. Cratty in Emmet county, northern Iowa. Two very rare species, of mainly north- ern range, occur near the east border of the Red river basin, namely, Subularia aqnatica, L., found in Eagle lake on the Canadian Pacific railway near Rainy lake ; and the equally noteworthy Littorella la- cnstris, L., detected by Prof. L. H. Bailey at Basswood lake on the northern boundary of Minnesota. Specimens of Rosa Engelmanni, Watson, collected by Professor Bailey at Vermilion lake in northern Minnesota, were at first referred by Mr. Watson to R. acicularis, Lindl., known on this continent only from Alaska and from Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie, but they are now referred to this new species, as described in the sixth edition of the Manual ; and Rev. E. J. Hill reports that this is the more common form of rose there. The known range of the boreal and sub-arctic Achillea multiflora, Hook., not previously recorded in the United States, is extended by my observations into North Dakota, this species being frequent in the valley of the Pembina at the fish-trap and the springs near Walhalla, and on the North branch of Park river near Milton. I also found it plentiful at the Elbow of the Souris river in Mani- toba. Long lists of familiar species, abundant in the floras of the East- ern and Southern States, but reaching their western and northern boundaries along the Red river of the North, might be given ; but they yj ould probably be less interesting to botanists in these portions of the country than the list that follows, noting the principal spe- cies of western range, common on the plains and often in the Rocky Mountains and to the Pacific, which attain their eastern limits within the Red river basin. WESTERN SPECIES EXTENDING TO THE BASIN OF THE RED RIVER. Anemone patens, L., var. Nuttalliana, Gray. Lesquerella Ludoviciana, Watson. Erysimum asperum, DC. parviflorum, Nutt. Polanisia trachysperma, Torr. & Gray. Malvastrum coccineum, Gray. Linum rigidum, Pursh. perenne, L., var. Lewisii, Eaton & Wright. Petalostemon villosus, Nutt. Astragalus caryocarpus, Ker. adsurgens, Pall, hypoglottis, L. Astragalus gracilis, Nutt. aboriginum, Richardson, flexuosus, Dougl. Oxytropis monticola, Gray. Lamberti, Pursh. splendens, Dougl. Glycyrrhiza lepidota, Nutt. Vicia Americana, Muhl., var. linearis, Watson. Potentilla Pennsylvanica, L., var. stri- gosa, Lehm. Potentilla Hippiana, Lehm. efifusa, Dougl. Rosa Arhansana, Porter. 1890.] 149 [Upham. Rosa Woodsii, Lindl. (Enothera albicaulis, Nutt. serrnlata, Nutt. Gaura coccinea, Nutt. Mamillaria vivipara, Haw. Opuntia Missouriensis, DC. fragilis, Haw. Peucedanum t'oeniculaceum, Nutt. Cymopterus glomeratus, Raf. Liatris punctata, Hook. Gutierrezin Euthamiae, Ton*, and Gray. Grindelia squavrosa, Dunal. Chrysopsis villosa, Nutt. Aplopappus spinulosus, DC. Erigeron glabellus, Nutt. Iva xanthiit'olia, Nutt. Ambrosia psilostachya, DC. Lepachys columuaris, Torr. & Gray. Helianthus annuus. L. (Indigenous.) petiolaris, Nutt. Maximiliani, Schrader. Gaillardia aristata, Pursh. Artemisia glauca, Pall. Ludoviciana, Nutt. Senecio canus, Hook. integerrimus, Nutt. Crepis runcinata, Torr. & Gray. Lygodesmia juncea, Don. Troximon glaucum, Nutt. Androsace occidentalis, Pursh. Asclepias speciosa, Torr. Acerates viridiflora, Ell., var. linearis, Gray. Gentiana affinis, Griseb. Phlox Hoodii, Richardson. Gilia linearis. Gray. Echinospermum dcflexum, Lehm., var. American nm, Gray. Echinospermum floribundum, Lehm. Redowskii, Lehm., var. occidentale, Watson. Onosmodium Carolinianum, DC., var. molle, Gray. Solanum triflorum, Nutt. Pentstemon gracilis, Nutt. Pentstemon albidus, Nutt. acuminatus, Dougl. Castilleia parviflora. Bong. Orthocarims luteus, Nutt. Lycopus lucidus, Turcz., var. America- mis, Gray. Plantago eriopoda, Torr. Oxybaphus nyctagineus, Sweet. hirsutus, Sweet, angustifolius, Sweet. Amarantus blitoides, Watson. Cycloloma platyphyllum, Moquin. Monolepis chenopodioides, Moquin. Atriplex patulum, L., var. subspicatum, Watson. Atriplex argenteum, Nutt. Nuttallii, Watson. Suaeda depressa, Watson, and its var. erecta, Watson. Comandra pallida, A. DC. Allium retieulatum, Fras. Juncus Balticus, Dethard, var. montanus, Engelm. Carex stenophylla, Wahl, vesicaria, L. marcida, Boott. Douglasii, Boott. Beckmanniaerucaeformis, Host, var. uni- flora, Scribner. Stipa spartea, Trin. viridula, Trin. Siiorobolus cuspidatus, Torr. Avena pratensis, L., var. Americana, Scribner. Schedonnanlus Texanus, Steud. Bouteloua oligostachya, Torr. Distichlis maritima, Raf., var. stricta^ Thurber. Poa tenuifolia, Nutt. Festuca scabrella, Torr. Agropyrum glaucum, R. & S., var. occi- dentale, V. and S. Elymus Sitanion, Schultes. Woodsia scopulina, D. C. Eaton. An isolated eastern station of Claytonia Chamissonis, Esch., which ranges from Colorado to British Columbia and Alaska, is re- ported by Prof. John M. Holzinger in Winona county, south- eastern Minnesota ; and he also finds in the same county the most northeastern locality of Lactuca Ludoviciana, DC. Again in Good- hue county, southeastern Minnesota, Dr. J. II. Sandberg has collect- ed Erysimum asperum, DC., and Lesquerella Ludoviciana, Watson, whose eastern limits, so far as known, excepting these isolated Upham.J 150 [May 21, stations, are found respectively at Redwood Falls and Montevideo, Minn., about 125 and 150 miles farther west. The families and genera of these lists have been arranged as in the newly revised sixth edition of Gray’s Manual, in which, and in Coulter’s Manual of the Rocky Mountain Region, the general areas of the several species are briefly stated. For more definite notes of the relative abundance and geographic limits, or localities of known occurrence, of the species in British America, the student should consult the Catalogue of Canadian Plants, by Prof. John Macoun, published by the Geological and Natural History Survey of Canada ; and similar details in- Minnesota, including the southeastern part of the Red river basin, are given in my Catalogue of the Flora of Minnesota, published in the Twelfth Annual Report, for 1883, of the Geological and Natural History Survey of that state. Grasses and. flowers of the prairie. — Where lately herds of count- less buffaloes grazed, wheat fields now extend far as the eye can see on the fertile flat expanse of the Red river valley, and the ranch- man’s cattle, horses, and sheep range over the plains that stretch west toward the mountains. On this northeastern border of the great prairie region of the continent, the most plentiful and valu- able grasses, with notes of their habit of growth and comparative importance, are as follows. PRINCIPAL GRASSES IN THE BASIN OF THE RED RIVER. Spartina cynosuroides, Willd., the prevailing and often the only grass of “sloughs” (which is the term commonly applied to miry depressions of the prairie) , making good hay ; also largely used as fuel by immigrants in many districts remote from timber and railways, and as thatch by Mennonite colonists in Manitoba. Beckmannia erucieformis, Host, var. uniflora, Scribner, frequent or common on wet ground, where water stands a part of the year, from Port Arthur, Lake Superior, to the Rocky Mountains ; ex- tending northeast to Hudson bay and lake Mistassini. Panicum capillare, L., common along streams, and in sandy cul- tivated fields. Panicum virgatum, L., frequent, often abundant, on somewhat moist portions of the prairie, especially in southwestern Minnesota and South Dakota. Andropogon furcatus, Mukl., abundant on rather dry tracts in South and North Dakota, where it is usually called “Blue Joint.” 1890.] 151 [Up ham. and is highly esteemed for hay ; less common in Manitoba ; whitish and glaucous, not abundant, among the sand dunes of the Sheyenne delta of the glacial Lake Agassiz. Andropogon scoparius, Michx., abundant, occupying drier land than the last. Chrysopogon nutans, Benth., common or frequent in the Dako- tas, less so farther north; much cut for hay, with Andropogon furcatus and Panicum virgatum. Phalaris arundinacea, L., abundant in marshes. Hierochloe borealis, R. & S., very common on moist ground and along rivers and lakes throughout this northern prairie region. Stipa spartea, Trin., deservedly named Porcupine Grass, but more commonly called “Wild Oats” in Minnesota and the Dakotas ; abundant on the dry prairie, especially in South Dakota. Stipa viridula, Trin., extending east, on sandy alluvial soil of bottomlands, to the Red river; also common westward on the gen- eral prairie. Muhlenbergia glomerata, Trin. (chiefly the var. ramosa, Vasey) , plentiful on moist land ; frequently persisting as a weed in wheat fields and other cultivated ground. Sporobolus cuspidatus, Torr., common on dry portions of the prairie in the Dakotas, Manitoba, and Assiniboia. Sporobolus heterolepis, Gray, also plentiful from Nebraska to northwestern Manitoba. Agrostis alba, L., var. vulgaris, Thurber, indigenous and com- mon on moist land, especially northward. Agrostis scabra, Willd., abundant along rivers, so that in late summer the wheel ruts of roads are often filled with its dead pan- icles, broken off and blown thither by the wind. Deyeuxia Canadensis, Hook. f. (Calamagrostis Canadensis, Beauv.), abundant on wet meadows bordering streams, especially in the forest region. Deyeuxia neglecta, Kunth (Calamagrostis stricta, Trin.), plenti- ful on similar ground throughout the prairie region west of Winni- peg. Ammophila longifolia, Benth. (Calamagrostis longifolia, Hook.) , which binds the sand dunes along the south shore of lake Michi- gan, is generally abundant on sandy ridges through all the prairie region from the Red river west to the Rocky Mountains. Upham.] 152 [May 21, A vena pratensis, L., var. Americana, Scribner, common from Portage la Prairie westward. Dantkonia intermedia, Vasey, common from the Red river to the sources of the Qu’Appelle ; also found at the east in Anticosti and Gaspe ; extending west to Vancouver island. Bouteloua oligostachya, Torr., the most valuable and widely spread of the “ Buffalo Grasses,” observed as the main species of grass on large tracts of the prairie between Devil’s lake and the Souris river ; described by V asey and Havard as the commonest species on the great plains, surpassing all others in its importance as pasturage for stock of all kinds, even in winter, when its dried tufts or bunches still retain their nutritive quality. Phragmites communis, Trin., abundant, often ten to fifteen feet high, in the edges of lakes. A prostrate stem, twenty feet long, rooting at the joints, was observed at Red lake, Minnesota. The large size, broad leaves, and beautiful plumose panicles of this spe- cies rival the nearly allied Arundo Donax of the Old World, from which, according to Lindley and Moore’s “ Treasury of Botany,” the Homeric heroes made their arrows, while the tent of Achilles was thatched with its leaves. Kceleria cristata, Pers., very abundant on the dryer portions of the country, affording good pasturage ; estimated by Lieberg as constituting fully half of the entire growth of grass along the Northern Pacific railroad between the James and Yellowstone rivers. Distichlis maritima, Raf., var. stricta, Thurber, very abundant on the borders of saline and alkaline marshes. Poa tenuifolia, Nutt., one of the much prized “Bunch Grasses,” common from Brandon westward to the Rocky Mountains, and the most important pasture grass of British Columbia, Vancouver island, and southward. Poa nemoralis, L., forming much of the pasturage northward. Poa serotina, Ehrh., plentiful in swampy places on lakes and rivers. Poa pratensis, L., the famous “Blue Grass” of Kentucky, in- digenous and abundant, rapidly taking the place of other species westward, and destined, according to Macoun, to be the chief pasture grass of this region. Glyceria distans, Wahl., var. airoides, Vasey (Puccinellia, Pari.) , abundant in saline marshes from Winnipeg westward. Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist. Vol. XXV. Plate VI. BOUVE, GEOLOGY OF H1NGHAM. 1890.] 153 [Upham. Festuca scabrella, Torr., a valuable “ Bunch Grass,” abundant at Brandon and westward to the mountains. Bromus Kalmii, Gray, abundant northward. Agropyrum glaucum, R. & S., var. occidentale, V. & S., com- mon on moist land, especially where the soil is somewhat saline and alkaline ; in Montana, according to Scribner, the most highly valued of the native grasses for hay. Agropyrum tenerum, Vasey, abundant, with the preceding, from W innipeg to Edmonton and southward ; one of the best grasses for hay. Dr. Vasey remarks that in southwestern Minnesota and South Dakota, wherever the ground has been broken and not culti- vated, Agropyrum glaucum and A. tenerum have commonly taken possession. Agropyrum caninum, R. & S., plentiful in the northern prairie region, from Winnipeg to Edmonton. Hordeum jubatum, L., a worthless species, well named Squirrel- tail Grass and “Tickle Grass,” very abundant by roadsides and on slightly saline, moist land. Elymus Canadensis, L., a conspicuous species, common on the banks and bluffs of rivers. Besides the grasses, the prairies bear multitudes of native flow- ers, of showy red, purple, blue, yellow, and orange hues, and pure white, which bloom from early spring till the severe frosts of autumn. Earliest of all is the Pasque-flower, named for its bloom- ing at Easter, common over all the prairie region. With this, or later in the spring, are other species of wind-flower, the wild col- umbine, indigenous buttercups, violets, and many more. During the summer the prairies are decked with species of lark- spur, Psoralea, Amorpha, Petalostemon, Astragalus, Oxytropis, Vicia, Lathyrus, Geum, rose, evening primrose, many Compositse, nearly all conspicuous by their flowers, the harebell, gentian, phlox, Rents temon, Gerardia, Orthocarpus, Pycnanthemum, Monarda, Spiranthes, Sisyrinchium, Uvularia, Smilacina, lily, wild onion, spiderwort, etc. Often I have seen large tracts of the natural prairie yellow with sunflowers or golden-rod ; other areas purple with Petalostemon, Liatris, or Gerardia, or blue with asters ; and still others white with the profusely flowering Galium boreale, L. Several yellow- flowered species of the Compositse, blooming in the middle and later portions of summer, resemble each other by grow- ing frequently in clumps or bunches, as the Grindelia, Aplopappus, Upliam.] 154 [May 21, Chrysopsis, and Gutierrezia in the list of western plants, here noted in the declining order of their height. A clayey soil prevails throughout the Red river valley, except- ing the small beach ridges of sand and gravel marking the former shore lines of Lake Agassiz, and the sandy expanses of deltas which were brought into this ancient lake by the Buffalo, Sand Hill, Sheyenne, Pembina, and Assiniboine rivers. Numerous species of plants prefer the sandy beaches and grow there in greater abundance and luxuriance than elsewhere, among these being the pasque-flower, Psoralea argophylla, Pursh, and P. escu- lenta, Pursh, two varieties of Potentilla Pennsylvanica, L., Rosa Arkansana, Porter, Liatris punctata, Hook., Chrysopsis villosa, Nutt., Lepachys columnaris, Torr. & Gray, Gaillardia aristata, Pursh, Lilium Philadelphicum, L., and Ammophila longifolia, Benth. Near Arden, Manitoba, one of the beaches of Lake Ag- assiz has been named by the settlers u Orange Ridge,” from its orange-red lilies, and another is called the “ Rose Ridge.” Maritime species on saline and alkaline soil. — The following plants peculiar to the sea- shore and its salt marshes, not found elsewhere in the Eastern States and Provinces, excepting some of them at salt springs in New York and along the shores of the Great Lakes, re-appear in abundance on the saline and alkaline soil in certain parts of the Red river valley and of the western prairies and arid plains. MARITIME PLANTS IN THE BASIN OF THE RED RIVER. Buda marina, Dumort (Spergularia media, Presl.), common on the borders of saline lakes from Winnipeg to the Rocky Moun- tains, and extending north to Great Bear lake. Glaux maritima, L., a pretty little flower, on moist portions of the prairie, often plentiful but half hidden in the grass ; also found on the borders of saline and alkaline lakes and marshes. Heliotropium Curassavicum, L., common on the shores of brack- ish lakes ; observed in abundance locally in dried sloughs near Towner and Devil’s Lake, North Dakota. Plantago eriopoda, Torr., very abundant on moist, flat, alkaline land ; observed eastward to eight miles east of Breckenridge, Min- nesota, and to the vicinity of Grand Forks, Pembina, and Winni- peg. Chenopodium rubrum, L., and its var. humile, Moquin, common 1890. J 155 [Upham. or frequent in brackish sloughs, when they become dried up, oc- curring thus eastward to Devil’s Lake and the Red river ; and since the settlement of the country becoming a common weed by road- sides and in cultivated fields. Atriplex patulum, L., var. hastatum, Gray, abundant on alka- line land and on the margins of saline lakes ; a plentiful weed on newly broken, slightly alkaline soil, from the Red river to the Rocky Mountains. Salicornia herbacea, L., infrequent, but in some places plentiful, on salty and alkaline, moist land in the Red river valley ; very abundant on the shores of saline lakes westward. Salsola Kali, L., occasionally found on alkaline soil in Nebraska, northwestern Iowa, and South and North Dakota, to the Souris river near Towner. Rumex salicifolius, Weinmann, very common around salt marsh- es and ponds and on saline soil ; also, sometimes in only slightly (if in any degree) saline dr alkaline localities, as at Vermilion lake, Minnesota. Rumex maritimus, L., abundant in brackish marshes and around saline lakes, from Winnipeg to the Rocky Mountains; filling sloughs to the exclusion of other vegetation, near Pembina, there dying and changed to a rich reddish brown color before the end of July; also frequent in fresh marshes eastward to Minneapolis. Triglochin maritima, L., common on wet prairies and in saline marshes. This species in Manitoba and Minnesota (as remarked by Rev. E. J. Hill, and as noted under the var. elata, Gray, in the fifth edition of the Manual) seems to bear fresh water or bog con- ditions as well as T. palustris. Scirpus maritimus, L., frequent on the borders of salt lakes and marshes, Turtle Mountain and westward. Distichlis maritima, Raf., in its var. stricta, Thurber, is very abundant on alkaline soil and in brackish marshes from Winnipeg west to British Columbia. Glyceriadistans, Wahl., var. airoides, Vasey (Puccinellia, Pari.), plentiful in saline marshes from the western part of the Red river basin to the Rocky Mountains. Ilordeum jubatum, L., abundant on only very slightly alkaline soil through nearly all of Nebraska, the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Manitoba, westward to the Rocky Mountains and far northward. Various other plants are found in abundance on these alkaline Upham.] 156 [May 21, lands, or in brackish sloughs and ponds, or on the borders of sa- line lakes. These include Ranunculus Cymbalaria, Pursh, Ribes setosum, Lindl., Grindelia squarrosa, Dunal, several species of Ar- temisia, Senecio palustris, Hook., Crepis runcinata, Ton*. & Gray, Chenopodinm glaucum, L. (indigenous), Monolepis chenopodioides, Moquin, Atriplex patulum, L., var. subspicatnm, Watson, A. ar- genteum, Nutt., and A. Nuttallii, Watson, Suseda depressa, Wat- son, and its var. erecta, Watson, Zygadenus elegans, Pursh, Triglochin palustris, L., Potamogeton marinus, L., and its var. Macounii, Morong, Zannichellia palustris, L., Scirpus pungens, Vahl., and Carex flava, L., var. viridula, Bailey. Introduced species. Weeds. — Nearly all of our plants naturalized from other countries, mostly from Europe, occur in such situations and conditions as to entitle themselves to be called weeds, under the definition given by Lindley and Moore, that a weed is “ any plant which obtrusively occupies cultivated or dressed ground, to the exclu- sion or injury of some particular crop intended to be grown.” A few, however, which are not commonly troublesome in fields and gardens, find congenial locations along roadsides and fences, on rail- way embankments, or in door-yards and around deserted dwellings. But we cannot say, conversely, that all weeds are introduced spe- cies ; for many of our most annoying and persistent weeds, espec- ially in the western region of the prairies and plains, are indigenous species, and some of these are rapidly extending their geographic range eastward. In the state of Minnesota, comprising 84,286 square miles, there are now known about 1,775 species and varieties of phsenogamous and vascular cryptogamous plants, of which 145 are naturalized and adventive species. Probably the flora of the Red river basin, which lies partly in Minnesota and includes, with the tributary As- siniboine, approximately the same area, has about the same total number of species and proportion of acclimated aliens. In gen- eral, the weeds of the two regions are identical; but some that have become abundant in the earliest settled portions of Minnesota have not yet spread to the Red river valley, or occur but rarely there. On the other hand, a few that are pests to the farmers of Winnipeg, Kildonan, and Selkirk, are unknown in the upper Mis- sissippi region, as about Saint Cloud and the u Twin Cities” of Minneapolis and St. Paul. During the future years many weeds that are now rare or restricted to limited areas will doubtless over- 1890.] 157 [Upham. spread the entire Red river basin, advancing with the increase of settlement and the subjection of the whole country to tillage ; and many new species of weeds also, according to experience elsewhere, will inevitably come in. The agriculture of onr Atlantic slope was necessarily preceded by the clearing away of portions of the primeval forest ; for no naturally prairie district existed there. Few of the indigenous plants of that area were fitted by their inherited tendencies to sur- vive and thrive in the open land and cultivated fields, which were therefore chiefly supplied with their weeds by unintentional impor- tation from Europe, as in grain, grass seed, and in the many almost mysterious ways by which they always accompany the farmer colo- nist. But in the great campestrian region of the West some of the native species, long accustomed to open and unshaded land, find still more favorable conditions for rank growth and rapid extension of their geographic limits when the soil is broken by the plow and sown and planted with crops. Hence it will be desirable, in the following annoted list of the most plentiful weeds of this basin, to distinguish the naturalized species, which is done by printing their names in Italic type. PRINCIPAL WEEDS, INDIGENOUS AND NATURALIZED, IN THE BASIN OF THE RED RIVER. Ranunculus acris , L. ( Tall Buttercups) , infrequent, yet observed at many places, in Minnesota ; reported by Macoun as becoming common in eastern Manitoba. Arabis lyrata, L. (Rock Cress), occasionally plentiful on dry fallow land near Brandon, Manitoba. Draba nemorosa, L., var. leiocarpa, Lindb., plentiful in a fallow field on the bluff at the Elbow of the Souris river, Manitoba. Camelina sativa, Crantz ( False Flax), becoming frequent in cul- tivated fields, and along railways, in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Manitoba. Barbarea vulgaris, R. Br. (Winter Cress, Yellow Rocket), some- times a weed in grain-fields, North Dakota, apparently the var. ar- cuata, Koch, which is found there indigenous in dried sloughs. Erysimum cheiranthoides, L. (Wormseed Mustard), a frequent weed in gardens and cultivated fields. Erysimum parviflorum, Nutt. (Small-flowered Prairie Rocket), Upliam.] 158 [May 21, a railway weed at Minneapolis ; frequent in grain and fallow fields, Langdon, North Dakota, and westward. Sisymbrium incisum, Engelm., also common or frequent in old fields at Langdon and westward. Sisymbrium officinale. Scop. {Hedge Mustard) , common in towns and villages, and on fallow land. Brassica Sinoffistrum, Boiss. ( Field Mustard , Charlock ), com- mon or frequent, and very troublesome, in grain fields of Minne- sota and North Dakota, so that farmers allowing it to go to seed are subjected to a penalty by law ; frequent, but well suppressed, in Manitoba. Brassica nigra , Koch ( Black Mustard ), a common weed in southern Minnesota ; less frequent in the Red river valley. Brassica campestris , L. {Kale), common or frequent in grain fields in Manitoba, and spreading into Minnesota. Capsella Bursa-pastoris, Moench {Shepherd’s Purse), “ found in profusion wherever there is cultivation.” Thlaspi arvense, L. {Field Penny cress, Mitliridate Mustard ), in Manitoba called “ St inking Weed” from its flavoring the milk and butter of cows that have eaten it ; a most noxious weed, long es- tablished and very abundant on cultivated land in the vicinity of Winnipeg, recently spreading into Minnesota and North Dakota; observed, in 1887, completely filling a fallow field one mile east of Northcote, Minn. ; also the same year seen plentiful in fields near Georgetown, Minn., and common on railway grades and less fre- quent by roadsides at Emerson and Gretna on the international boundary; first noticed near Fargo and Moorhead in 1886. Lepidinm Virginicum, L., a common or frequent roadside weed in Minnesota and the Dakotas, northward to Langdon, immigrat- ing from farther south. Lepidinm intermedium, Gray, abundant, on roadsides and in fields throughout Minnesota and North Dakota, and from Manitoba to the Rocky mountains and Peace river. Lepidium sativum , L., frequent, as reported by Macoun, close to old Fort Garry, Winnipeg. Saponaria officinalis , L. {Soapwort, Bouncing Bet) , occasionally adventive by roadsides in southern Minnesota ; rare in the Red river valley. Saponaria Vaccaria, L. {Cow Herb), becoming common and per- nicious in wheat fields throughout Minnesota and Manitoba; in 1890. J 159 [Upham. 1885 reported by Macoun as already introduced along the whole line of the Canadian Pacific Railway from W innipeg to the Colum- bia river. Silene nocti flora, L. {Night- flowering Catchfly), a frequent weed in fields and gardens, both in Minnesota and Manitoba. Lychnis Githago , Lam. ( Corn-Cockle ), plentiful and very trouble- some in wheat-fields. Stellaria media, Smith {Chickweed) , common throughout in gar- dens and fields. Cerastium viscosum , L. {Mouse-ear Chickweed ), becoming fre- quent in cultivated land, especially in gardens. Cerastium vulgatum , L. {Larger Mouse-ear Chickweed), common or frequent in same situations as the last two ; apparently indige- nous in Ontario and eastward, being often common there in wood- lands. 1'ortulaca oleracea , L. {Purslane), generally an abundant weed in market gardens and other highly cultivated land ; plentiful in Indian corn-fields at the O jib way village, Red lake, Minnesota; abundant on railway enbankments at Tintah, Minn., and Denbigh, North Dakota; but in 1887 not yet common in the Red river valley north of Fargo, nor in Manitoba. Malva rotundifolia , L. {Common Mallow), common or frequent in Minnesota, extending northwestward to Todd county, »ear the southeastern border of the Red river basin ; but not observed in Manitoba nor North Dakota. Oxalis corniculata, L., var. stricta, Sav. (Yellow Wood-Sorrel), occasionally found in great abundance, forming a matted growth, in wheat-fields in the northeast part of North Dakota, and fre- quently seen there springing up through the sods of newly broken ground. Melilotus alba, Lam. ( White Melilot, Sweet Clover), becoming fre- quent, especially southward ; spreading abundantly along the road- sides in some parts of Cottonwood county, Minnesota. Geuin album, Gmelin (White Avens), frequent southward by roadsides. Potentilla Norvegica, L., common in waste places and in culti- vated ground. Potentilla Anserina, L. (Silver- Weed), occasionally a plentiful weed beside roads and railways and in moist fallow fields, in North Upham.] 160 [May 21, Dakota and Manitoba ; also very abundant on moist portions of the prairie. Agrimonia Eupatoria, L., frequent on roadsides. Rosa Arkansana, Porter, common in fallow fields ; sometimes growing with grain, and causing annoyance in harvesting. CEnothera biennis, L. (Common Evening Primrose), frequently a weed in fallow fields in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Manitoba. CEnothera albicaulis, Nutt., plentiful, occurring as a weed, beside railways, and less frequently in wheat-fields, between Glyndon and Muskoda, and at other localities, in western Minnesota, and through- out the agricultural portion of North Dakota ; seldom seen in Man- itoba ; sometimes, but rarely, observed in these districts in situations where it would appear indigenous ; very common in the drier part of the prairie region westward. Mollugo verticillata, L. {Carpet- weed) , rare in the Red river val- ley, but common or frequent as a garden weed in southern Minne- sota ; also occurring there in rocky places and on sandy river-banks, appearing indigenous, but perhaps in all cases introduced from far- ther south. Padinaca sativa, L. ( Parsnip ), frequently adventive in Minne- sota, and more common in Manitoba. Grindelia squarrosa, Dunal, locally an abundant weed of road- sides and fields in the vicinity of Winnipeg, Larimore, Devil’s Lake, Cooperstown, Jamestown, and westward; in other localities surely indigenous to the eastern limit of its range. Erigeron Canadensis, L. (Horse-weed, Butter-weed, but oftener called “Fire-weed”), a cosmopolitan weed common in fields and waste ground ; frequently plentiful on tracts of burned woodland, with Epilobium angustifolium, L., and Erechthites hieracifolia, Raf., both of which are also called “Fire-weed.” Erigeron strigosus, Muhl., frequent on dry fallow ground. Iva xanthiifolia, Nutt., the most abundant and rank weed in rich soil of waste places, roadsides, and about stables and deserted dwellings, throughout the Red river valley and westward. Ambrosia trifida, L. (Great Ragweed), habit of growth, and range, like the last ; but neither of these was observed in the lately settled district about Langdon, North Dakota, where the geologic formation is the Fort Pierre shale thinly covered with till, their places being there taken by many Chenopodiacese. 1890. ] 161 [UphaiH. Ambrosia artemisisefolia, L. (Roman Wormwood, Bitterweed), common along railways, and in fields and towns. Ambrosia psilostachya, DC., similar with the preceding in habit, but less plentiful. Xanthium Canadense, Mill. (Cocklebur), frequent in waste places, and especially on alluvial soil of rivers. Rudbeckia hirta, L., frequent in fallow fields and along rail- ways ; also frequent, occasionally abundant, on the general prairie. Helianthus annuus, L. (Common Sunflower, indigenous), fre- quent, sometimes persisting as a rank weed, on alluvial bottom- lands. Helianthus rigidus, Desf., very common on the natural prairie, one to three feet high ; continuing as a bad weed in wheat-fields during the first two or three years of cultivation, there growing from three to five feet in height. Helianthus Maximilian!, Schrader, the most noteworthy species of sunflower in the Red river basin, more plentiful than the last, preferring somewhat moister land ; usually from nine to eighteen inches high, or sometimes three to five feet, on the prairie, but persisting as the most troublesome weed in wheat-fields, where it commonly grows four to six feet in height and sometimes eight feet or more. Bidens frondosa, L. (Common Beggar-ticks), frequent on road- sides and in waste places, on rich, moist soil. Anthemis Gotula , DC. ( May-weed , Dog Fennel ), common, often abundant, in door-yards, on roadsides, etc., preferring rather hard, clayey soil, through the southern two-thirds of Minnesota ; scarce or absent from Ada northward in the Red river valley, but likely to spread over this entire basin. Achillea Millefolium, L. (Yarrow, Milfoil), frequent in fields and along roadsides ; indigenous and common throughout the dis- trict. Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum , L. (Ox-eye Daisy, White-weed ), rare and local in Minnesota and Manitoba ; not observed by me in the Red river basin. Tanacetum vulgar e, L. (Common Tansy), frequent along roads and fences, near dwellings. Artemisia Canadensis, Michx., A. dracunculoides, Pursh, A. Ludoviciana, Nutt., and A. biennis, Willd. (Wormwood species), are common in fallow fields, on roadsides, and along railways. 11 FEBRUARY, 1891. PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV Upham.] 162 [May 21, Arctium Lappa, L. ( Common Burdock ), frequent or common on vacant lots in towns, along roadsides, etc., especially southward. Cnicus lanceolatus , Hoffm. ( Common Thistle ), frequent, but not yet generally plentiful or troublesome. Cnicus arvensis, Hoffm. (“ Canada Thistle”), too common about Winnipeg and along the Red river in Manitoba, but infrequent in other parts of the basin. Prof. W. J. Beal, as quoted by L. H. Pammel in his list of the “ Weeds of southwestern Wisconsin and southeastern Minnesota,” says of this species : — “Its course west- ward is likely to be checked by the fact that it has usually failed to produce seeds on the prairies.” Lygodesmia juncea, Don., observed as a weed in cultivated fields on the “First Pembina Mountain,” near Walhalla, North Dakota. Taraxacum officinale, Weber ( Common Dandelion ), frequent along roadsides, in pastures, etc., about Winnipeg, and plentiful at the w'est end of the main street in Saint Vincent; generally rare or absent throughout the Red river valley and westward, but it may be expected to become abundant. Sonclius oleraceus, L. ( Common Sow-Thistle ), occasional in waste places around dwellings. Sonclius asper, Vili. ( Spiny Sow-Thistle) , more frequent, and occurring in cultivated fields. Apocynum androssemifolium, L. (Spreading Dogbane) , frequent along fences and on fallow land. Asclepias speciosa, Torr., and A. Cornuti, Decaisne (Milkweed, Silkweed), are occasionally troublesome in grain-fields. Cynoglossum officinale, L. ( Common Hound's- Tongue, Sheep Bur) , becoming a frequent weed of pastures, roadsides, and waste places. Echinospennum Virginicum, Lehm. (Beggar’s Lice), frequent on borders of fields adjoining woodlands and thickets. Ecliinospermum Lappula , Lehm. (Stick seed, Small Sheep Bur), frequent, occasionally abundant, by roadsides, in pastures, and es- pecially in the vicinity of towns. Echinospennum Redowskii, Lehm., var. occidentale, Watson, in habit and frequency nearly like the last. Convolvulus sepium, L. (Hedge Bindweed, Bracted Bindweed), sometimes troublesome in grain-fields, in the same way as Polygo- num Convolvulus, which is more abundant in cultivated ground. Solanum triflorum, Nutt. (Three-flowered Nightshade), a fre- 1890.] 163 [Upham. quent or common weed on newly broken prairie, and occasionally in cultivated fields, also along railways, in the vicinity of Langdon and Church’s Ferry, North Dakota, and westward, growing often ten times as large as in its favorite natural locations, which are the mounds of earth thrown up by badgers and gophers in digging their holes. Solanum nigrum, L. (Common Nightshade),' indigenous, also cosmopolitan ; frequent, usually in cultivated ground and waste places, as if an introduced species. Verbascum Thapsus , L. ( Common Mullein ), common, or fre- quent, through eastern Minnesota p but rare, or altogether absent, in the Red river valley and westward. Linaria vulgaris , Mill. (“ Butter and Eggs”), becoming a fre- quent roadside weed through southern Minnesota ; but rare in the Red river valley. Teucrium Canadense, L. (American Germander, Wood Sage), extending north in the Red river valley to Pembina, occasionally a troublesome weed on moist, cultivated land. Nepeta Cataria , L. {Catnip), frequent near dwellings, and along fences of gardens. Brunella vulgaris, L. (Self-heal, Heal-all), common by road- sides and in pastures ; indigenous, occurring in damp woodlands and copses. Leonurus Cardiaca , L. ( Common Motherwort ), an occasional weed near dwellings. Galeopsis Tetrahit , L. ( Common Hemp-Nettle) , frequent about stables and in rich cultivated soil. Stachys palustris, L., abundant on moist ground and margins of sloughs, often persisting as a weed in wheat-fields. Plantago major, L. (Common or Wayside Plantain), and P. Ru- gelii, Decaisne, both are plentiful along roads and in dooryards, also in meadows and pastures. Oxybaphus hirsutus, Sweet, frequently seen as a weed on newly broken ground and in cultivated fields. Amarantus retroflexus, L. (Pigweed), indigenous on the plains and in the Rock}^ Mountain region ; common or frequent through- out Minnesota, and becoming common in Manitoba and westward, mostly in manured or rich soil, around stables, and in waste places. Amarantus albus, L. (Tumble-weed), indigenous throughout this Upham.] 164 [May 21, region ; frequent in the Red river valley, and abundant in the great- er part of North Dakota, western Manitoba, and Assiniboia, grow- ing on both the longest cultivated and the newly broken land ; also a common weed along railways. Prof. J. C. Arthur writes of the origin of its name, as follows: “It grows in a globular form, of- ten three or four feet in diameter. When killed by frost, the branch- es remain rigid, the plant soon loosens from the soil, and the wind drives it bounding over the fields and prairies, until brought ip in some fence corner. When the corner is full, those that follow are enabled to scale the fence. With a change of wind, all the lodged plants are set flying in another direction. This is an effective method of scattering the seeds.” Prairie fires are sometimes car- ried by these rolling dead weeds across broad fire-breaks of plowed land. Amarantus blitoides, Watson, a common native weed of road- sides and waste places, rapidly spreading eastward, already intro- duced as far as western New York ; plentiful in Otter Tail and Becker counties, Minnesota, and at Valley City, Cooperstown, Towner, Minot, and Williston, North Dakota, but not found in some districts, as around Langdon ; not reported in Manitoba, nor westward on the north side of the international boundary. [Since preparing this paper, I have found this plant in August, 1890, es- tablished on Frank street and at the corner of this street and North avenue, Cambridge, Mass., near the West End car stables, where it probably was introduced in grain from the west.] Cycloloma platyphyllum, Moquin (Winged Pigweed), reported by Bessey as a “ tumble-weed” in portions of Nebraska, was ob- served on the railway embankment at Denbigh, north of the Souris river, North Dakota. Chenopodium Boscianum, Moquin, like the next, common on the prairie and thriving more on new 44 breaking,” about Langdon and westward. Chenopodium album, L. (Lamb’s Quarters, Pigweed) , a common indigenous weed on the dry prairies, often growing three to five feet high on gopher mounds, becoming abundant and equally rank nearly everywhere on newly broken land about Langdon, Devil’s Lake, and westward, also luxuriant along the embankments and ditches of railways; eastward, as in the Red river valley, plentiful in cultivated soil, around barns, and in waste places. Chenopodium urhicum , L., infrequent, chiefly in or pear towns, 1890.] 165 [Upham. as in waste places and streets ; noted at Pembina by Dr. V. Ha- vard . Chenopodium hybridum, L. (Maple-leaved Goosefoot), indige- nous, abundant in woods and about cabins and in clearings, near Lake Itasca, Minnesota, and on the shores of Lake Winnipeg and westward ; extending north to Great Bear lake. Chenopodium glaucum, L. (Oak -leaved Goosefoot), indigenous on the dry, somewhat saline and alkaline portions of the prairie ; reported byMacoun as “very common on newly broken, saline soil from Winnipeg throughout the prairie region and across the Rocky Mountains on the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway.” Chenopodium rubrum, L. (Coast Blite), becoming a common weed, as already mentioned in the foregoing list of maritime plants of this basin. Chenopodium capitatum, Watson (Strawberry Blite), in woods, and especially on newly cleared tracts and the bottomlands of rivers ; a common railway weed far westward. Atriplex patulum, L., var. liastatum, Gray, and var. subspica- tum, Watson, and A. argenteum, Nutt., all common on alkaline portions of the prairie in the Red river valley and westward ; also thriving as weeds on newly broken land and by roadsides. Suseda depressa, Watson, and its var. erecta, Watson, both growing on same or moister alkaline soil, and having similar range with the last, the var. erecta sometimes filling dried sloughs with a rank growth ; also, like the last, persisting as weeds by roadsides, along railways, and in cultivated ground. Salsola Kali, L. (Saltwort), observed near Oakes, North Dakota, as a railway weed, and in a sandy cultivated field on the Souris bottomland near Towner. Rumex crispus, L. ( Curled Dock , Yellow Dock), becoming com- mon in rather damp cultivated ground and by roadsides. Rumex Acetosella , L. ( Field or Sheep Sorrel ), already common, often abundant, on gravelly and sandy soil, in clearings of woods, and in cultivated or especially fallow land. Polygonum avicul are, L. (Knotgrass, Doorweed), a common weed of dooryards, but less abundant than the next, in the Red river valley and westward. Polygonum erectum, L., very abundant in dooryards and along roads ; quite distinct, by its erect and rank growth, large and wide Upham.] 166 [May 21, leaves, etc., from the preceding, and I have observed no intergra- dation between these species. Polygonum Pennsylvanicum, L., frequent or common in moist, waste places, especially southward. Polygonum Persicaria , L. (Lady’s Thumb), habit like the last; becoming introduced and spreading with settlements westward. Polygonum Hydropiper, L. (Common Smartweed or Water-Pep- per) , indigenous, often growing in moist woods ; also a frequent weed of roadsides and wet pastures.' Polygonum Convolvulus, L. (Black Bindweed ), a bad weed of cultivated ground ; especially troublesome in fields of grain by caus- ing it, when beaten down by wind and rain, to remain so. Euphorbia maculata, L. (Spotted Spurge), frequent, usually growing as a weed of roadsides, dooryards, and waste places, pre- ferring sandy soil. Cannabis sativa , L. (Hemp), a common or frequent weed in waste places of towns. Urtiea gracilis, Ait. (Tall Wild Nettle), frequent or common in rich soil, along fences and near dwellings, especially on bottomlands of rivers or near woods ; indigenous westward to the Rocky Moun- tains and north to the Mackenzie river. Panicum capillare, L. (Old-witch Grass), common on cultivated ground and in waste places, especially on sandy alluvial bottom- lands. Panicum Crus-galli , L. (Barnyard Grass), common in moist rich soil, especially in barnyards and along roadside ditches near dwellings. Setaria glauca, Beauv. (Foxtail), and S. viridis, Beauv. (Green Foxtail) , both called “ Pigeon Grass,” are becoming common, spread- ing westward, in cultivated ground and waste places. Muhlenbergia glomerata, Trin., vaf. rarnosa, Vasey, abundant in deserted fields near Red Lake Agency, Minnesota ; often plenti- ful on cultivated ground in Pembina county, North Dakota. Avena fatua, L. ( Wild Oats), rare in Minnesota, more frequent in Manitoba, growing in grain-fields and on waste ground ; becom- ing very troublesome in oat-fields in Wisconsin. Eragrostis major , Host, abundant in dooryards and by roadsides throughout the south half of Minnesota and in the Red river val- ley. [It was found byGeyer in 1839 on sandy plains in the valley 167 [Upham . of the Sheyenne river, North Dakota, which indicates that it was either introduced by the Indians or is indigenous in this region.] Bromus secalmus, L. ( Cheat or Chess) , occasional in wheat-fields ; seldom troublesome, as its seeds are now generally separated from seed wheat by fanning mills. Agropyrum repens, Beauv. (Couch Grass, “Witch Grass”), fre- quent, but here rarely so plentiful in cultivated ground as to be troublesome. Hordeum jubatum, L. (Squirrel- tail Grass, “Tickle Grass”), common on roadsides, and on poorly cultivated, moist land. Concluding remarks . — In connection with my study of the gla- cial drift of the Red river basin and of the shore lines and delta de- posits of Lake Agassiz, the most interesting inquiry concerning the geographic range of plants there is whether we may learn from it somewhat of the climatic changes of the Quaternary era, with its Ice Age and enforced migrations of the flora and fauna of north- ern countries. The main outlines of these effects of the Glacial period have been pointed out and ably discussed by Edward Forbes, Asa Gray, Alfred Russel Wallace and others, who have thus ex- plained many peculiarities in the distribution of species, as the oc- currence of arctic plants on tlie^summits of mountains in temperate latitudes, and the identity of a considerable number of species of plants found in both the United States and Japan but absent from Europe. As geologists are lately finding valuable additions to our knowledge of important orographic movements of our continent during the Mesozoic, Tertiary and Quaternary eras from the pres- ent conditions of its rivers and their relations to geologic forma- tions, so the pages of thei geologic record receive another useful side-light from the range of our present species of animals and plants. Professor Gray well stated this bearing of botanic science upon geology, in the conclusion reached by his comparison of the floras of Japan and North America, “that the extant vegetable kingdom has a long and eventful history, and that the explanation of apparent anomalies in the geographical distribution of species may be found in the various and prolonged climatic or other phys- ical vicissitudes to which they have been subject in earlier times.” The general likeness of the Arctic flora all around the globe, the many instances of relationship and identity in the north temperate floras, and the increasing divergence of prevailing types as we pass to the equatorial regions and the southern hemisphere, indicate that Upham.] 168 [May 21, in late geologic time circumpolar lands have been united, permitting free land communication and causing the same plants and animals to extend throughout the whole Arctic area. But glacial drift and striae show that after this a colder climate enveloped northwestern Europe, British America and the northern part of the United States wdth thick accumulations of snow and ice ; and I believe that this climatic change was due to the increase of the northern eleva- tion of the land through which the continents had become united. Not only vegetation but all seeds upon the glaciated areas must have been destroyed, though the species were mostly preserved by migration southward. Thus various species of the preglacial cir- cumpolar flora whose retreat from the European ice-sheet was cut off by the Pyrenees, Alps, Carpathians and Caucasus, so that they perished, escaped from extinction in Asia, where no general ice- sheet existed, and in North America, where no transverse ranges of mountains barred their retreat from the ice. The glacial period is past, but the mild Arctic climate of Tertiary times has not re- turned ; and species whose range was formerly continuous through the high northern latitudes are now found occupying widely separated temperate districts in Asia and on our own continent, the time since the Ice Age having been too brief for them to become changed into new forms by the influences of their different environment. Many plants, however, have been changed during the Ice Age and the postglacial epoch, and survive in slightly unlike represen- tative species, as they are called, each of the three grand divisions of northern land, North America, Asia, and Europe, possessing a form thus derived from a common preglacial ancestor. Professor Gray has conjectured that Asia may have been still united by a land passage with Alaska during the earlier part of the postglacial epoch ; but he believed, from the noticeable contrast between the Arctic flora of North America and that of Greenland, that there has been no postglacial connection of land across Baffin bay nor Davis strait. This contrast seems chiefly attributable to the glacial extinction of species in Europe which survived in North America, as before noted, and to the extension of the impoverished European flora to the Faeroe islands, Iceland, and Greenland, after the rigorous cold and glaciation of these lands had abated. The difference of the plants found on the opposite sides of Baffin bay, presenting a definite break while elsewhere throughout the Arctic zone they are intermingled as a single continuous flora, with gradual 1890. j 169 [Upham. differentiation toward each end, accords with the testimony of the raised beaches of Labrador, Greenland and Grinnell Land, with re- cent marine shells 1,000 to 2,000 feet above the sea, which show that during the Glacial period the Baffin bay region, after having stood much higher than now, as is known by its fiords, sank far be- low its present level, and during the postglacial epoch has been again uplifted. But the derivation of the plants of the Faeroes, Iceland and Greenland from Europe could not have taken place through the agency of sea currents nor winds, which would the rather favor their coming from America ; and therefore botany seems to contrib- ute to geology the proof that the great preglacial elevation of the northeastern Atlantic region, unlike that of western Greenland and Labrador, continued through the Ice Age, the spaces which are now sea between Greenland and the British Isles having become sub- merged, as pointed out by James Geikie, during the recent epoch, after affording a land passage for the European flora. The entire basin of the Red river of the North was covered by the ice-sheet, which also extended south to Saint Louis and south- westward beyond the Missouri river at the time of its maximum area in the early part of the Glacial period, and to Des Moines, Yankton, the Coteaudu Missouri, and the Elbow of the South Sas- katchewan at the time of its later great incursion, when it formed the terminal moraines that stretch across the upper Mississippi and upper Missouri regions, western Manitoba, and Assiniboia. Arctic and boreal plants were driven south during these epochs to the cen- tral part of the United States, and at the close of the Ice Age they followed the receding ice-sheet and again took possession of the great northern region from which they had been expelled. With the restoration of a temperate climate throughout the northern United States and southern Canada, the Arctic species found them- selves no longer able to survive there, excepting on the cool heights of mountains, notably the White Mountains and the Adirondacks, and, in the case of a few species, on the cool high northern shores of lake Superior and on the adjacent Isle Roy ale. These stations of Arctic plants are divided by several hundreds of miles from their general northern range. We may also class with these the isolated southern stations of northern species observed in Minnesota and adjoining states, as the white pine and balsam fir, Adoxa Moschat- ellina, L., Mertensia paniculata, Don, and Phegopteris calcarea, Fee, which, with other northern species, are found on bleak river- Upham.] 170 [May 21, bluffs at Decorah, Iowa; the similar occurrence of white pines at many localities on river-bluffs in southeastern Minnesota, many miles southwest of the ordinary limits of this species ; of the May- flower (Epigaea repens, L.) at Plainview, Minn. ; of Scolochloa fes- tucacea, Link, in Emmet county, Iowa ; and of Achillea multiflora’ Hook., on the Pembina and Park rivers, North Dakota. All these are readily accounted for as remnants of the Arctic and boreal flora which was forced to migrate alternately southward and northward by the climatic changes of the glacial and postglacial epochs. Countries bordering the North Atlantic have experienced gener- ally warmer temperatures than now, both of the sea itself and of the air and winds upon the land, for a considerable time since the Glacial period, apparently extending, but probably in diminishing degree, nearly to our own day. On the coast of New England and the Eastern Provinces, colonies of southern species of marine mollusks are found in Casco and Quohog bays, Maine, and even in the southern part of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, such as are com- mon along the warmer shores south of Cape Cod, but whose con- tinuous range does not pass north of Massachusetts. These isolated southern species include the oyster (Ostrea Virginiana, Lister), quohog (Venus mercenaria, L.), Pecten irradians, Lam., Ilyanassa obsoleta, Stimpson, Urosalpinx cinerea, Stimpson, and others. Professor Verrill believes that they are “survivors from a time when the marine climate of the whole coast, from Cape Cod to Nova Sco- tia and the Bay of Fundy, was warmer than at present, and these species had a continuous range from southern New England to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.” Furthermore, we have to note that oys- ter and quohog shells are found in abundance in the Indian shell- heaps on the coast of northeastern Massachusetts and on islands in Casco bay, Maine, where they are thus known to have flourished in very recent times, though now they are rare or extinct in the same localities. A few southern plants also survive from this warmer period on or near our northern Atlantic coast, as the Magnolia glauca, L., which grows on Cape Ann, but not elsewhere north of the vicinity of New York City, and Rhododendron maximum, L., which occurs rarely. in damp woods, somewhat inland, from Nova Scotia to Lake Erie, but it is very common through the Alleghanies in the South- ern States. Even northward to Greenland evidences of such a warmer postglacial climate are found, and an increase of cold seems 1890.] 171 [Uphatn. to have made the shores of that land more inhospitable since its first colonization by Scandinavians, only about nine hundred years ago. On the shores of Iceland, Scotland, northwestern Europe, and Spitzbergen, similar isolated southern marine shells are also found, either still living or fossil in postglacial deposits, and the successive floras fossil in the peat-bogs of the land likewise tell of a formerly milder climate, as well summarized by Prof. James Geikie in his ‘‘Prehistoric Europe.” But no such evidences of climatic alternations since the Glacial period are discovered in the interior region of this continent, as in the range of species of plants in the Red river basin. Instead, we see there, in the southern stations of boreal species, indications of the gradual amelioration of the climate through the postglacial ep- och to the present day. In Siberia, too, the frozen bodies of mam- moths show that a continuously cold but probably ameliorating climate has been uninterrupted by any warm interval since the Gla- cial period. The recently warmer climate of the northern Atlan- tic countries, from New England to Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia and even Spitzbergen, seems therefore referable to formerly greater volume of the warm Gulf Stream, rather than to any astronomic conditions, which would affect not only that ocean and its shores but also the central and northwestern portion of our continent and northern Asia. Besides the greater part of our flora which is of northern origin, coming to us from an ancestral flora that probably in the begin- ning of the Quaternary period occupied continuous land around the globe in high northern latitudes, the plants of the Red river basin include many species derived, as Gray and Watson have shown for a large portion of the flora of California, the Great Ba- sin, and the southern Rocky Mountain region, from the plateau veg- etation of Mexico. By the return of a warmer and drier climate in the southwestern United States, following the Ice Age of the north, our Cactus species, Petalostemons, and Onagracese, many of our Compositse, the milkweeds, and many more, have been en- abled to spread from their original southwestern and Mexican home- land, becoming a most important element of the flora of all the plains and prairie region to the Saskatchewan and Red rivers, and gaining a less numerous representation in the wooded country east to the Atlantic coast. General Meetings.] 172 [Nov. and Dec. 1890. How these northern and southwestern floras have become inter- mingled, the geographic limits of separate species, and the gradual changes observable in the specific characters of some of our plants in passing between distant parts of their range, are themes of suf- ficient interest to repay the careful observations of amateur botan- ists in all parts of our country. In these directions important ad- ditions to botanic science may be made by many who have neither leisure nor ability for valuable biologic study of plants, but who love the search for our wild flowers in shaded ravine, or cool bog, dry plain, dim depths of the forest, and on mountain heights, not less than quaint Izaak Walton loved angling by the charming brook- sides of old England. General Meeting, November 5, 1890. Prof. F. W. Putnam in the chair. Mr. G. H. Barton read a paper on the Drumlins of Massachu- setts. Prof. F. W. Putnam spoke of “Archaeological Explorations in Ohio during the past season.” General Meeting, November 19, 1890. Prof. F. W. Putnam in the chair. Capt. Nathan Appleton gave a lecture illustrated with the ster- eopticon on Santo Domingo. General Meeting, December 3, 1890. Prof. F. W. Putnam in the chair. Dr. J. Walter Fewkes read a paper on “The Summer Ceremon- ials of the Zuni Indians ; a study of Aboriginal Religions.” General Meeting.] 173 [Dec. 17, General Meeting, December 17, 1890. Prof. F. W. Putnam in the chair. The following communication was read : KAME RIDGES, KETTLE-HOLES, AND OTHER PHE- NOMENA ATTENDANT UPON THE PASSING AWAY OF THE GREAT ICE-SHEET IN HINGHAM, MASS. BY T. T. BOUV£. I have within the last two or three years studied carefully the phenomena attendant upon the great and long-continued flooding over the ice-sheet and the land upon the passing away of the great gla- cier in the Champlain Period. This in preparation of a Chapter of the Geology of Hingham furnished as a contribution to the forthcoming history of the town. As, however, the issuing of that work will be sometime longer delayed, the substance of that portion relating to the kame ridges and kettle-holes is here presented for publica- tion in our Proceedings, mostly in the same language. Undoubtedly the formation of these ridges and of the singular hollows in the land contiguous, known as kettle-holes, is to be ascribed to the passing away of the ice-sheet. Kames. There are found extensively over New England, where the great glacier covered the surface, ridges of a peculiar character which ordinarily run in a direction approximate to northwest and south- east. The variations from this direction are common and often so like those of a stream of water in its course as to have suggested that the many rivers pouring over the glacial sheet during its sub- sidence, cutting into its surface and receiving from it a large por- tion of its burden of rocky, gravelly and sandy material, somehow led to the formation of these singular elevations which have long excited the interest of beholders. The view is a reasonable one, and if such was the origin of kames referred to, their general direction and sinuous course are readily accounted for, as currents of water on the melting glacier would ordinarily run towards the retreating ice front. PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV 12 APRIL, 1891. Bouv£.] 174 [Dec. 17, In quite a full account of the “Karnes of New England” by the Rev. G. F. Wright, published in our Proceedings, Vol. xxii, Part 2, there are several ridges mentioned which have been traced over one hundred miles. Before proceeding further it is necessary to state that the term “Karnes” is not now used so restrictively as formerly, when it was applied only to the long ridges of glacial material referred to, but is made to include the numerous hills and hillocks of the same character which are found often associated with the ridges, espec- ially towards the termination of the ice-sheet, and like them deposited by the melting ice during its retreat from the surface. The mate- rial is the same and its origin the same, the only difference consist- ing in the method of its deposition. Kettle -Holes. There are frequently found among the kame hills and hillocks, and often alongside the ridges, deep depressions of the surface, sometimes many acres in extent, which are known as kettle-holes. Their origin, formerly a puzzle to students of glacial phenomena, is no longer so, as nature has been detected in the very act of their formation. From observations of Dr. G. F. Wright upon the glaciers of Alaska, he found that when a considerable surface of a melting ice-sheet had been covered over to any depth with earth material, rocks, pebbles and sand, the ice thus prevented from melting beneath remained intact, whilst all more exposed over the field sunk away and finally disappeared. The result of this was to leave a great mass, sometimes of large area, to settle as the glacier retreated from it with enormous weight upon the subsoil below. Here it would remain until melted and it might require the heat of many summers to effect its entire dissolution, protected as it would be from the sun’s rays by its earthy covering. As, however, the melting progressed, this covering matter would necessarily slide down around its margin, producing ridges and hillocks of material, the forms of which would be more or less modified by the running water from the ice as it dissolved away. With the accumulated quantity of matter thus deposited, the resting-place of the ice mass would be much below the surrounding surface. After knowing Dr. Wright’s investigations, it may be confidently stated that there can no longer be an}7 reasonable doubt concerning the origin of these depressions. 175 [Bouv6. Kame Ridges of Hingham. The Kame Ridge of Accord Pond. — The first of the kame ridges to which I call attention is to be found on the northern and north- eastern borders of Accord Pond. This ridge, which was approxi- mately continuous, has been distinctly divided into two parts, a considerable area having been dug away so that two transverse sections are presented, separated from each other about 350 feet. The direction of the kame at this place was about southeast as shown by a line between the two exposed faces. Following the southern portion it is found to skirt the pond in a somewhat irreg- ular course varying from east to southeast, and ends just before reaching Hingham street in Rockland. The northerly part of the kame, commencing from where it was dug away, follows a some- what serpentine course, first along the margin of the pond, south- east, and then in a northerly direction towards Whiting street. After crossing this street it continues in a northerly direction about 150 feet, then changing and running westerly about 320 feet where it terminates. The whole length of the ridge is somewhat over five-eighths of a mile. It is a good example of a typical kame ridge, and though gener- ally wooded, is sufficiently open at the summit to allow of the free passage of pedestrians. Karnes of Gushing Street. — Proceeding from Whiting street north, through Cushing street, the range called Breakneck Hills is at first seen at a considerable distance on the left, but these eleva- tions gradually approach the road, and at about half a mile from Whiting street terminate quite near to it. No sooner are these passed than there looms up on the right side of the way in rear of a farmhouse and adjoining fields, a high and very remarkable ridge, which is well worth ascending, not only to study its construction, but because it affords quite an extensive view from its summit of the Breakneck (kame) Hills and other objects. The height of this ridge is about 80 feet, its length about 1200 feet, and the slope from the top, especially on the west side, very steep. A short distance north from the farmhouse mentioned, a great kame ridge crosses the street, the transverse sections exposed by digging the roadway through, rising high on each side. These show the base of the ridge to be about 200 feet wide. Its greatest height Bouve.] 176 [Dec. 17, is about 100 feet. The length is greater than that of any other in Hingham, being about a mile. Its general course is east-southeast and north-northwest, but it is now so closely wooded as to make particular examination difficult. Its southerly termination is quite near Gardner street. Proceeding but a short distance further north on Cushing street, another ridge is found to cross the road, but at a different angle from the first, its course being approximately northwest and south- east. It consequently intersects the other at a point distant five to six hundred feet from the road and there has its termination. In the angle between the two is a deep kettle-hole depression. This ridge extends northwest from the road between eleven and twelve hundred feet. Cushing street passes through another kame deposit, but this is rather a hillock than a ridge, as it extends but a short distance from the road on either side. The Kames near Great Hill. — In passing through New Bridge street towards Hobart, looking to the right may be seen, on land of Mr. F. W. Brewer, two high parallel ridges near the road, of about equal altitude and which coalesce with each other about 900 feet from the street, by one of them — the most northerly — abruptly dividing, one branch crossing to the other ridge, the first continu- ing beyond about 350 feet. The northerly kame crosses the street, and its extreme length is 1825 feet. The height of these ridges is from 30 to 50 feet, with quite narrow summits and having very sloping sides. Their composition is small stones, mostly shingle, gravel and sand. As seen from Great Hill, they are striking ob- jects to the view. A plate of these given shows in the distance at the left one of the beautifully rounded summits of a drumlin, that of Baker’s Hill. A peculiarity of these kames is the fact that their direction is from west to east, thus being nearly at right angles to all others which have been referred to. This direction would be entirely in- consistent with the view that the great ice front of the glacier con- tinued to present itself, as at an earlier period, along an unbroken line from west to east, for if so the rivers caused by the melting glacier would have continued to flow south or nearly so. Mr. Up- ham, in endeavoring to account for deflection in the direction of some of the lenticular hills described by him, makes remarks which 1890.] 177 [Bouve. are quite applicable to the changed direction of the kames under notice. In writing upon the retreat of the ice-sheet in southeast- ern Massachusetts, he states : — “The warmth of the ocean, however, had begun to melt away the ice- fields which encroached upon its depths, more rapidly than they were driven back upon the land, or in the shallow sounds south of New Eng- land. At their further departure it seems probable that this cause pro- duced within the Gulf of Maine a great bay in the terminal front of the ice-sheet, so that it entirely melted away east of Massachusetts, while it remained in great depth upon all the territory except its southeast por- tion. The effect of this unequal rate of retreat would be to leav e the ice upon our coast unsupported at the east side, and to cause its motion con- sequently to be deflected towards the vacant area.” This view being taken as a correct one, it will be at once recog- nized that the direction of the ice movement itself would be also approximately that of the rivers that poured over it, and conse- quently of the kames formed by the debris washed into the river- beds from the glacier. There is not wanting other evidence than that here suggested to sustain the view that in eastern Massachusetts the onward move- ment of the ice changed towards the close of the Glacial Period from the normal southeast direction to one more east, as a second series of striae are found on some of our exposures attesting this. Stoddard's Neck. — Another remarkable system of kame ridge exists at the northwest extremity of Hingham, extending more than 3000 feet along the west side of Stoddard’s Neck and across Beal street near the bridge over Weymouth Back River, thence southward to a little indentation just north of Beal’s Cove. These ridges run in a general north and south direction, although wind- ing and branching considerably south of Beal street. On Stod- dard’s Neck the heavily wooded ridge varies from 50 to 75 feet in height ; on the west side above it is quite abrupt. South of Beal street the steep ridges are about 50 feet high. There is another low ridge on the east side of Stoddard’s Neck, and on the south side of Beal street are several small ridges and kame hills, besides the high serpentine kames. Fulling-Mill Pond. — A kame ridge of considerable length bor- ders the western shore of Fulling-Mill Pond, and another skirts its southern shore. The first-named extended several years ago to the street line, but has been dug awa}^ 50 or 60 feet. The direction of this kame is generally north and south, varying in some portions Bouve.] 178 [Dec. 17, toward the east and west of north, and its length is nearly 2000 feet. Its width at base is some 150 feet, and its highest elevation about 50 feet. Somewhat less than 1500 feet south from its north- erly termination another ridge runs west at a right angle from this one, for a distance of 750 feet, having an elevation of 25 feet, in places, and a basal width of 150 feet. Beyond these ridges, to the southward, are numerous kame hills, so covered by forest growth as to obscure observation. Still fur- ther away, especially east and southeast, are hills of this charac- ter, of considerable elevation. The Kame Hills and Hillocks of Hingham. The range called Breakneck Hills, which crosses Whiting street, some distance north of Cushing and extends southwest half a mile or more, is a great kame deposit, the material of it not differ- ing from that of the kame ridges. The width of the range varies somewhat, but averages perhaps 1000 feet. The average height is about 50 feet. A very considerable depression of the surface ex- ists along the north side of the range, followed by other approxi- mately parallel elevations, with depressions alternating for a con- siderable distance, of the same general character but less promi- nent. The long range of hills lying nearly parallel with, and north of the Old Colony Railroad, between North and East Weymouth, though outside the limits of Hingham, may well be mentioned here, as these hills can hardly fail to attract the attention of people as they travel within full sight of them. These are kame elevations and owe their origin to the great continental glacier. The general direction of this range is west-northwest and east-southeast. The separate kame hills and hillocks cover a very considerable portion of the surface, especially in the southern and western sec- tions of the town, where they present conspicuous features in the landscape. This is the case on the territory bordering French street, from Hobart to High, and on High street west. Here may be seen an area almost entirely covered with hills and hillocks, having many kettle-hole depressions among them. The same may be said of much of the territory bordering Main street, from Cush- ing street to Prospect street, and some distance beyond. The road indeed runs through and over hillocks of kame material until reach- 1890.] 179 [Bouve. ing Prospect street, where the surface becomes more level and so continues until near Whiting street. The kame elevations of Hingham are by no means limited to the ridges and the rounded hills that cover so large a portion of its sur- face. They indeed present themselves sometimes in extensive de- posits that can hardly be included under the head of either. One such is of so marked a character and has such remarkable propor- tions, as may make particular mention of it desirable. This is to be found southwest from Great Hill, bordering the south side of Hobart street, along which it extends irregularly. It may proper- ly be designated as tableland, being of a height varying from 30 to 50 feet, and having at top a flat surface. It measures in length east and west about half a mile and has a width of from 500 to 1000 feet. Its sides are very steep and are thickly covered with trees. At the south side of it is a large kettle-liole, which is par- tially embraced in the kame limits by an extension of an arm from the main body. As a sketch of the kame, however rough, will give a better idea of its singular contour than any description, one is presented on the map of the town. The country about this interesting kame is well worth the obser- vation of those who would know of glacial phenomena in Hingham. North is Great Hill, one of the large drumlins, or lenticular hills, and south of it to High street and indeed far beyond, the country is covered with kame ridges and hillocks of irregular size and shape. The effect upon the surface of the town by the distribution of kame material was much greater than that caused simply by its deposit in hills, ridges and other elevations, for it is likely that all these contain scarcely one-lialf the whole quantity resting over its area. Temporary lakes formed by barriers of ice and other mat- ter, together with the flow of the waters, undoubtedly led to such spread of the gravel and sand as to result in the formation of the extensive plains that form at different levels so large a portion of the territory. This was not all, for great bodies of it were depos- ited in such depressions of the general surface as to choke up the water-courses. There is no doubt in the mind of the writer that our principal stream, that of Weir River, pursued its way in pre- glacial times through a very different channel from that it now fol- lows, and instead of turning east of north as it does at Hingham Centre just before reaching Leavitt street and finally entering the sea between World’s End and Hull, it discharged itself directly in- Bouv£.] 180 [Dec. 17, to Hingham Harbor, which then was open to the spread of its wa- ters bnt a few hundred feet from where the river takes an eastward course as mentioned. It is due to Prof. W. O. Crosby to state that he suggested the probability of this to the writer, and that subsequent examination by both revealed to us that an extensive kame deposit here had caused the river, which had flowed for some distance directly north to make the detour mentioned. Kettle-Holes. Intimately connected with the kames are depressions in the sur- face, sometimes of considerable depth, which have received this name. Their origin, formerly a puzzle to students of glacial phe- nomena is no longer so, as nature has been detected in the very act of their formation. From observations of Dr. G. F. Wright upon the glaciers of Alaska, he found that when a considerable surface of melting ice-sheet had been covered over to any depth with earth material, rocks, pebbles and sand, the ice thus prevented from melting beneath remained intact, whilst all more exposed over the field sunk away and finally disappeared. The result of this would be to leave a great mass, sometimes of large area, to settle as the glacier retreated from it, with enormous weight upon the subsoil below. Here it would remain until melted, and it might require the heat of many summers to effect its entire dissolution, protected as it would be from the sun’s rays by its earthy cover- ing. As, however, the melting progressed, this covering matter would necessarily slide down around its margin, producing ridges and hillocks of material, the forms of which would be more or less modified by the running water from the ice as it dissolved away. With the accumulated quantity of matter thus deposited, the rest- ing-place of the ice mass would be much below the surrounding surface. After knowing the results of Dr. Wright’s investigations, it may be confidently stated that there can be no longer reasonable doubt concerning the origin of these depressions. The Passing Away of the Ice-sheet. Some suggestions respecting the kame ridges, the kame hills, and the kettle-lioles may well be presented in remarks upon the passing away of the great ice-sheet that had for ages covered the land. The reality of the ice spread over the whole North, where previously for millions of years a tropical climate had prevailed ; 1890.] 181 [Bouv6. its increase until it hid from the sun’s rays the summits of all but the highest mountain peaks ; its onward grand movement so fruit- ful of great results, bearing as it did upon and within it the material of the present hills and valleys ; and its final melting away, leav- ing an entirely remodelled surface, are no longer questions for discussion. Let us therefore contemplate what the condition of the glacier was, particularly when passing away, first briefly re- ferring to what was probable at an earlier date. The question sometimes presents itself to mind why, with the onward movement of the ice for many thousands of years, was not all the loose material of the previously decayed rocks borne to its termination long before the change that led to its passing away, thus preventing its spreading over the land in its retreat such im- mense quantities of material now forming the surface in our region and constituting the innumerable kame hills and hillocks that di- versify the landscape? In considering this question, it should be borne in mind that with the gradual increase of the ice in an epoch of intense cold, there could probably have been but little flooding of the elevated regions, and consequently less disturbance of the loose material than in a later age. Consideration of this may result in the view that the glacier during the greater part of its existence had less to do with the transportation of the kame material than when pass- ing away, aided as it then was by the torrents of water that flowed over its surface and swept the hills of all movable matter as they emerged from the melting ice. The writer is strongly inclined to this view, as it will satisfactorily account for the immense quantity of stones, gravel and sand borne upon and deposited by the glacier when it finally disappeared from the surface. Now let us picture to ourselves if we can the probable state of things over and about this town when the ice-sheet had become re- duced from possibly thousands of feet in thickness to a few hun- dred, bearing upon it great quantities of transported material, and having floods of water pouring over it and in its channels such as the world could never before have witnessed. Let us recognize, too, that its water courses were being gorged with stones, gravel and sand, and that vast collections of these were protecting great areas of the ice from the sun’s rays, often causing the channels of water to deviate from their normal course in seeking new channels. Let us note, too, that the great body of ice itself had by lessened continuit}' ceased its onward movement, and we shall find reasons Bouv6.] 182 [Dec. 17, for all we see and wonder at in the marvellous diversity of the pres- ent surface over large portions of our territory. Where great areas of the glacier by the protecting debris were kept intact for a long period when that about them had melted away, there would be found about each such area, as the sun’s rays dissolved its sides, hills and hillocks formed by the falling of the gravel and sand from its summit, more or less modified by the melting ice ; and when all the ice had melted there would remain a deep depression, such as we now know as kettle-holes. Where channels existed of any length, and these became filled with the sand and gravel, there would be formed ridges ; and when large areas of the ice first melted away, the material flooded into these areas would form hills and ranges of hills such as we now find occupying a considerable portion of our territory. It will be readily recognized, that though the course of the chan- nels of the surface and in the glacier was generally the same as that of the movement of the ice-sheet itself, and consequently the ridges formed would be now found having a like direction, yet when by the clogging of the channel’s unequal melting, the water was forced to deviate, the ridges formed would present themselves varying much from the normal direction, as they now do in regions approx- imating to the termination of the great ice-sheet. Some of our ridges, notably those of Great Hill, have an east-west direction, such as it is supposed the glacier itself had near its closing period over eastern Massachusetts ; but others or portions of others vary so as to be found running in every direction. The foregoing is by no means an exhaustive account of all the kame ridges and other developments in Hingham. The writer lacked time to examine all the territory. Professor Niles then presented the following resolution : — Resolved: — That the members of the Boston Society of Natural History assembled having listened with peculiar interest to the paper upon “kame ridges, kettle-holes and other phenomena attend- ants on the passing away of the great ice-sheet in Hingham,” by Ex-President Thomas T. Bouve, extend to him their congratula- tions upon the completion of this valuable contribution tothegeol- ogy of this region. The resolution was unanimously approved by the members of the Society present. The kames represented on the map are more numerous than mentioned in the text, which does not give any account of those shown near Prospect Hill and near Beal’s Cove. Many more drumlins are also here represented than have been hitherto noticed. i89i.J 183 [General Meeting-. The Society then considered the proposed new By-Laws which, after considerable discussion, were approved, to be finally afcted upon at the next meeting of the Society. General Meeting, January 7, 1891. Prof. W. H. Niles, in the chair. The new By-Laws approved at the last meeting were accepted by the Society. Mr. J. G. Gwens read a paper on “A Few Games of the Zuni Indians.” General Meeting, January 21, 1891. Prof. W. II. Niles, in the chair. The following communication was read On Chemism, etc., by A. E. Dolbear. ON CHEMISM OR THE ORGANIZATION OF MATTER. BY A. E. DOLBEAR. The term chemism has now mostly supplanted the terms chemi- cal affinity and chemical attraction which denoted the ability of atoms and molecules to combine into new aggregates. The word attraction implied only a general mutual approach and cohesion while affinity signified selective properties by which certain speci- fic combinations were produced instead of indiscriminate ones. So long as the so-called different forces of nature such as heat, light, magnetism, electricity, were supposed to be independent forces and without any necessary relations, it might be expected that chemism would be looked upon as an independent force, and as no one thought of such a thing as looking for the ancestry of a force, no knowledge of such a condition existed. Count Rumford and Sir Humphrey Davy were the first to prove experimentally that mechanical work and heat were directly related to each other. Dolbear.] 184 T Jan. 21, and Joule in 1843 discovered their quantitive relation approxi- mately and afterwards more exactly. Faraday about 1834 had shown the quantitive relationship between electricity and chemi- cal affinity, and Joule went over the ground of all the known forms of physical energy and proved not only their correlation but their conservation. The philosophical value of this work was not only the quantita- tive relation which was established, but it also made clear the idea that one might be the antecedent of another, and this was a new idea. It is true that one of the maxims of the old philoso- phy was “every effect must have a cause”; but that explained nothing. If this be transformed so as to be more precise and in accordance with what we call the Conservation of Energy it might read thus, every phenomenon must have a physical antece- dent, and as all phenomena involve energy, successive phenomena imply exchange of energy. Now energy is a product of two fac- tors, a mass and motion. A mass at rest possesses no energy.1 If, then, a mass of matter exhibits successive phenomena without any change in the mass quantity, or additional energy from with- out, the energy must be represented by a change in the character of the motion involved. Thus when a bullet with a velocity of 1000 feet per second strikes a target it becomes heated ; the motion of translation as a whole has now been changed to individual molecular motions. If the whole of the energy of the moving bullet still remained in it after impact, the sum of the individual motions would be equal to the translatory movement, i. e. 1000 feet per second. If the amount of matter in the universe is a constant quantity then the doctrine of the conservation of energy requires the amount of motion to be constant. It is not unfrequently said now-a-days, that matter and energy are the two factors in physical phenomena but the above considerations show that motion should be substituted for energy. A year or two before his death Max- well wrote a little treatise on Natural Philosophy which he named “ Matter and Motion ,” which shows that the above was his con- ception of the factors in physical phenomena. 1 “ It is impossible to conceive of a truly dormant form of energy whose magnitude should depend in any way on the unit of time; and we are therefore forced to the con- clusion that potential energy, like kinetic energy depends upon motion.” P. G. Tait Art. Mechanics, Enc. Brit. § 297. 185 [DolbeAr. To explain a phenomenon therefore is to point out the antece- dent motions and the conditions under which a transformation has been effected. To say that a given phenomenon is the result of attraction or repulsion or chemism is not to explain it at all. If, however, one does not understand the modus operandi by which the change has been effected, but does understand the physical necessity of recognizing physical antecedents of an ex- changeable sort he will not mistake such terms for ultimate causes of change. The work of Davy, Faraday and Joule already alluded to set- tled the question as to the nature of all the forms of energy, although there are some now who are unable to see the logic of the question. Thus, if heat and electricity be quantitatively re- lated, and heat be vibratory molecular motion, and a given body becomes electrified at the expense of the temperature of the body, there must have been a change in the character of the motions present and electricity must be as much a mode of motion as heat is. In like manner if electricity and chemism be quantitatively related as Faraday’s laws state and if there be likewise constant thermal relations between chemical reactions, as is implied in all thermo-chemical problems, then is chemism traceable to antece- dent motions of an atomic and molecular sort, and it will be ex- plained in a complete physical sense when these purely mechanical relations are fully pointed out. The first step must then be to inquire what known forms of energy, if any, plainly condition chem- ism. Here at the outset we have the laws of thermo-chemistry, founded in thermo-dynamics. In all chemical reactions whether of composition or decomposition there is an exchange of energy meas- ureable in foot-pounds, or calories. Now if we take the simple example of the thermal effect due to the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, we know that if a gram of hydrogen combines with oxygen to form water, there will be developed 34,000 calories, the calorie representing the amount of heat required to raise a gram of water one degree centigrade, and which in turn represents in amount of work 426 gram-metres. 34,000 X 423 = 14,484,000 gram-metres, work. We also know, that to separate the hydro- gen from the oxygen will require the expenditure of the same amount of work. It therefore is a measure of the chemism of that amount of hydrogen and oxygen. In like manner it is deduced from the second law of theorm- Dolbear. | 186 [ Jan. 21, dynamics that, the kinetic energy of molecules is proportionate to absolute temperature. If temperature be absolute zero, then no work would be needed to separate atoms in a chemical compound, which is the same as saying that chemism does not exist at absolute zero.1 This indicates plainly enough that chemism depends upon heat and one must therefore inquire into the specific nature of heat in order to discover if possible how it happens that it condi- tions the existence of chemism.2 For many years it has been common to speak of heat as a mode of motion, but before the invention of the spectroscope it was quite impossible to say whether the motion represented by the temperature of a body was a true vibratory motion or an oscilla- tion, swinging in space to and fro, or a rotation. Now we know that both atoms and molecules at any temperature vibrate in har- monic rates when not interfered with as is the case in a gas. Stoney long ago pointed out that the C. F. and H. hydrogen lines in the spectrum are the 20tli, 27th and 32nd harmonies of a funda- mental having a length .01312mm.3 Knowing that the velocity of light divided by wave length gives the number of vibrations per second, it follows that 1_ ’ 1 = 22 4- 1012 which r .01312 T is the number of fundamental vibrations per second an atom of hydrogen can make when free. 1 Maxwell’s “ Theory of heat’’ pp. 160,161. H h — — & and T are the absolute temperatui’es of the hot and cold bodies in b T Carnot’s Engine, II and li are the quantities of heat taken up and given out. When T=0, then h=o, h being the heat equivalent of the work done. As this is o at abso- lute zero no work could be done in changing the volume of a substance at that temper- ature. There can be no cohesion among the molecules or atoms. It is the tempera- ture of dissociation. -2This is the conclusion to which chemists have been led by their researches. For example Dr. Lothar Meyer says, “ At the lowest temperatures to which we can attain, the majority of chemical reactions studied under these conditions have been found to cease entirely or to proceed very slowly, so that it would appear to be very probable that at the absolute zero, viz. — 273° a temperature much below the lowest yet attained, chemical action would altogether cease, from the absence of any form of heat motion whatsoever. So without heat there would be no exertion of the so-called affinity.” “ Modern Theories of Chemistry,’’ § 211. 3 It is not here asserted that atoms and molecules vibrate in simple harmonic series as do stretched strings and pipes, but that the ratios of the periods of vibration may be expressed by integer numbers. In Weid. Ann. xxv, p. 80 (1885), E. J. Balmer pre- sents such a law, and subsequent spectroscopic work, especially at Johns Hopkins Uni- versity gives great countenance to it. :8c)1.] 187 [Dolbear. Now the kinetic theory of gases explains the pressure of a gas as being due to the impact of the molecules upon the surface of the containing vessel. The source of the free path motion that is arrested by the impact, is the vibratory motion that constitutes the heat of the molecules, and the energy is therefore propor- tional to the absolute temperature. At absolute zero there would be no free path, because there is no heat to spend to produce it. It is, however, important here to bear in mind that free path motion is not heat, in either small or large bodies, though in most books on thermo-dynamics it is assumed as being heat, and that the heat of a gas is in two parts, an external or free path and an internal or true vibration, the total heat being the sum of the two. That this cannot be so will be seen from the following considera- tions : — Assume a litre of gas at any temperature to be removed to an empty space, say a million miles from the earth, and suddenly set free. The molecules will now scatter in direction and with ve- locity determined by the last molecular impacts, and being in a frictionless medium their velocity will be uniform, so after an in- terval of say a day, their freepath energy will be what it was at the outset, but each individual molecule will now continuously lose its temperature by direct radiation, and might arrive in that way to absolute zero, — in which case we should have the anomalous result of a mass of gas at absolute zero possessing heat ! ! which is absurd. It follows therefore that heat is a true molecular or atomic vibra- tion as distinguished from any other kind of motion and when a hot body loses energy by radiation it is because it has handed it over to the ether. We have now got an atom or a molecule vibrating in harmonic rates and reacting upon the ether so as to set up waves in it. Sir Wm. Thomson and others have shown us that these par- ticles are in the neighborhood of the one-fifty-millionth of an inch in diameter, and one is bound to picture to himself in some kind of a way what these particles would look like if they could be seen. The theory of atoms as hard-round somethings, endowed with specific properties such as elasticity, attraction, etc., breaks down as soon as one attempts to derive phenomena from such hypothesis, for the whole of physics to-day, so far as it has any bearing upon the question, seems to show that all phenomena, even the properties of the elements themselves, are due to the Dolbear.] 188 [ Jan. 21, characteristics of motion. The only theory of matter that has any degree of probability now, is the vortex-ring theory proposed by Sir Wm. Thomson, that considers an atom as being a vortex- ring of ether, in the ether. The ease with which such an atom lends itself to the explana- tion of physical phenomena is surprising, and leads one to the reflection that if it is not true it ought to be, as some one once said concerning the nebula theory. So far as the phenomena alone are concerned it makes not much difference for present pur- pose whether this or some other form be adopted, but for conven- ience I shall adopt the vortex ring as the typical atom, therefore having a ring structure and the possibilities of harmonic vibratory motion, thus. fig. 1. This change of form con- stituting what is called heat, and the am- jar plitude of which is the measure of the tern- fm perature of the atom. Given such an l ft jB/ atom vibrating in a harmonic motion as Jw' represented, it is seen that there are what in acoustics are called nodes and loops, fig. i. places of greatest and least amplitude of vibrations, four of each. If it be borne in mind now that this is the motion that is handed over to the ether and becomes ether waves, it will be seen that the rate at which such energy is trans- ferred at a given point must depend upon the amplitude of vi- bration at that point. At the points of maximum vibration it must be greatest, and least at the nodes, and hence the space adjacent to a loop must be in a different physical condition from that adjacent to a node, and such changed relations must be symmetrical with reference to the vibratory body. Guthrie discovered a good many years ago that a vibrating tun- ing fork apparently attracted other bodies near to it, and Thom- son explained the phenomenon as due to the lessening of the density of the medium about the prongs of the fork, the density being least when the amplitude was greatest. Guthrie thought by this means he could explain gravitation, as being due to the vibration of atoms. This idea implies that gravitation should de- pend upon temperature which I hardly need say is unwarrantable. If, however, there be an atomic phenomenon that is known to depend upon temperature, it would be quite to the point to apply such relation and see how far such an explanation will go in ac- counting for the observed phenomena. How a vibrating body i89i.] 189 [Dolbear. can reduce the pressure of the medium about it may be under- stood by remembering that pressure is proportional to density. If the vibration lessens the density it lessens the pressure. Let the inner circle in the diagram fig. 2 represent an elastic sphere capable of extension to the dimensions of the outer circle. When it is thus expanded of course it excludes the air from the space it occupied. When it con- tracts again the air or other medium will follow. Suppose the contraction should take place at a rate greater than it was possible for the air to move, than a vacuum would be formed between the surface and the advancing air. At whatever rate the contraction took place there would still be a partial vacuum next the surface of the sphere, else there would be no movement of the air towards it, that is to say, the pressure is less next to the surface than at a distance from it. Suppose the sphere to dilate and contract between the limits of the lines say 100 times per second then the density would be less not only be- tween those limits but beyond them, and this lessened density would lessen the pressure upon the sphere in all directions about it, a condition that would be maintained as long as such motion continued. Another body near this vibrating body would be subject to a pressure on its further side greater than on the side adjacent and as a consequence would be pushed towards the sphere. It would appear as if the sphere attracted it. The space about a vibrating body within which such lessening pressure occurs may be called its mechanical field , because its effects are purely me- chanical effects. This expression is in accordance with the termin- ology employed in electrical and magnetic phenomena. The magnetic field is that space about a magnet within which magnetic effects take place. In the case of the sphere the shape of the field would be spherical, but if the vibrating body were a rod, or fork, or disk, or ring, evidently the shape of the field would nec- essarily be different. Indeed the shape of the field would depend upon the shape of the vibrating body and also upon its character- istic vibrations. A tuning fork does not have such a uniform field as the imag- ined sphere but presents two nodes radiating from the outer edge of each prong. These nodes or places of uniform pressure may easily be detected by holding the fork near the ear and rotating Dolbear.] 190 [Jan. 21, it with the fingers while it is vibrating. The field of a vibrating Chladni plate will cause a body to move towards the plate, or make a paper wind-mill to go round and round. We may assume then that a vibrating body that can give up its energy to the me- dium about it reduces the pressure about itself by its own motions, and hence has a field the shape of which will be determined by its own form as well as by its harmonic rates and amplitudes, that is its timbre and this is the idea to be applied to atoms as an explana- tion of the phenomenon of chemism. There is to be explained not only the mutual attraction of atoms, but their selective at- tractions, the nascent state, dissociation, as well as the crystalline and colloid states and cohesion in general. We are prepared to consider the effects of the vibrating atom in the diagram, upon the medium about it, the ether. That an ex- change of energy is going on there can be no doubt, at all tem- peratures above absolute zero. Provost’s law asserts that for all atoms. A field therefore might be anticipated and if we have the form that of a ring and the vibration the fundamental one the field must be shaped something like this fig. 3. At the four nodes where the motion is least the change in pressure will be least and therefore the normal state will come more closely to the atom.1 Suppose now that another atom at absolute zero should come within that field, (as at 6, Fig. 3) it would be subject to a greater pressure fig. 3. on its side that is more remote than on the side adjacent to the other atom and would therefore be pushed towards the latter until it touched it. If it touched where the amplitude of vibra- tion was greatest it would doubtless be bounced away only to return again, but it would ultimately be tossed until it came to anode when it would remain quiescent, the two adhering because pressed together. v In the absence of experimental proof that the vibrations of the atoms produce such a change in the stress in the ether about them, it is important to bear in mind that the antecedent condition which is known is, that the vibrating atoms are imparting energy to the ether in some way, and second that all the anoiogies we have point to such a field as is here described. 191 [Dolhear, 1891. J Suppose that the second atom was not at absolute zero, but had the same temperature as the other. It would have a similar field and when the two fields overlapped, each would be pushed to- wards the other but they could not cohere until the nodes were adjacent, in which position they would be stable. But there are four nodes and consequently as many places where other atoms can join, in which case, if all were vibrating similarly, there might be a conjunction as in fig. 4 or they might join in a straight line indefinitely, indeed in all the ways figured out in the books. Such arrangements in one plane would not be stable. The point of attach- ment might be considered as a kind of hinge permitting a swing to and fro. Imagine two opposite ones as 2 and 4 to swing upward so as to touch each other. If these be vibrating their points of contact will be nodes. They will therefore cohere by another bond and such an atomic arrangement will be a stable one. If the rings have equal dimensions an edge view would show them as an equil- ateral triangle with nodes at the apices, Fig. 5. We might call such a combination a mole- cule and say it was held together by chemism. Each molecule thus constituted must have a mechanical field which will be the resultant of all the atomic fields that compose it and indeed this will be true for such molecules of every degree of complexity. Molecules having similar fields fit together for obvious mechanical reasons and cohere because they are pressed together by the medium they vibrate in. If similar triangular forms to the one above unite, they may form hexagonal prisms as Fig. 6 show in cross section and such as is the crystalline forms assumed by water, silica, and some other minerals having three atoms in the molecule. Now let 2, 3, 4 and 5 of fig. 4 swing up- wards, they too will touch each other at their sides and at nodes so as to form a stable figure held by eight bonds, an at- omic box without a lid, yet having four fig. 4. Dolbear.] 192 [Jan. Si, nodes on the open end to which another similar atom could be attached by its four bonds forming a cubical box having a high degree of mechanical stability. It will have a symetrical but not a uniform field. The corners being the places having maximum displacements and the middle of each edge the minimum as the nodes are all in such positions, hence other similar ones would be moved to assume symmetrical positions when in contact and thus a cubical structure or prismatic form would be built up by aggregation of similar molecules. This is on the supposition that all the atoms combining thus together are equal in size as well as uniform in their vibrations, and this cubical form is one in which not a few of the elements crystallize, for example, gold, iron, copper. That there is a real difference in directive action between the sides and edges of crystals is apparent upon examination of many types of them. For instance, what are called skeleton crystals in which the growth takes place only in axial directions is one. An- other one is illustrated by salt crystals forming as it often does only upon the edges of a crystalline mass producing cavernous crystals. The same thing is sometimes seen in quartz ; cavernous forma- tions on both sides and pyramidal ends. Again, in dissolving large crystals not too rapidly, the frame work frequently persists longer than the rest. These phenomena show that there is a real difference in crystallizing conditions be- tween the edges and the faces of crystals and that the cohesion is greater at the edges than elsewhere. If one would see more clearly how these nodes and loops fit to- gether in such structures let him make paper models, drawing a set of circles with their peripheries touching at one point as shown in fig. 4 ; Make points on each circle to indicate the nodes and then bend them up as described. If another one similar to 3 be made hinged at 6 it will form the cover to the cube and all the nodes will be adjacent. So far such vortex atoms have been considered as being all of one magnitude or as all having a similar rate of vibration, but the different elements have different masses and therefore vibrate with different rates ; the greater the mass the slower the rate according to the law of energy. When two elementary atoms come into con- tact with each other while vibrating at their individual rates, 1891.] 193 [Dolbear. whether they can cohere or not will depend upon whether the vibra- tory rates are commensurate or not. If they are not there will be what is called interference in their respective fields and each will tend to destroy the other’s field. When the vibrations of two tun- ing forks not in unison or in a harmonic series, are heard together their interferences are audible and are called beats. They are in opposite phases a portion of the time. Vibrating atoms must be subject to the same conditions. One ought therefore to expect that elements with different masses should show different degrees of coherence, as indeed they do. There are all degrees of these incompatible movements from that exhibited by oxygen and fluo- rine which have never been made to combine at all, through the slight cohesions shown by gold, platinum etc. for other elements up to that exhibited by carbon for itself in the diamond and oxy- gen and aluminum in the ruby. Furthermore an element having but a small mass like hj^drogen could produce a. field of slight strength compared to that of an element moving with same velocity yet having decidedly a greater mass, so that when it combined with any other element it would be because of the greater energy of the other’s field, that is to say, oxygen holds on to hydrogen rather than hydrogen to oxygen, and one would, expect that hydrogen could be replaced by some other element in a compound more readily than any other element. Hence, whatever might be the relative rates of vibration when compared with other elements one might infer it could be asso- ciated with them. One might explain its weak affinities by its small mass and consequent small vibratory energy. With larger masses however, the case would be different ; if one made five vibrations while the other made but one, they would be in the same phase but one-fiftli of the time and in more or less in- terference the other four-fifths, and unless there was a con- siderable disparity in their masses there would apparently be but slight cohesion. If one made four while the other made one they would be in similar phases three-fourths of the time and could thus fortn a more stable alliance. As has already been said atoms vibrate in harmonic series and this must frequently modify the position of the nodes where ad- hesion can occur. Now, the simple harmonic series is 2, 3, 4 and so on times the fundamental rate. If one will imagine such a PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. 13 JAN. 1S9I . Dolbear.] 194 [Jan. 21 , vibrating ring to be cut at one of the nodes and the two ends straightened out, it will be seen that there are really two vibra- tions or stationary waves as they sometimes are called, in the ring, and the harmonics are the fractional parts of one wave. Suppose each of these waves to be divided into 3 parts, that is to be ac- companied by the second harmonic. Then the circumference of the ring would have twelve nodes ; an arrange ment that would permit three other rings to be hinged at angles of 120 degrees apart, and if these were swung upwards until they touched each other they would form a stable combination, but the angle made be- tween the base and the side of this pyramidal structure would de- pend upon the relative diameters of the ring composing the base and sides. The smaller the latter the greater the inclination. With similar structures there could grow up another hexagonal system, having a differently distributed field from the other but still symmetrical and therefore capable of growing a symmetrical shape. So far we have got an explanation of both attraction and selec- tive attraction. When a ring is vibrating only in its fundamental rate it would seem as if it would be quadrivalent. As a matter of fact, all of our experience with chemical reactions is a long way from absolute zero, and there must therefore be few or no fundamentals pres- ent— the energy must appear in the harmonics. This multiplies the nodes which will be multiples of two or three or five. Again given an atom having a strong field like carbon, it must strongly tend to neutralize the difference in pressure between the nodes and loops of a weaker atom, say, hydrogen. If at a given temperature two different kinds of atoms have no common ratios in their vibrations, their nodes will be unsymmet- rical with reference to each other, and their fields will more or less neutralize each other, rendering cohesion more or less precarious or altogether impossible as in the case of oxygen and fluorine. Now this vibratory motion of the atoms has certain limits of am- plitude. Suppose two atoms of different sorts to be combined into a molecule as IIC1. Let their temperature be increased higher and higher ; as the amplitude increases their impacts become more and more violent and as a consequence their stability becomes less until they are broken apart by the vigorous bumping. Of course heir fields will in reality be stronger but not necessarily propor- 195 [ Dolbear. 1891.] tionally stronger. Such a disruption of a molecule is called dis- sociation and is produced by high temperature. Dissociation, however brought about, results in giving to the atom so set free its undiluted field, the maximum strength it can have at that tem- perature, hence the freedom and ease with which it can enter into new combinations. This is the nascent state. Dissociation results in cases where the reaction is simply an exchange of atoms in one or both molecules acting, for instance, NaOH -|- HC1 = NaCl-f- H20. Here the field of NaOH is rendered weaker in the presence of HC1 and the harmonic rates of Na and Cl are more concor- dant than those in the other combinations. Whenever the field of one molecule weakens or neutralizes the field of another the degree of cohesion existing in the latter case must be lessened, and hence chemical reactions may take place which might not otherwise. Now there are numerous cases of this sort well known. For in- stance, a much lower degree of heat is needed to dissociate oxygen from KC103 if MnOs be present. The latter takes no part in the reaction itself, but it provides the chemical field that permits other reaction to occur which would not otherwise. The sig- nificance of a “flux” for fusing “refractory” compounds is thus made apparent. It is a pertinent question to ask if one can tell how far from a given molecule or surface of molecules this field extends. I do not know, but I have lately read of some German researches into the different rates of chemical reaction in a beaker, those nearest the surface of the glass going on at a swifter rate than those more remote from it. This method of explaining such a result is to say that the glass molecules have a field of their own as do any other molecules that extends to an appreciable distance from the surface which must lessen the de- gree of cohesion among other molecules there and thereby facil- itate other changes. Allusion has already been made to other kinds of physical fields such as the magnetic and the electrical ; it remains to point out a physical property that belongs to all such fields, namely, it reacts upon other bodies in them in such a way as to compel these bodies to assume similar states to those which produced the field. For example, a sounding body sets up in the air a kind of radiant en- ergy that makes other bodies to vibrate at the same rate. If the natural rate of the second body is the same as that of the first, t>olbear.J 196 Jan. 21, the effect is cumulative and the body is set in audible sonorous vibrations and we call that sympathetic vibration. A heated body radiates its energy also, and every body upon which such radiant energy falls is heated by it, that is it is made to assume the same kind of a condition the first body had, the action is mechanical and compulsory. An electrified body produces a field of such a nature that other bodies in it become electrified and a magnet produces a field such that certain kinds of molecules in it become magnetic, or what is doubtless more correctly described by saying that the molecules of magnetic bodies are differently arranged in space by the reaction of the field. If sound, heat, light, electric- ity and magnetism stand thus related to what nre called fields, and if cliemism is known to be related to the others as they are to themselves, one would certainly expect to find a chemical field to have a similar chemical effect. In reality the chemist has abun- dance of testimony on that point. In order to bring about chemical changes it is only necessary to initiate it. A mixture of hydrogen and oxygen might stand a long time without a reaction but if one contrives to initiate it so that but a single molecule is formed in the mixture the whole of the rest takes place with explosive vio- lence. Crystallization is best initiated by dropping into the sat- urated solution a bit of crystal of the substance itself. In cases of supersaturation of liquids, the process thus begun takes place at such a rapid rate that but a second or two is needed to reduce a liquid to a crystalline mass. There are numerous chemical changes in the way of exchange of position among atoms in a molecular structure which are well known. The following is an example : Among hydroxyl com- pounds there is one which may be graphically represented thus, fX — C=OH I where the hydroxyl OH combines with one of (X'— C — H the unsaturated carbon atoms, as with X. In the presence of some controlling factors at X', the hydrogen atom changes its [ X— C — O place to -i | { X'— C — HH This is easily explained by supposing the field of X7, C, H to be a little stronger than the field of the opposite end or side X. C. O. The H. goes where the field is the strongest, that is where there is the greatest pressure towards. :89I.l 197 Again Benzole, C6 H6, may be thus graphi- cally represented. The substitution of a chlor- ine atom for one of the hydrogen atoms, renders it easier to substitute another similar one, or one of Br. or I. or NO 2. A second chlorine atom will go to an adjacent or an opposite position. For instance if the structure be like this (Fig. 7), Cl be attached to 1, another Cl will go to 2, 6 or 4, not to 3 or 5. If N02 be at- tached to 1 instead of chlorine, than another N02 or Cl will go to 3 or 5. The first substitution determines the subsequent ones. Suppose that N02 be the first substitute at 4 and Cl is at 2, then the N02 determines that another substitnte shall be at 6 instead of at 5 or 3 or 1 as would be the case if Cl at 2 de- termined it. As a resultant there is a mixture of the two bodies in which the position of the last attached atoms depends upon the kind and position of the atoms already associated. This is the general rule and any exceptions may be due to differences in the temperature at which the reactions are brought about, for temperature determines rates of vibration and therefore nodal relations. This has been developed far enough now and in a sufficient number of directions to show what is intended, namely, that be- cause the atoms of matter are vibrating at all temperatures above absolute zero, and because the motions of matter are known to affect the ether in a manner that depends upon the character of the motion, it follows that each atom has a field the shape of which and the strength of which must depend upon the kind of motion it has and the energy involved. That vibratory motion of an atom develops a stress in the ether in different directions about it and results in a pressure towards it, and on account of its harmonic motion there are stationary nodes where atoms may cohere together forming symmetrical groups of molecules and larger masses of crystals, each of which in its turn has a field which is the resultant of the combined fields of al] its components. It is the reaction of this field upon other atoms and molecules that organizes them into larger geometrical shapes. As the field is bound to be symmetrical too, it must compel symmetrical arrange- ment within its borders and this accounts for the replacing upon imperfect crystals the parts that have been removed or which for [Dolbear /°\ 0-0 6 1 2 Q-O 0 0\ ^ 9 6 FIG. 7. Jan. 21,] 198 [Dolbear. any reason are not symmetrical with the rest ; phenomena which are well enough known. The foregoing explanation of the or- ganization of atoms into molecules and molecules into crystalline forms is made to depend upon the freedom of the bodies them- selves to assume their geometrical positions such as gases and liquids permit but it is not to be inferred that molecules could not cohere except at such nodal points. So long as the atoms vibrate they must produce fields and this must compel the molecules to assume a degree of compactness which must depend upon the strength of such fields, and this may bring about condensation to a solid Avithout any semblance to regularity in form. This is the case with perhaps most of the masses of matter Ave see but it does not imply that the molecules of which they are composed are un- syrnmetrical. A piece of wrought iron having no semblance of structure may be made crystalline by repeated jarring as it gives to the molecules a transient degree of freedom to assume any position they have any tendency to take. In like manner a bar of iron held in the proper position in a magnetic field will, if jarred by the stroke of a hammer assume polarity, for the jar assists the molecules to rotate to the magnetic position induced by the field. But the strength of cohesion in crystals is generally less than in amorphous bodies, probably from the fact that when the molecules have moved to the vibratory nodes forming geo- metrical figures, they have moved somewhat away from the places of greatest pressure which is where the amount of motion is greatest, the atomic impacts at such places tending to move them towards less disturbed points. When molecules are very compact such change of position is mechanically difficult and vigorous jar- ring aids somewhat to the arrangement. Hence the crystalliza- tion that often takes place in solids like iron. So far only so called inorganic phenomena have been referred to. The distinction that was formerly supposed to exist between inorganic and organic chemistry broke down long ago Avhen it Avas discovered that the distinction was one of degree only not of kind. Vital force as an entity, or as a force or factor different from chemism and that could bold chemical phenomena in abey- ance or direct it to this or that end has been abandoned by all except a few of the old school biologists who have not yet perceived the significance of the theory of the conservation of energy, and who probably never will. They do not see that such 1891.] 199 [Dolbear. a view of vital actions as they hold is incomparable with almost everything we know about the relations of energy to matter. The works of the later physiologists abound with statements that in- dicate all the phenomena they have to consider are physico chem- ical and nothing different. Thus, Foster, one of the most eminent, says, “The physiologists have been led to consider the qualities of things as being expressions of internal movements ; even more imperative does it seem to us that the biologist should regard the qualities of protoplasm as in like manner the expression of internal movements. He may speak of protoplasm as a complex sub- stance, but he must strive to realize that what he means by a complex substance is a complex whirl, an intricate dance.” And again, “The more these molecular problems of physiology are studied, the stronger becomes the conviction that the considera- tion of what we call structure must, in harmony with modern teachings of physics, be approached under the dominant concep- tions of modes of motion.” “The phenomena in question are the result not of properties of kinds of matter but of kinds of motion. ” Well, then, if biological phenomena are not different in kind from those generally known as chemical it follows that the factors and operations that explain the one will explain the other also. Chemically protoplasm is made up of complex molecules, not of so great a variety of elements, as a relatively larger number of them, a thousand or more perhaps in a molecule. Generally as molecules increase in complexity they become less stable. If a molecule be so large as to have some of its constituent atoms wholly inclosed within its surface, and if each atom maintains in a measure its characteristic motions the interior atoms must be in a much more uniform field than the external ones, and there- fore so much more easily displaced. There must be a greater tension upon the external layer of atoms than upon the rest. This phenomenon is well known even upon large masses of liquids and is called surface tension. The explanation here given is that this is the necessary result of the mechanical field of pressure and hence then a greater degree of stability would befclooked for in the material of the outside than upon the inside and so cellular struct- ure is the mechanical expression of the relation of the molecules and their field. The field of a given cell must depend upon the elements that compose it, their number and arrangement, and for any one of Dolbear.] 200 [Jan. 21, visible magnitude must be so complex that at any rate at present it would be quite a hopeless task to attempt to describe it, yet there does seem to be a good reason for having a well grounded conviction that in fact there must be such a field, and some sort of a mental picture of what it must be like. Physicists did not wait for the specific form of heat motions to be pointed out before they adopted in extenso the proposition that all the phenomena innst be due to motions. An obscure phenomenon did not cause them to hesitate, and why should it? Since the discovery of the mechanical equivalent of heat there has been no alternative that could be entertained a minute. It would not do for a man to say even that he did not know, for he had all the data there was. It has already been pointed out that such motions of matter as constitute sound, heat, magnetism and the rest, do all produce fields external to themselves and that within such fields other bodies are brought into similar states of position, or of motion, or both. Let this same principle be ap- plied to proptoplasm and cell structure. Imagine a cell with any degree of complexity, surrounded by material such as it is itself composed of and what should one look for to take place if not that the same kind of a structure should be reproduced? Where this happens we say that growth has taken place and it is attri- buted to life. As the new cell is similar to the old one that fur- nished the specific conditions for its development we say it has inherited its form and functions. The bearings of this upon the fundamental problems of biology are apparent. If the foregoing be true, heredity is explained as much as inductive magnetism is, and is no more mysterious. The cause of variation has been a subject much debated during the past few years and two schools of theory are still contending for acceptance ; one of them finding environment to be the chief factor, the other looking to supernaturalism for changes in organic evolution. Environment even in the hands of its friends is still a very vague and shadowy condition of things, but it is supposed to be altogether physical in its nature and to be subject to the ordinary laws of matter. As to supernaturalism, if con- sidered at all one is bound to admit its infinite possibilities, and also that an attempt at an explanation is absurd. On the other hand the possibilities of the mechanical combinations are infinite. Suppose that in such a complex molecule as protoplasm a sin- 1891.] 201 [Dolbear. gle atom of a different substance should accidentally become imbedded, either as a constituent or not, it would bring its field along with it necessarily and the resultant field of the whole would be modified. It could not be quite what it would be in the ab- sence of this new constituent, and consequently the reaction upon other matter in its neighborhood would be different and the next organic molecule formed would need to be a little differently or- ganized. Mechanical conditions would necessitate it. Again if energy, radiant or conducted, should act for a short time upon one part of a molecule it might easily bring about an exchange of position among some of the less stable constituents without other disturbance and this too would result in a change of the configuration of the field and the direction of growth. Every change in the collocation and motions among molecules exhibits itself in changed properties. Such conditions might properly be spoken of as changes in the environment, but it is molecular environ- ment, and the difference between this idea and that heretofore common is that the molecule produces an environment of its own. The space beyond its own geometric boundary, in which it is competent to act upon other bodies and compel other bodies to conform in a greater or less degree to it. More than that, a new constituent in a nearly saturated molecule could not have as firm a grip upon the structure as the older constituents could have, although it might so modify things while present as to organize other molecules in like manner, but slight changes in the neigh- borhood might slough off the new acquisition in a subsequent generation so there might be a return to the form and qualities of the ancestry, that is, reversion to former type would also be a mechanical consequence. Thus growth, heredity, variation and reversion may be con- sidered as the consequence of atoms vibrating in harmonic order, each producing its own field in the universal ether and each group of atoms constituting a molecule large or small, having a field which is the resultant of all the fields of its constituents. All of them are molecular properties as much as any one of them can be, and growth has been believed for a long time to be a property of inorganic molecules. The cause of variation is there- fore molecular as truly as isomerism is, a different collocation of atoms. It is a chemical problem. Marcou.] 202 [Jan. 21, The Secretary then read by title the following paper : GEOLOGY OF THE ENVIRONS OF QUEBEC, WITH MAP AND SECTIONS. BY JULES MARCOU. Between the vegetable mould and the subjacent rock, there is, all round Quebec, a deposit of glacial mud with scratched pebbles and boulders ; and also above that glacial formation, sand deposits containing marine shells actually living in the Gulf of St. Law- rence. Near the top of Montmorency falls, 250 feet above the St. Lawrence river, that boulder formation and sand with- marine shells, is well developed, and can be found even higher up, five miles northeast of Indian Lorette. I shall not refer to those superficial formations of the Quaternary period or surface geology but limit my remarks and observations to the stratigraphy of the older rocks. Montmorency. — In following the river Montmorency from the u Natural Steps” down to the bridge, the brink and the foot of the Montmorency fall, we have the following strata : At the Natural Steps, the Trenton limestone is well developed, with all its characteristics, as well lithologically, as paleontologically, abso- lutely like the typical Trenton limestone near Chazy village, and at Trenton falls in New York. In the dark blue, almost black, limestone, stratified in beds varying from six inches to one foot in thickness, the Trenton fossils are very numerous, more especi- ally : Calymene Blumenbachii , Ceraurus pleurexanthemus , Illaenus Milleri , Trinucleus concentricus , Asaphus platycephalus, Conularia Trentonensis , Orthoceras , Murchisonia , Bellerophon , Orthis , Stra- phomena , Leptaena , Prasopora , etc. Coming down the river, near the road west of the bridge, and at the bridge, the limestone is not so thick as it is at the Natural Steps ; and the first thirty feet lying on the quartzites and the conglomerates, is composed of thin beds, varying from half an inch to three and four inches thick only, which give to the cliffs of limestone about the bridge the appearance of a dark brown brick wall. The limestone strata in contact with the quartzites lies on the protuberances and inequalities of the quartzites, which they follow closely as if they were moulded on them. Sometimes between the quartzite and limestone, there is a conglomerate formed mainly of fragments of quartzites cemented by calcareous matter(1), from one foot in thickness to three and even ten feet in thickness. No fossils have been found yet in that conglomer- ate, which seems to represent the Calcareous and Chazy formations. Then the first fifteen feet of limestone represent the Black river subdivision of the state of New York, and the last fifteen feet forming the upper part of the cliff, north of the bridge, belong to the Lower Trenton proper. The strata are horizontal. The quartzite is seen in the bed of the river, and in a small island above the bridge ; the water flows over it and leaps at one bound to the foot of the precipice. The whole water-fall is made by the quartzite. Those quartzites are generally whitish-gray, stratified in beds of ten to fifteen feet thick, above the fall ; at other places, they are only one to three feet of thickness. No fossils have been found in them yet ; so it is impossible to classify them. Lithologically they have great similarity with the quartzites of the Potsdam sandstone of Keeseville in New York ; but they may be much older. The dipping is east-south under an angle of 80 to 85 degrees, almost perpendicular ; and the strike is north 45° east, to south 45° west. At the end of a very dry summer, August 30, 1863, at my last visit to the Montmorency fall, the water of the river was very low, and I was able to explore every part of the foot of the fall. The section is represented fig. No. 1 ; and the fig. No. 2 is the section at the same place by Mr. Selwyn, Director of the geologi- cal survey of Canada. The water falls into a small basin formed in the quartzites. The depth of the basin is about fifteen feet, with some fragments of rounded rocks at the bottom, fallen from the top of the fall. The width of the basin is twelve feet ; then there is an outcrop of quartzites about fifteen feet of thickness, the strata of quartzites varying between one foot and three feet of thickness ; the stream of the river flows round and over that outcrop of quartzites ; then we have a small basin of water three or four feet in width in the slates and beyond that small basin (!) L’Abb6 J. Cl. K. Laflamme, in his excellent paper, “Note sur le contact des- ' formations palaeozoiques etarch6ennes dela province de Quebec” (Mem. Soc. E. Can, ada , Section iv, 1886, pp. 43-47) gives facts, and opinions of great value; but which unhappily, were overlooked by the geological survey of Canada. Marcou.J 204 Jan. 21, the water flows toward the St. Lawrence river over gray and black slates with thin beds of calcareous-marls interstratified now and then in the slates. No fossils have been found yet in those gray and black slates, nor in the thin beds of calcareous-marls. The slates dip at an angle of sixty degrees south-south-east. They belong to a system of strata older than the horizontal Black river and Trenton limestone of the top of the fall, and are similar and of the same age as those forming the beach of Lake Champlain west of Swanton’s fall, and which I have called Swanton slates ” of the Upper Taconic system. If we consider the plan of quartzites east of the fall, looking almost like a perpendicular wall, we see that a recession exists at the fall, and that constant washing and yearly frost, have eroded a sort of gorge. At the beginning of the modern period, just after the glacial epoch and the St. Lawrence Quarternary deposits of sand with marine shells, the Fall was exactly above the south- eastern limit of the quartzites, which are seen at the foot of the fall ; and the small basin at the contact of the slate formation and the quartzites is the remains of the basin made at first by the leaping of the river. The recession seems to be of about twenty- eight to thirty feet, giving a very slow rate in forming the gorge ; for we must consider that the age of the Montmorency fall is the same as the Niagara fall which had made such a long gorge during the same space of time. Notwithstanding many calculations already suggested for the recession of the Niagara fall, from near Lewiston to its actual position ; suggestions which have varied from four thousand years to three millions or even more millions of years, giving a wide range of speculation as to the length of time required ; it is impossible to give any close approximation. But at all events the rate of recession of the Montmorency fall is certainly very small, on account of the hard quartzite material of the fall, and of the almost perpendicular position of the quart- zite strata. However the recession of the fall is a plain fact, which is clearly seen at low water. Another important fact, is that at the foot of the fall there are no traces of Black river and Trenton limestone ; if any have ever fallen from above by landslides, which was very likely the case at the beginning of the existence of the fall, then all have been destroyed and washed away long before our present time. On the left side of the fall — or eastern side — there is a small 205 [Marcou. 1891.] ravine in a great V shape, which is most interesting to study, be- cause we have there the remains of a landslide in the form of a spindle (fuseau in French) , which has preserved from destruction a part of the Upper Trenton and Utica formations, in a sort of box situated between the almost perpendicular wall of quartzites and the gray and brown slates of the Upper Taconic. At a distance of only ten yards from the eastern part of the foot of Montmor- ency fall, we have the following section. Fig. No. 3. The section begins at the top of the plateau a few yards east of the fall, then cuts the ravine perpendicularly going through the hill of slates which extend directly to the river St. Lawrence. The section is parallel to the preceding one (fig. No. 1) at a dis- tance of only thirty or forty feet eastward. At the top of the plateau we have fifteen feet of the Black river or Upper Trenton limestone, exactly like the fifteen feet of the section (fig. No. 1) near the bridge. The fossils are abundant ; and the moulding of the thin strata of limestone over the inequalities of the heavy beds of the quartzite are conspicuous at the contact of the two rocks. Then we have the almost perpendicular wall of quartzite, with a dip of 85 degrees. At the bottom of the ravine, there is an intermittent creek, which falls from the Trenton lime- stone above and flows during several months of the year. When dry, the lowest rocks seen belong to the quartzite ; then we have about twenty feet of blue-black Upper Trenton limestone, with a dip of only ten degrees south-south-east ; then come above it six- teen feet of gray slates and two feet of blue limestone with a dip of 20 degrees ; then thirty-five feet of brown and gray slates with a dip varying from thirty to forty degrees. In those seventy-three feet of limestone and slates the fossils are abundant, and accord- ing to Mr. Henry Ami, paleontologist of the Canadian geological survey, they indicate a fauna “pre-eminently Utica in facies, with an evident admixture of a few Upper Trenton species obtained from the lowest calcareous beds which crop out in the ravine.” Here is the list of fossils collected and obtained by Mr. Ami : Primitia , Triarthrus Becki ? Calymene Bhimenbachii, Illaenus, Or- this testudinaria , Leptaena sericea, Leptobolus insignis and Lingula. At the contact of the brown slates of the Utica formation, and the black slates of the Quebec city group or Swanton slates, there is great disorder and confused stratification ; the dip of forty de- grees passes rapidly to the vertical and is even reversed ; some Marcou.] 206 [Jan. 2i, of the Utica slates dipping westward instead of eastward. It is evident that the group of slates called B in the section, seventy- three feet thick, belongs to the Upper Trenton and Lower Utica, and has fallen into the ravine by a landslide, between the wall of quartzite on one side and the black and gray slates of the Upper Taconic on the other. After passing the confused stratification indicated on the section figure No. 3, we come to a great thickness of black and gray slates, with now and then a few thin beds of calciferous-marls in- terstratified, dipping sixty degrees to the east-east-south, like all the great masses of strata of the whole Taconic system ; and which form the hill extending from the ravine to the St. Law- rence river. Only close to the St. Lawrence river there is a small tongue1 of the Upper Utica slates containing: Triarthrus Becki, Endoceras proteiforme and Leptobolus insignis, which is the remains of another landslide preserved above or in the S wanton slates of the Taconic system. 1 have given (fig. No. 2) a section sent to me by Mr. Selwyn. Director of the geological survey, the 7th of June 1884; just at the time that he was publishing his: “Diagram section of sup- posed structure from Montmorency falls to the Island of Orleans,” in his: “Descriptive sketch of the physical geography and geology of the Dominion of Canada,” page 14, Montreal, 1884. As Dr. R. W. Ells, in his “Second report on the geology of the province of Quebec,” p. 22, Montreal, 1888, says that his ob- servations “clearly” maintain the conclusions stated by Logan and subsequently by Dr. Selwyn ; it will be easy for the reader and future practical observers in the field to compare and see the difference existing among geologists on the geology of Montmor- ency falls. On the western or right side of Montmorency fall, at a distance of only thirty or forty yards from the river Montmorency, there is an example of a Trenton limestone landslide. A large mass of Trenton rests on asperities of the quartzites, at an angle of eighty iThe expression of “tongue of Utica slates’’ is due to the Abb6 Laflamme, Profes- sor of Geology at the Laval University of Quebec. It is a happy word, which expresses in the most satisfactory way a phenomenon constantly met with in the province of Quebec, near the contact of the Champlain system with the Upper Taconic strata, brought about by landslides due to great erosions and denudations. Ann. Report , Geol. Surv. Canada, vol. ii, new series, 1886, p. 37, A, Montreal, 1887. 207 [Marcou. 1891.] degrees — almost perpendicular. That landslide must be quite recent when compared with the landslide of the eastern ravine previously described and given in fig. No. 3. Charlebourg. — I have already given the section of the road from the city of Quebec to Charlebourg (“ The Taconic of Georgia and the report on the geology of Vermont” ; Mem. Boston Soc. Nat. History , vol. iv, plate 13, 1888) showing local folding and small local faults. From Charles river to the Tr&s- plat, there is a great mass of slates, dipping south-easterly at an angle of forty to sixty degrees, of a thickness of at least 2,500 feet, more probably 3,000 feet, belonging to the Swanton slates of the Upper Taconic. I did not find any fossil during my re- searches ; but the stratigraphic position of those slates above the Point-Levis great group, and their lithological structure, showed them to be the equivalent of the Swanton slates of Vermont. The little plateau of the Tr&splat above the village of Cliarle- bourgis formed wholly of horizontal strata of the Black river lime- stone or Lower Trenton, lying in discordance of stratification over the Swanton or Quebec-city slates. Lately Messrs. Giroux and Ami of the geological survey of Canada have found, be- tween Charlebourg church and Tr&splat, a tongue of Utica slates containing : Triarthrus Becki, Primitia , Bellerophon and Stro- phomena. That tongue of Utica slates seems to extend one mile eastward, as far as a small brook. It is another example of land- slide of the bituminous slates of the Utica group, brought about by a process of denundation and destruction, followed by a slide- down, with the usual result of a tongue of Utica, inclosed in or covering the Upper Taconic slates. (u Second report on the geol- ogy of a portion of the province of Quebec,” by R. W- Ells, p. 20 K, in Ann. Report Geol. Surv . Canada , 1887, Montreal, 1888.) Indian Lorette. — The bed of the Charles river at the fall and down the rapids is occupied entirely by the same quartzite as at Montmorency fall and river ; only the strata are not so thick being only half a foot, or one foot — very seldom three or four feet of thickness. On the right side of the river (fig. No. 4) and consequently westward of the village, overlying the quartzites, there is a deposit of fifteen feet of calcareous sandstone, reddish and very finely grained, representing the Calciferous and Chazy, which forms a sort of gigantic step between the perpendicular wall of Black river-Trenton limestone and the gorge of quartzite Marcou.] 208 [Jan. 21, of the river bed. No fossils have been found yet in either the quartzite or the fifteen feet of reddish calcareous-sandstone. Above the reddish Calciferous-Chazy there is a perfect vertical wall, fifty feet high, formed of beds of Black river and Lower Trenton limestone, one foot thick, instead of being one or three inches thick as they are at Montmorency bridge. At Indian Lorette, just close by the bridge, the strata of the Champlain system are almost horizontal, with a very slight inclin- ation toward the south-east. But in descending the rapids of the Charles river, the inclination increases rapidly, and from a dip of ten degrees it passes to twenty and thirty degrees, and finally it reaches the vertical. We have there good examples of landslides by erosion of the Champlain systems strata over the quartzites. I did not see on what rocks the vertical beds of the Trenton lime- stone lies. On the interrupted and fragmentary section (fig. No. 4)1 have indicated the quartzites ; but I am not sure ; the Taeonic slates so common and which form the whole undulated plain in which the Charles river flows, may reach as far up as the vertical Trenton strata are. It is a question to be solved by exact and minute observations in the field. Messrs. Ami and Giroux of the geographical survey of Canada have published the following list of fossils, collected by them at the foot of the Indian Lorette fall : Illaenus Miller i, Trinucleus concentricus , Dalmanites callicephalus , Encrinurus vigilans , Caly- mene Blumenbachii , Ceraurus pleurexanthemus , Asaphus platyceph- alu's , Beyrichia , Primitia , Endoceras proteiforme , Lituites unda- tus , Ambony chia, Pterinea Trentonensis , Ctenodonta dubia , Theca , Conularia Trentonensis , Beller option bilobatus, Bucania punctifrons, Atrypa hemispherica , Orthis testudinaria , Strophomena alter nata, Leptaena sericea , Lingula , Discina , Polyzoa , Pachydictya , and Prasopora lycoperdon. As they say, a part of those fossils have a Black river facies in the lowest portion of the stTata ; and the rest indicate the Lower Trenton limestone ( Loc . cit. pp. 19-20.) Quebec-city. — All the lower part of the valley of the St. Charles river, is occupied by the Swanton slates of the Upper Ta- conic system. The gray and black slates are seen in many places on the roads from Quebec to Indian Lorette, to Charlebourg and to Beauport, with local folds well marked on the roads to Lorette and to Charlebourg, and also on the edge of the St. Lawrence river at La Canardi&re. EXPLANATIONS OF THE SECTIONS TO ILLUSTRATE JULES MARCOU’S PAPER ON THE “GEOLOGY OF THE ENVIRONS OF QUEBEC.” PLATES VIII AND IX. Fig. No. 1. Section of Montmorency’s fall. a. Black River limestone. b. Lower Trenton limestone The strata between the quartzites at the foot of the fall and the river St. Lawrence are gray and black slates with beds of calcareous marl of the City of Quebec or Swanton group of the Upper Taconic, August, 1868. Fig. No. 2. Section of Montmorency’s fall, by Alfred R. C. Selwyn, June, 1884. Fig. No. 3. Section from the Ravine on the east bank of Mont- morency’s fall to the River St. Lawrence, a. Black River limestone or Lower Trenton. Dip 5° southeast and almost horizontal at the summit of the fall. B. Upper Trenton and Lower Utica, composed of 20 feet of Upper Trenton limestone at the foot of the ravine; then 16 feet of gray slates; then 2 feet of limestone; then 35 feet of brown and gray slates. These 73 feet of strata have fallen into the ravine by a landslide. At the contact between the brown slates of the Utica and the black slates of the City of Quebec groups there is a great disorder and a confused stratification ; some of the slates being verticales an.) even reversed dipping westward instead of eastward. C. Black and gray slates of the City of Quebec or Swanton slates. B' . A tongue of Upper Utica slates at the St. Lawrence river shore ; another reiuain of a landslide. Fig. No. 4. Interrupted section taken on the Charles River banks, from the village of Indian Lorette down the rapids, showing the inclination of the Calciferous, Black River and Trenton groups of strata by landslides. Fig. No. 5. Arched fold with a long rise of the strata at the base of the Citadel of Quebec, in following Champlain Street. Fig. No. 6. Section from Montmorency to the mouths of Beauport and St. Charles Rivers across the city and Citadel of Quebec to the western foot of the Citadel. Fig. No. 7. Section from the St. Lawrence River, at the Point Levis shoal to the St. Joseph’s church and the Redoubt. The magnesian lime- stone of the Redoubt contains a Primordial fauna, and in following it after the fold of that lenticular mass; just near the Letellier house, a Trinu- cleus has been found with a Dikelocephalus in the same piece of limestone. Proc.Bost Soc.Nat. Hist. Vol.XXV. Pirn Proc. Bost. So c. Nat. Hist. Vol. XXV. Plate VIII. MARCOU, GEOLOGY OF QUEBEC. Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist. Vol. XXV. Plate IX. MARCOU, GEOLOGY OF QUEBEC, 209 [Marcou. 1891.] The city of Quebec is built at the extremity of a sort of prom- ontory, extending from the mouth of the Charles river to Cape Rouge (pronounced Carouge by the French Canadians). This promontory is capped by a sort of plateau, more or less accidented by small hills, which begin behind the citadel and extend to Ste. Foye, St. Albans and Cape Rouge, bounded on the south by es- carpments like almost perpendicular cliffs on the St. Lawrence river, and on the north by another great escarpment called “C6te. Ste. Grenevidve,” “C6te de la N6gresse,” Cdte Sauvageau,” etc. The whole is an elongated mountain formed entirely by the Upper Taconic strata arranged in a fan-like structure (called structure en 6ventail by the French and Swiss geologists) very common in the Alps. It is the result of some strong lateral pressure, made upon rocks mainly slaty, but containing now and then lenticular masses of magnesian limestone, limited bands or spindles ( fus - eaux in French) of pudding limestone, conglomerate and even of sandstone, which being strongly squeezed north and south, was forced into folds, with a quantity of small, very local faults (called faillottes by French geologists) . All the folds strike more or less east- west ward with a deviation toward the north and south, just like the course of the St. Lawrence river, which very likely has followed some of the local folds in digging its bed into the slaty Taconic strata. The celebrated citadel of Quebec is built on the very top of the most important and largest of those folds ; and if looked at from the other side of the St. Lawrence, or from the middle of the stream, we see (fig. No. 5) a splendid arched fold wdth a long rise of the strata at the back of Champlain street, recalling the arched fold of the citadel of Besangon in Franche-comte (France). As I have said previously, the great masses of rocks are slates, varying in color from gray to blue, brown, black, red and green. But the slates contain inclosed beds, all more or less lenticular and limited in extent, of marly limestone, magnesian limestone very hard and almost sub-crystalline, pudding limestone, true conglomerate, and some small lenticular masses of magnesian limestone varying in size from an egg to a diameter of one or more yards. For instance in ascending the rue de la Montagne, just in the perpendicular cliff of the black slates, under the Sem- inary garden, a lenticular block of whitish magnesian limestone, PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. ?4 JAN. 1891 Marcou.] 210 [jan. 21, one yard in diameter, is seen (1863) at a height of about thirty- five feet above the street, inclosed in the slates, just as if it had been placed there in a sort of niche, or framed into the wall of black slates. At first it looks like a limestone boulder perched in a slaty cavity. Between the foot of the escarpment at the “C6te de la N6- gresse” to the “rue Champlain” at the north-west corner of the citadel, the strata has a thickness of at least 3,000 feet, which added to the 2,500 or 3,000 feet of slates existing between the St. Charles river and Trdsplat at Charlebourg, gives a total of 6,000 feet, at least, for the Upper Taconic, in the city of Quebec and its vicinity. The fossils are very scarce. It is not like the Champlain system at Montmorency, Beauport, Tr&splat of Char- lebourg, Indian Lorette and St. Ambroise, where fossils are very abundant, and are found without any interruption in following the strata horizontally. After many years of researches, only five very limited spots in the plain and “Cdte d’ Abraham” have been found, containing a few fossils. Messrs. Ami and Giroux who made the discovery of those fossils, give the following list (See, on the geographical map accompanying this paper, the five spots, marked by a small cross.) Between the Grand allee and the Drill shed, eight graptolites ; between St. John market and St. Patrick street nine graptolites, three Lingula undescribed and special to those strata, Obolella , Acrothale , StricMandinia , n. sp., Ortliis , Leptaena n. sp. Leptaena sericea? Cyrtolites , Illaenus n. sp., Ampyx , n. sp. Trinucleus, n. sp., Cheirurus ? Asaphus? n. sp., Batliyurus ? Hydrocephalus or a new genus, Cyphaspis? n. sp., Beyrichia? and Primitia, all new species or doubtful ones. At “Cdte d’ Abraham” several monticuliporids, an Ortliis , a Lep- taena sericea , and portions of pleura of a species of Asaphus? (Loc. cit. pp. 77-80, K). Such an imperfect and limited fauna does not allow the conclu- sion given by the geographical survey of Canada, that the Quebec citadel series of strata belongs to the Trenton-Utica and more spec- ially the lower portion of the Utica slates ; but simply that we have there primordial forms mixed with very few second fauna forms. Lingula , Obolella , Acrothele , Ortliis , Batliyurus, Primitia, are all characteristic forms of the “Lingula flags” of Wales and of the Phillipsburgh and Pointe-L6vis group of Canada and Ver- mont. As to the Leptaena, Illaenus, Ampyx, Trinucleus, Cheir- 1891 I 211 [Marcou. urus? and Asapkus ? they all belong to new species, not found anywhere in the typical Champlain system of North America or of Europe, and the only inference which we can safely draw from their presence in the Upper Taconic strata, is, that those gen" era made their apparition in the Nevado-Canadian sea sooner than in the Acadio-Russian ocean, that they migrated from ihe western sea into the eastern sea, and that we have there another example of the apparition of the prophetic types and colonies of Barrande during the primordial period. Besides we have a striking example of the co-existence in Eu- rope of the trilobitic genera Asaphus and Cheirurus , with the Olenus , Agnosias, and Conocephalites at Hoff in Bavaria, just as we have at Quebec-city, at Pointe-Levis, at Phillipsburgh and many other places in the states of Vermont and New York, the trilolites genera Asaphus, Cheirurus , Ampyx, Illaenus, Trinucleus , which have co existed with Conocephalites , Agnostus, Dikelocepli- alus , and Bathyurus. Barrande, Linnarson and others well qualified to express an opinion on the primordial fauna, have no hesitation in placing the strata of Hoff in the Upper Taconic of Europe, and not in the second fauna. If the normal and original Champlain system, as it exists at Trenton falls and Chazy village, was at a great distance from the citadel of Quebec, say 5,000 or 6,000 miles, some hesitation, as regards the synchronizing of the strata of the city of Quebec, may be understood, to a certain extent, although the Champlain system never shows in the Lake Champlain area and around Mon- treal and Ottawa, a mixture of primordial forms, such as : Bath- yurus, Dikelocephalus, and Conocephalites. But in the vicinity of Quebec, we possess the normal and typical Champlain system, at a distance less than a cannon shot — only two miles ; and if we reconstruct the deposits as they existed at the time of the end of the Champlain period, before any erosion or denudation took place, when the sea had just retired, then we see that the Cham- plain strata were deposited over a great part of the Upper Ta- conic, and are consequently younger than the Quebec-city and the Point L6vis rocks, which were then already a terra ftrma and formed in their prolongation under water the beds of the Champlain sea in the area of Quebec and its environs. I have tried to reconstruct the deposits, as they were at the end of the Champlain period, in a “Section from Montmorency Marcou.J 2i2 [Jan. 21. to the mouths of Beauport and St. Charles rivers across the city and citadel of Quebec to the western foot of the citadel.” (Fig. No. 6.) The part of the section drawn with full lines is the actual section as seen from the “Natural Steps” above Montmo- rency fall, to the foot of the fall, and then following closely on the edge of the St. Lawrence river, at low tide, in passing across Beauport beach and la Canardiere, to the old rampart of Quebec, the citadel and Champlain street, to the St. Lawrence river. And the pointed lines indicate the outlines of the deposits as they existed before any denudation, erosion and landslide took place; as well as the terra jirma of the Laurentine Mountains on the north, and the Champlain continent on the south ; the last shore being formed by a plateau composed entirely of Taconic strata, which has been upheaved and cleared out of water by the great break and total overturn of the whole Taconic system at the end of the deposits of the Quebec-city and Swanton states. The stratigraphy (strikes, dipping, thickness, succession and superposition), the lithology and the paleontology (species, habi- tat and geographical distribution) of the great slaty system called Taconic by Dr. Emmons, are so completely different from those of all the other palaeozoic systems, that it is materially im- possible to confound its divisions and great groups with any of the Champlain (primitive Cambrian of Sedgwick) , of the Silurian (primitive Upper Silurian of Murchison), of the Devonian and of the Carboniferous. The sporadic character of habitat of fossils in the Taconic system, is general everywhere, and can be used safely to indicate the existence of that system. The attempt of the geological survey of Canada to synchronise and correlate the Quebec-city rocks with the Chazy, or the Lower Trenton, or the Upper Trenton, or the Utica slates; to consider the enormous mass of slates which form the entire valley of the St. Charles river between Quebec-city and the foot of Montmorency fall as the equivalent of the Lorraine shales of the State of New York and of the vicinity of Ottawa ; to identify the Pointe-Levis group with the Calciferous of Chazy village, Argenteuil and Ot- tawa (at Gatineau river) ; is made against all sound principles used in practical geology. Paleontology after being used first wrongly in transferring the primordial fauna above the second fauna at Georgia (Vermont), at Pointe-L6vis, and at Bald Moun- tain by the paleontologist of the geological survey of the State 1891.] 213 [Marcou. of New York, has been the tool constantly used by unskillful hands to classify strata absolutely different in every respect from those with which they have been identified. Few paleontologists are able to deal with stratigraphy and lithology. I shall name only a few of the dead, such as : Edward Forbes, Barrande, Alcide d’Orbigny, Quenstedt, von Buch, Oppel, Newmayr, Linnarson, E. Emmons, Conrad, de Verneuil, David son, Salter, etc. But unhappily many paleontologists, not so skilful as those iust named, have tried to classify strata with either incomplete data, or with incorrect determination of species, of genera and even of family ; and without hesitation they have given and used classifications of strata incorrect and at complete variance with the facts as they exist in situ. Of course the rocks are there plainly exposed to view, and observers can go any day and see for themselves. Obstruction cannot last very long, and first-rate paleontologists, although rare, are sure one day or an- other to take in hand all the questions at variance, and to see that paleontology properly understood and used, is in complete harmony with the result arrived at by stratigraphists and practi- cal geologists. A quotation taken from “Life and letters of A. Sedgwick,” by Clark and Hughes, vol. ii, pp. 397-398, Cambridge, 1890, applies most fittingly to the case. It reads as follows : “ . . . No good classification either of subdivisions or systems, or of subordinate formations, ever can be attempted wfithout a previous determina- tion of the physical groups. The study of fossils, based on ascer- tained physical groups, may produce, and often does produce, some modification of our lines of demarcation ; but the evidence of sections must ever remain as the primary basis of geology. When a system has been well made out, and its groups of fossils deter- mined, we may then make use of comparative groups of fossils freely, and with very small risk of mistake. But to begin with fossils , before the physical groups are determined , and through them to establish the yiomenclature of a system , would be to invert the whole logic of geology , and could produce nothing but confusion and incongruity of language.’’1 The italics are mine. Dr. Emmons and the present writer have followed strictly Sedgwick’s rules, while their opponents on the contrary have “inverted the whole logic of geology,” with the constant result of “confusion and incongruity of language.” Marcou. | 214 [Jan. 21, Pointe-Levis. — On the southern side of the St. Lawrence river, opposite Quebec-city, the Taconic strata occupy the whole area as far up the river as St. Nicholas, twelve miles above Pointe-Levis, where a tongue of Utica slates has been inclosed in and over the Taconic slates, by a landslide. Twenty-six years ago, I published a detailed paper on the geology of Pointe-Levis, entitled : “Notice sur les gisements des lentilles trilobitif&res ta- coniques de la Pointe-Levis, au Canada.” ( Bull . Soc. geol. France , vol. xxi, p. 236, Avril 1864); accompanied by a carefully made plan of the outcrops of fosiliferous magnesian limestone, and by a section taken from the main street of L6vis at the Croix-de-Tem- p6rance in a south-easterly direction. As a lithological confusion in regard to conglomerate has been maintained until now by the geological survey of Canada, I shall give another section (fig. No. 7) taken a little farther east than the one published in 1864, from the shoal, at low tide of the St. Lawrence river, to the church of St. Joseph and the top of the Redoubt or Notaire Gay’s quarry.1 Explanation of the section fig. No. 7 :) Close by the river there is a pudding-limestone, heavily bedded, formed of a matrix of blue limestone containing, disseminated irregularly, a certain number of large pebbles of another grayish limestone. No fossils had been found yet in either the matrix or the pebbles. The strata dip south-south-east, at an angle of sixty degrees, and their strike is east-east-north, to west-west-south, pointing directly toward the southern part of the citadel of Quebec. Those blue-pudding limestones of the upper part of Pointe-Levis group can be seen in 1 During the last Franco-English war, in 1759, a redoubt was roughly built there, on account of its commanding position over the St. Lawrence river and the country around. After being taken by the English, it was promptly dismantled, and nothing remains of it, except the name of the “Redoute’’ kept among the French in- habitants. The Notaire Gay, proprietor of the place, came to see me, when I was working the geology of that part of Pointe-Levis, and gave these details, as well as the name of the road to Arlaka, having the kindness to write himself the name Arlaka, which resembles Arthabaska, another Indian name. The geological survey of Can- ada have lately called in question both names ; saying that I have styled the mass of limestone found on the Arlaka road by the name of the “Redoubte,” spelling Harlaka with an h . It is well known that a certain contempt always exists for the French- Canadian called “Cannuck,” and their noble defence of their country against the British army. But notwithstanding the stricture of the Canadian geological survey the facts are that above the St. Joseph’s church, the principal knob of limestone is called the “Redoute,” and the old Indian village of Arlaka is spelled without an h, by the French inhabitants, the best judges in the question. i89J.] 215 [Marcou* several parts of Champlain street at Quebec, and form with the slates in which they are enclosed almost one-third of the moun- tain on which the Chateau St. Louis, the old city of Quebec and the citadel are built, as it is marked on the section fig. No. 6. It is probable that the part of the bed of the St. Lawrence, be- tween Pointe-Levis shoal and the “Sault du Matelot” at Quebec, is formed entirely of those pudding limestones interstratified with slates; the slates, as usual in the Laconic system, being much thicker and more frequent than the limestones. South of and close by the church of St. Joseph, there is a small lenticular mass of magnesian limestone, fifteen feet thick and very limited, without fossils. Then come twenty feet of slates, dipping at an angle of sixty degrees. Above it we meet the elon- gated lenticular mass of true conglomerate, which I have called outcrop of the “Croix de Temperance,” in my paper of 1864 — the only conglomerate in the full sense of the word existing at Pointe-Levis. Its thickness at the section fig. No. 7 is only fifteen feet ; some thin beds of magnesian limestone and gray slates are interstratified iu forms of spindle (< fuseau ). No fossils have been found in either the pebbles or in the interstratified mag- nesian limestone and slates. In 1863, a house, called “Letellier house,” built on that true conglomerate, was a prominent land- mark between the Main street of Pointe-Levis and the Redoubt. From that house a small plateau extends toward the foot of the Redoubt, and at about mid- way, inclosed in slates, there is an outcrop of magnesian limestone with fossils, which is a prolonga- tion of the lenticular mass of the Redoubt, after its sharp turn, a few yards eastward opposite the second Chapelle. Near the northern foot of the Redoubt the slates dip more and more ; and then the heavy bedding rocks, indistinctly stratified, as they al- ways are in the lenticular masses of the magnesian limestone of the Taconic, dip south-east at an angle of seventy-five degrees, passing rapidly to the vertical, at the top of the Redoubt ; then dipping in the opposite direction north-westward under an angle of eighty-five degrees. The slates at the southern foot of the Redoubt dip at an angle of eighty-six degrees toward the north- west; and finally the conglomerate band of the “Croix de Tem- perance” dips also north-westward. The reversion of the dip of the strata at the Redoubt is due to a local fold, and the difference of thickness of the slates, conglomerate and magnesian limestone- Marcou.J 216 [Jan. 21, are clue to pressure of the slates and to enlargement of the len- ticular masses, so often seen in all the lenticular masses of the Taconic system. Until my first exploration and study at Pointe-Levis in 1861, no fossils had been found at the Redoubt, where I collected a good primordial fauna such as : Arionellus, Dikelocephalus, Con- ocephcdites , Menoceplialus , Leptaena , Metaptoma and Cystidae. The geological survey of Canada, having sent one of its members to see how I made observations in the environs of Quebec, was ad- vised of my discovery of fossils at the Redoubt, and of its impor- tance as well stratigraphically as paleontologically. I shall only repeat what I have already said in 1864 : That the lenticular masses found in the three folds of Pointe-Levis are simply the result of a local accident of folding, limited to one and a half mile square. The magnesian limestone there contains a primor- dial fauna, indicating the lower porton of the Supra-primordial fauna or Upper Taconic. That the outcrop of Pointe-Levis be- longs to the same horizon as the Phillipsburgh group, only it is a little below or more exactly the inferior part of that horizon That the fossiliferous lenticular masses, called by me “Redoute,’* “Milieu,” “Devine” and “Colline Paroisiale” are not formed by a “Limestone conglomerate,” as it has been erroneously called by some geologists, but by a magnesian limestone, perfectly homo- geneous, without any boulders or pebbles of any sort ; and that the fossils are disseminated in every part of each lenticular mass, either in nests or sporadic. That the fossils with forms of the second fauna, are only “prophetic types,” and that we have there an example of what Barrande has called his “doctrine des colo- nies.” The true conglomerate of the lenticular mass called the “Croix de Temperance” does not contain any fossils, and the blue pud- ding limestone of the most northern part of Pointe Levis, close by the shoal of the St. Lawrence, and in the village, does not contain any fossils, in either the matrix or the pebbles. La Cpiaudiere’s fall. — In following the road from Victoria hotel at Levis to the river des Etchemins and La Chaudidre’s fall, just when reaching the mouth of the river Etchemin in the river St. Lawrence, the slates present flows of diorite or more exactly diabase — “old basalt” — which are more or less intercalated and even stratified into the slates. The whole country between the ■S9I-] 217 [Marcou. river Etchemin and La Chaudiere’s fall shows such outcrops of diabase protruding from the red, green, brown and black slates. Near the Chaudi^re’s fall these diabases are extremely phonolitic, ringing under the hammer like bells. Those dyke-beds ( filons - couches as they are called in French) intercalated into the grau- wakes or Taconic slates, recall the same phenomenon of dykes and intercalated beds of diabase ( porphyrites and Kersanton) which exist between the “Rade de Brest” and the “Douarnenez” bay in Britany (France). It seems that the eruption of those phonolitic diabases — a very remarkable example of ancient volca- nos during the Taconic period — prevented the existence of marine animals in the area directly under their actions, for no fossils have been found there yet. Near to it, however, at the crossing of the Railroad above Chaudi&re’s fall, a small brachio- poda, called Oholella preciosa , has been found. The same fossil has been collected by the members of the geological survey of Canada on the shores of the St. Lawrence river east of Arlaka junction, near the Hotel Victoria at Levis and at Pointe-a-Pizeau. The slates containing the Oholella preciosa, with some graptolites , lay directly below the Pointe-Levis group and are placed a little above the Elliptocephalus ( olenellus ) Tliompsoni beds found by the geological survey of Canada near Beaumont. The horizon of the Oholella preciosa can be taken as the approximate extreme limit between the Upper and Middle Taconic ; and the groups of the “Georgia slates” containing the Elliptocephalus Tliompsoni extend from Bic-Harbor to above Beaumont, east of Pointe-Levis. It is composed of the belt of slates, which rfms south of the local fold of Pointe-Levis, reaching the St. Lawrence again at the western extremity of the fold near the Old Victoria hotel ; cross the St. Lawrence to near the Pointe-a-Pizeau, following for a very short distance up the shore toward Cape Rouge. The dia- basic slates of the area between the mouth of Etchemin and Chaudiere rivers and Chaudi&re’s fall belong to that division of the Middle Taconic or Georgia groups. I was unable to find a single fossil in the red slates spotted with green and the gray reddish sandstone with ripple-marks, which form the masses of strata of the Chaudiere’s fall. At my first visit there in 1849, I was much struck by the exact similarity of the rocks with those existing at the fall of the river Montreal near the south-west shore of Lake Superior ; and I have no doubt Marcou.] 218 [Jan. 21, that both falls are made among slates of the Middle Taconic sys- tem ; just as Kakabeka’s fall on the river Ministiquia, north-west of Lake Superior, has been referred by me to the black slates of the Lower Taconic. Conclusions. — We can assume the following facts as well es- tablished for the geology of the vicinity of Quebec : Two dif- ferent systems of Lower Paleozoic rocks are found there. 1st, the Champlain system, almost horizontal with remains of landslides, near the actual edge of the system, which has left fragments or spindles ( fuseaux ) of Trenton limestone in ravines or perched on asperities of quartzites, and tongues of Utica slates lying over Taconic slates. Denudation and erosion hasr educed the Cham- plain system of the vicinity of Quebec to very narrow limits, as well horizontally as vertically. 2d, the Taconic system is al- ways strongly dislocated, with a general dip south-eastward, under an angle of an average of sixty degrees. As the whole system has been overturned, and is mainly formed of an enor- mous mass of slates, at least 20,000 feet thick, there is in such a mass many small faults ( faillotes ) which do not affect by any means the whole system, or any portion of it ; and also many local folds, the most conspicuous being Pointe-Levis and the Citadel of Quebec. But nowhere do those small faults or local folds repeat on a great scale the different groups of the Upper, Middle and Lower Taconic. The upper part of the Taconic system, 6,000 feet thick, is formed by the strata which cover the whole ground from the foot of Montmorencjf fall to near Pointe-a-Pizeau, Victoria hotel at Levis, and half-way between Beaumont and Pointe-Levis. In that great mass of 6,000 feet of strata, two great groups may be made for convenience. The first upper 3,000 feet are called “Quebec-city group” or “Swanton slates” of Vermont. In it are sporadic apparitions of forms of fossils of the second fauna mixed with supra-primordial forms, at only three or four places in the vicinity of the Plain of Abraham, as at Highgate-spring in Vermont. But generally the Quebec-city group or Swanton slate is bare of fossils. The lower 3,000 feet of the Upper Taconic are well developed at Pointe-Levis, under the Chateau St. Louis and the upper por- tion of the old town of Quebec and under the citadel, extending along the northern shore of the St. Lawrence as far as Mount 219 [Marcou- 1891. J Herman cemetery near Pointe-a-Pizeau. Fossils are found in some lenticular masses of magnesian limestone at Pointe-Levis, and are distributed in a sporadic way, just like at Phillipsburgh, with colonies of forms of the second fauna mixed among supra- primordial fossils. Both great groups are characterized by the genera of trilobites called Dikelocepalus and Batliyurus , which have never been found in the typical Champlain system of the New York geological survey. The Upper Taconic correspond exactly to the Olenus zone of Scandinavia and to the Ffestiniog, Tremadoc, and Arenig or Skiddau groups of Segwick in North Wales. t Below the Upper Taconic the slates are characterized by a fauna entirely primordial, without any mixture of forms recalling the second fauna. The principal fossils found in the vicinity of Quebec are : Obolella pretiosa and Elliptocephalus ( olenellus ) Thompsoni. The thickness of the Middle Taconic cannot be given even approximately, because we do not know yet the Lower Taconic in that region ; but it must be several thousand feet thick. Old volcanic eruptions have left remains in diabase dikes and flows, between Etchemin and La Chaudiere rivers, in the Middle Taconic group of slates ; but so far the history of those volcanos, which have left such conspicuous land-marks at Bel- Oeil, is entirely to be written, for neither the geological survey of Canada, nor private observers, have yet touched that important part of the Lower paleozoic eruptive rocks. The quartzites of Montmorency and Indian Lorette are of an unknown age. In such a mass of broken slates as those of the vicinity of Que- bec, it is extremely difficult to use the lithologic character, in order to make subdivisions and divisions ; but I have no doubt that, if a geologist inhabiting Quebec or Pointe-L6vis devotes fifteen or twenty years of constant work to them, that he will succeed in giving a rational and clear classification of every foot of strata. It is a work of patience and good practical geology. Explanation of the Geological Map. — During my first visit at Quebec, in September 1849, I made a first rough sketch of a geological map, and a general section from Montmorency to Chaudi&re’s fall ; giving a copy of both to my friend, the late Frangois Xavier Garneau, the historian of Canada, who accom- panied me to every locality. Garneau was specially anxious to Marcou.] 220 [Jan. 21 know if there was any peculiar geological fact at Wolfe’s cove and Wolfe’s field, in explanation of the choosing of that special locality of the north shore of the St. Lawrence river for disem- barking the British army. After looking carefully, I did not see any fault, or any change in the lithological character of the slates. Denudation and erosion were the only factors in allowing a more easy ascent of the cliff at that place. Lately Dr. Ells in his Re- port ( Loc . cit. p. 44 K) says that he found “a profound fault,” a new term, never used in geology before, and which is not ex- plained. In 1861, ’62 and ’63, I finished my first sketch of 1849 ; and if I did not publish sooner my notes with geological map and sec- tions, it was because I thought that after the publication of my letter to Barrande in 1862, and my paper on Pointe-Levis in 1864, I had given sufficient explanations of the geology of the en- virons of Quebec, and a classification of strata so clear and well justified by plain facts in the field that it was almost useless to go any farther on my part, leaving the field to local geologists and the geological survey of Canada. But the publication of the Report of Dr. Ells in 1890, and his paper of April 1890, in the Bulletin Geol. Soc. America , vol. i, pp. 453-468, with a geo- logical map of the vicinity of Quebec, present the geology of the region in such a shape, and with such classification and dynamic phenomenon of great faults, entirely different from the result arrived at by my researches, that I am justified in publishing my observations at this late date, so many years after making them. The only additions made to my map are due to discoveries of Utica fossils, on the edge of the St. Lawrence river at the mouth of Montmorency river, and at two places near Charlebourg’s church, by the geological survey of Canada. I have marked by a cross the places where Taconic fossils have been found, always in a sporadic condition, by both the geological survey of Canada and myself. Finally I must say, that the outcrops of the diabasic flows and eruptions among the slates of the Middle Taconic, in the Etchemin and Chaudiere rivers area, were not surveyed carefully and want to be looked a-new on a map of large scale. On my map they must be taken as an expression of a general fact existing in that area, and not as mathematically exact, as regards precision in their location. 221 . [Mar con i 1891. J Bibliography of the Geology and Paleontology of the Environs of Quebec. 1 1827 — Bigsby (J. T.). — The true initials are J. J. — On the geology of Que- bec and its vicinity ( Proceed . Geol. Soc. London , vol. 1, p. 37) The quartzite of Montmorency fall is called gneiss, and the lime- stone of Montmorency and Beauport is referred to the carbonifer- ous limestone of English geologists, 1829 — Baddeley (F. E.). — On the geognosy of a part of the Saguenay coun- try (Trans. Lit. and Hist. Soc. Quebec , vol. 1, p. 79). With a sketch geological map from Cape Rouge and Quebec to Lake St. John. The limestone of Montmorency is referred, with doubt, to the carboniferous. 1829 — Green (William). — Notes on the country in the neighborhood of the falls of Montmorency {Trans. Lit. and Hist. Soc. Quebec , vol. 1, p. 181). With a plate containing seven geological sections. 1841 — Emmons (Ebenezer). — Geology of Montmorenci ( Amer . Magazine Nov. ; reprinted in Amer. Geologist , Aug. 1888, vol. n, p. 94.). The Beauport limestone is referred to the Trenton Limestone ; the sand- stone and conglomerate, fifteen to twenty feet thick, directly below the Trenton is referred to the Potsdam, and the quartzite of the fall is called gneiss. Dr. Emmons has reproduced his section of the falls of Montmorency, at p. 138 of his Agriculture of Hew York , vol. 1, 1846; and also at p. 55 of his Manual of Geology, first and second editions, 1859-60. 1845 — Bayfield (H. W.). — On the junction of the transition and primary rocks of Canada and Labrador (Quart. Jrn. Geol. Soc. London , vol. 1, p. 450). The limestone of Beauport and Indian Lorrette is re- ferred to the Silurian. 1845 — Lyell (Charles). — Travels in North America, in the years 1841-42, vol. 11, p. 108. The quartzite of Montmorency is referred to the gneiss, and are regarded as “truly primary.” 1845— Logan (W. E.). — Message de son excellence le gouverneur general, avec Rapports sur une exploration geologique de la province de Canada, presents a la chambre, le 27 Janvier, 1845, Montreal. The first report, called : “ Remarques sur le mode ou la maniere de pro- ceder pour faire une exploration geologique de la province,” is dated, 6 Dec. 1842. Atp. 20 of this preliminary report, the author says that he does not know the exact place in the stratigraphic scale of the folded rocks at Pointe-Levis, but he inclines to regard them as below the horizontal strata of the St. Lawrence limestone (that is to say the limestone of Beauport and Montmorency) . But acting under the influence of advices received, shortly after, from 1 The order is chronological even in each year, when several papers were issued during the same year. Marcou.] 222 [Jan. 2i- the Paleontologist of tlie Geological Survey of the State of New York and the Geologist of the State of Pennyslvania, he added, in, 1845, a foot-note, in which he retracted his first opinion of 1842, saying that the rocks of Pointe-Levis are above the St. Lawrence limestone (Trenton limestone). 1853. — Bigsby (J. J.). — On the geology of Quebec andits environs {Quart. Jrn. G-eol. Soc. London , vol . ix, p. 82). With a “ Geological map of the vicinity of Quebec,” on which all the strata of Quebec and Pointe-L6vis are placed above the Trenton limestone, as belonging to the Hudson river group. 1854 — Logan (W. E.) — Geol. Surv. Canada. Report of Progress for the year 1852-53. Quebec. Geology of the north side of the St. Law- rence, between Montreal and Cape Tourmente below Quebec ; pp. 34-36. 1855. — Logan (W. E.) et Sterry-Hunt (T.). — Esquisse g6ologique du Can- ada, Paris, pp. 49-52. With a general: “ Carte g^ologique du Canada,” par W. E. Logan. The hills around Quebec and Pointe- Levis are referred to the Hudson river group and the Oneida con- glomerate. On the map, Pointe-Levis and a part of Quebec hills are colored as Onondaga gypseous limestone. 1858. — Hall (James). — Descriptions of Canadian graptolites, in Report Geol. Surv. Canada , for the year 1857, Toronto, pp. 109-145. The author refers the strata of Pointe-Levis to the Hudson river group, adding that they form also the rocks of Quebec-city. Two of the species were published first in 1855 in Canadian Naturalist , vol. hi, under the title: “Note upon the genus Graptolithus, and de- scriptions of some remarkable new forms from the shales of the Hudson river group, etc. , etc.” Mr. Hall reprinted the same paper in the Twelfth Ann. Rep. State Cabinet Nat. Hist., State of New York , pp. 47-58, Albany, 1859. 1860. — Billings (E.). — On some new species of fossils from the limestone near Pointe-Levis, opposite Quebec. ( Canadian Naturalist , vol. v, p. 301, August). 1860 — Barrande (J.) and Marcou (J.) — On the primordial fauna and the Taconic system ( Proceed . Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. vn, pp. 369-382, October). Barrande refers the fossiliferous limestone of Pointe-L6vis to the Taconic system ; and Marcou calls the rocks of Montmorency fall quartzites instead of gneiss, and says that he did not see the fifty feet of Trenton limestone pointed out by Logan as existing at the foot of the fall, nor the anticlinal axis with fault of Logan. It is the first hint of the grave errors committed in re- ferring the strata of Pointe-L6vis, Quebec-city, and the foot of Montmorency falls, to the Hudson river group, the Oneida con- glomerate and the Onondaga gypseous limestone. This paper has been called “turning point” of the Taconic question. Part of the paper has been reprinted, under the altered and false title of : “ On the primordial fauna and the Taconic system of Emmons, in a 223 letter to Professor Broun of Heidelberg,” in the Amer. Jr. Sc., vol xxxi, March 1861, pp. 212-215, in the Canadian Naturalist , vol. vi, pp. 108-173 and also in the “ Geology of Vermont,” vol. i, pp. 377-379, March 1862. 1861. — Logan (W. E.). — Remarks on the fauna of the Quebec group of rocks, and the primordial zone of Canada, addressed to Mr. Joa- chim Barrande, 15 January 1861. The author admits that the Hudson river group and Oneida conglomerate for the rocks of Pointe-Levis and Quebec-city is an error, and he refers them now to the horizon of the Chazy and Calciferous. His explanation of the strata at Pointe-Levis is so confused as to be incomprehensible. Reprinted in the Canadian Naturalist, vol. v, pp. 472-477, also in the Amer. Jr. Soc., vol. xxxi. pp. 216-220; and in the “Geology of Vermont,” vol. i, pp. 379-382. 1861 — Hall (James). — On the primordial fauna and Pointe-Levis fossils in a letter to the editors of the American Journal of Science and Arts , vol. xxxi, March 1861, pp. 220-226. The author opposes Bar- rande’s conclusions in regard to “successive trilobitic fauna”; and maintains that on “paleontological evidence” and on “stratigraplii- cal basis” the rocks of Pointe-LSvis belong to the Hudson river group. Reprinted in the Canadian Naturalist vol. vi, p. 113-120, and also in the “ Geology of Vermont,” vol. i, pp. 382-386. 1861. — Logan (W. E.). — Considerations relating to the Quebec group and the upper copper-bearing rocks of Lake Superior ( Canadian Natu- ralist vol. vi, pp. 199-207, May 1861) ; with a vertical section extending from Montmorency to the Island of Orleans, p. 199 ; and a diagram at p. 206, showing the author’s opinion on the deposit of the Potsdam, Quebec group, Birdseye, Black River, Trenton, Utica and Hudson river in the Montmorency region. 1861. — Barrande (Joachim). — Documents anciens et nouveaux sur la faune primordiale et le systeme Taconique en Amerique ( Bulletin Soc. geol. France, vol. xviii, pp. 203-321, Eevrier 1861, received in America August 1861. At pp. 209-216, chap. n. — “Faune nouvelle, decouverte a la Pointe-L6vis pres Quebec, et renfermant des trilo- bites de forme primordiales ;” and at pp. 315-221, “Observations au sujet de la communication de Sir W. E. Logan, sur la faune du groupe de Quebec.” A very remarkable and impartial paper. 1861. — Billings (E.). — On some of the rocks and fossils occurring near Philipsburgh, Canada East ( Canadian Naturalist, vol. vi, pp. 310- 328.) Comparison of the upper limestone of Pliillipsburgh with the Pointe-Levis limestone, referred to the upper part of the Calciferous. 1861. — Marcou (Jules) . — Sur les roches fossiliferes les plus anciennes de 1’ Amerique du nord; deuxieme lettre de M. J. Marcou a M. Elie de Beaumont ( Comptes rendus de V Academic des sciences, tome liii, 4 November, 1861, pp. 915-921, Paris). First description of the Redoubt at Pointe-Levis, with its primordial fauna as belong- ing to the Taconic system. 224 1861. — Marcou (Jules). — The Taconic ancl Lower Silurian rocks of Ver- mont and Canada ( Proceed . Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., v ol. win, pp. 239-253, November). At p. 248, there is a “Theoretical section of the rocks of the vicinity of Quebec,” with an explanation of the superpositions. It is a first attempt at a rational and exact classifi- cation of the strata of the environs of Quebec. 1862. — Billings (E.). — 3. On some new species of fossils from the Quebec group. Synchronism of the Pointe-Levis limestones ( new species of the Lower Silurian fossils, pp. 57-96, issued June, 1862. Reprinted in Paleozoic fossils, vol. i, 1865, with alterations so great as to be regarded as another paper. The pages 57 to 67 are entirely different from the same pages 57 to 67 of the issue of June 1861. It is an incomprehensible confusion, showing the complete state of anarchy of the geological survey of Canada, after the publication of Barrande and Marco u’s papers on the geology of the vicinity of Quebec. 1862. — Marcou (Jules). — Letter to M. Joachim Barrande on the Taconic rocks of Vermont and Canada, August 1862, Cambridge. The author gives an “abstract section for the vicinity of Pointe-Levis, Chaudiere and Quebec,” with explanations, pp. 9-15. For the first time the existence of lenticular masses of limestone, sandstone and puddingstone inclosed in the shales are clearly shown and an exact classification and nomenclature of all the strata around Quebec is given, under the names of : “city of Quebec” group, “Pointe-Levis and Redoubt” group and “Chaudiere and Sillery” group for the Canadian Taconic. In this paper is the first notice of porphyry or diabase inclosed and crossing the strata of the Chaudiere group. The paper marks a new departure for the stratigraphy of the en- virons of Quebec. 1863. — Logan (W. E.) — Letter addressed to Mr. Joachim Barrande on the rocks of the Quebec group at Pointe-L$vi» ; March 1863, Montreal. Reprinted in Canadian Naturalist, vol. win, pp. 183-194. A second attempt to explain the stratigraphy of Pointe-Levis, crossing and blotting his explanation of 1861, and creating new stratigraphical confusions. 1863. — Billings (E.). — The parallelism of the Quebec group with the Ilandeilo of England and Australia, and with the Chazy and Calcifer- ous. ( Canadian Naturalist, vol. win, pp. 19-35.) 1863 — Devine (T.). — Description of a new trilobite from the Quebec group. — Olenus? Logani, Pointe-Levis. ( Canadian Naturalist, vol. win, April, pp. 95-98.) 1863. — Devine (T.). — Description of a new triobite from the Quebec group. — Menocephalus Salteri , Pointe-Levis. {Canadian Naturalist, vol. win, June, pp. 210-211.) 1864. — Marcou (Jules). — Notice sur les gisements des lentilles trilobitiferes taconiques de la Pointe-L6vis, au Canada {Bulletin soc. geol. France, vol xxi, pp. 236-250, avril.). A minute description with section and map of a part of Pointe-Levis. i89i.] 225 [Marcou. 1865. — Hall (James) . — Graptolites of the Quebec group ( Figures and de- scriptions of Canadian organic remains, Decade II). The shales’ with graptolites of Pointe -Levis are referred to the Calciferous and Chazy limestone. The introduction is reprinted in the “Twentieth Ann. Rep. State Cabinet of Nat. Hist, of the State of New York,’ pp. 169-233, “with supplementary notes,” pp. 234-240, Albany, 1868. 1865.— -Billings (E.) — New species of fossils from the limestones of the Quebec group from Pointe-L6vis and other localities in Canada- East. ( Paleozoic Fossils, vol. i, No. 5, pp. 185-206.) 1865. — Logan (W. E.). — Geology of Canada or Report of progress from its commencement to 1863, Montreal, 1863 ; accompanied by an “At- las of maps and sections,” Montreal 1865, and the “geological map of Canada and the adjacent regions, including the other British provin- ces, and parts of the United States,” eight sheets, each 24x20^- inches ; scale 25 miles to one inch, 1886. Although dated 1863, 1865 and 1866, the complete work was not issued and distributed until the spring of 1867. In taking 1865 for the year of publication of the work, it is a fair average of the dates inscribed on its three different parts. The bulky volume in 8vo, contains observations on the vicin- ity of Quebec in chapters ix, x, and xi, frompp. 196-296; in chap, xxii, pp. 861-864. On both the geological maps, the vicinity of Que- bec is colored as Chazy and Calciferous formations, with a band of Hudson river groups, extending from the rear of the citadel to Montmorency. The author described a great fault or break, made by “an overturn anticlinal fold with a crack and a great dislocation running along the summit, passing just north of the fortress.” 1866. — Richardson (James). — Geological Survey of Canada. Report of Progress from 1863 to 1866, Ottawa, 1866. Report of Mr. James Richardson, pp. 29-32. 1867. — Capellini (Giovanni). — Ricordi di un viaggia scientifico nell’ America settentrionale nel mdccclxiii Bologna, 1867. The volume contains, Capitolo in, pp . 47-62, “Geologia della collina di Pointe- L§vis, Sezione geologica del Montmorenci,” the “Natural Steps.” The rocks of Montmorency fall are called Quartzites, and the sec- tion of the fall, p. 55, is correct. 1870. — Richardson (James). — Geological Survey of Canada. Report of progress from 1866 to 1869, Montreal. Report of Mr. James Rich- ardson on the south shore below Quebec, pp. 119-139. A geologi- cal map from the Chaudiere to Trois Pistoles river, gives for the area between the Chaudiere river and the village of Beaumont, the Sillery and Lauzon groups, placed above strata called Upper Pots- dam ; and the Pointe-Levis group; according to the author the Pointe-L6vis group does not exist at Pointe-Levis, and is not found until below Beaumont’s village. 1879. — Selwyn (A. R. C.). — Geological Survey of Canada; Report of prog- ress for 1877-78, Montreal, contains: “Report of observations on PROCEEDINGS B. S.N. H. VOL. XXVI iS Jan. 1891. Marcou.] 226 [jan. 21. the stratigraphy of the Quebec group and the older crystalline rocks of Canada,” pp. la-8a. This paper with a few alterations in the title and in the first page, was read by Mr. Selwyn before the Natural History Society of Montreal, 24 Feb. 1879, and reprinted in the Canadian Naturalist , vol. ix, pp. 17-31, 1879. 1879. — Dawson (J. W.). — The Quebec group of Sir William Logan, being the annual address of the President of the Natural History Society of Montreal, for 1879. 1879. — Macfarlane (Thomas). — Remarks on Canadian stratigraphy (Canadian Naturalist, vol. ix, pp. 91-102). 1882. — Selwyn (A. R. C.). — The Quebec group in Geology, with an Intro- ductory address (Trans. R. Soc. Canada ), vol. i, section rv, pp. 1-13, Montreal. 1883. — Dawson (J. W.). — The Quebec group, as an appendixtothe “Life of Sir W. E. Logan” by B. J. Harrington, pp. 404-414, Montreal. 1883. — Selwyn (A. R. C.) — Notes on the “Life of Sir W. E. Logan,” by B. J. Harrington, with an appendix on “the Quebec group,” by principal Dawson; pp. 1-8, Ottawa. 1884. — Selwyn (A. R. C.). — Descriptive sketch of the physical geogra- phy and geology of the Dominion of Canada. Part I, Eastern Sec- tion. Opposite p. 14, a plate, fig. 1. Diagram section of supposed structure from Montmorenci falls to thejisland of Orleans. 1884. — Selwyn (A. R. C.). — Map of the Dominion of Canada, geologically colored from surveys made by the geological corps, 1842-1882. Quebec-city and Montmorency are colored as Cambro-Silurian or Champlain system ; and Pointe-L6vis as Cambrian or Taconic sys- tem. There is a want of harmony between the map and Mr. Sel- wyn’s expressed views, for he says in all his papers that the L6vis group belong to the Champlain system or his Cambro-Silurian. 1885. — Marcou (Jules). — The Taconic system and its position in strati- graphic geology. (Proceed. Amer. Acad. Arts and Science, Vol. xn, pp. 221-224.) Cambridge. 1886. — Laflamme (J. Cl. K.). — Note sur le contact des formations pal6- ozoiques et archeennes de la province de Quebec. ( Trans. R. Soc. Canada, vol. iv, sect, iv, pp. 43-47), Montreal, 1887. 1886. — Lapworth (Chas.). — Preliminary report on some Graptolites from the Lower paleozoic rocks on the south side of the St. Lawrence from Cape Rozier to Tartigo river, from the north shore of the island of Orleans, one mile above Cape Rouge, and from the cove fields, Quebec. (Trans. R. Soc. Canada, vol. iv. section iv, pp. 167- 184.) Montreal, 1887. 1887. — Marcou (Jules). — The Taconic of Georgia and the Report on the geology of Vermont (Mem. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. iv, issued March 1888, Boston). Plate 13, fig. 8, section on the road from Quebec to Charlebourg, and explanations pp. 116-119, on the strat- igraphy of Charlebourg, and landslides at Montmorency and Indian Lorette falls. 227 [Marcou. 1891.] 1888. — Selwyn (A. R. C.). — The Taconic at Queoec. ( Amer . Geologist, vol. n, pp. 134-135, Minneapolis, Aug. 1888). 1888. — Marcou (Jules). — Geology of the vicinity of Quebec-city, (Amer. geologist, vol. n, pp. 355-356, Minneapolis, Nov. 1888.) 1888. — Dawson (Sir J. William). — On the eozoic and palaeozoic rocks of the Atlantic coast of Canada, in comparison with those of Western Europe and of the Interior of America. (Quart. Jr. Geol. 80c. Lon- don, vol. xliv, pp. 808-811, “Quebec group of Lower St. Law- rence,” November 1888). 1889. — Marcou (Jules). — Canadian geological classification for the pro- vince of Quebec, (Proceed. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. xxiv, pp. 54-83). At p. 79, a diagram of the “stratigraphy of the province of Quebec,” based on observations made around Quebec-city. 1889. — Selwyn (A. R. C.). — Canadian geological classification for the province of Quebec, by Jules Marcou. (Proceed. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. xxiv, pp. 216-218). 1889. — Marcou (Jules). — Reply to the questions of Mr. Selwyn on “Cana- dian geological classification for Quebec.” (Proceed. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. vol. xxiv, pp. 357-364.) 1890. — Ells (R. W.). — Geological Survey of Canada. Annual report (new series) vol. m, part ii, for 1887-88, dated Montreal, 1889, issued only in 1890. Contains “Second report on the geology of a portion of the province of Quebec, relating more especially to the counties of Megantic, Beauce, Dorchester, L6vis, Bellechasse and Montmagny,” by R. W. Ells. Part K. 1890. — Walcott (Charles D.). — A review of Dr. R. W. Elis’s second report on the geology of a portion of the province of Quebec ; with addi- tional notes on the “Quebec group.” (Amer. Jr. Sc., vol. xxxix,Feb. 1890, pp. 101-115.) 1890. — Ells (R. C.). — The stratigraphy of the “Quebec group,” (Bulle- tin Geol. Soc. America, vol. 1, pp. 453-468, plate 10), Washington, April 1890. With a “map of Quebec, L6vis and west end of Island of Orleans, showing distribution and stratigraphical positions of the Sillery and L6vis formation.” The main features of the map are nine great faults, two of which are in the bed of the St. Law- rence river. 1890. — Dawson (Sir William). — The Quebec group of Logan, (Canadian Becord of Science, July 1890, pp. 133-143) , Montreal. 1890. — Marcou (Jules). — The Lower and Middle Taconic of Europe and North America, with a sketch map of the Lower and Middle Ta- conic period (The Amer. Geologist, vol. v, pp. 357-375; vol. vi‘ pp. 78-102; and vol. vi, pp. 221-233; June, August and October, 1890, Minneapolis.) At pp. 92-97, “The St. Lawrence gulf and the vicinity of Quebec-city,” with three tabular views of the strati- graphy of the province of Quebec. Upham.] 228 [ Feb. 18 * General Meeting, February 4, 1891. Prof. W. H. Niles in the chair. Mr. G. H. Barton read a paper on the Hawaiian Islands. General Meeting, February 18, 1891. President F. W. Putnam, in the chair. The following paper was read to the Society : — WALDEN, COCHITUATE, AND OTHER LAKES EN- CLOSED BY MODIFIED DRIFT. BY WARREN UPHAM. The lakes and ponds here considered are bounded wholly or in large part by modified drift, that is, beds of gravel and sand, or rarely of fine silt or clay, which were supplied directly from the melting and receding ice-sheet, in which these materials had been held and from which they were brought and deposited in their present position by streams flowing down from the ice-surface. After a brief description of lakes Walden and Cochituate, which are examples of these gravel-enclosed basins near Boston, others are noticed in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, and near Providence. For the more distant portion of the drift-cov- ered area within the United States, my examination of the greater part of Minnesota during six years of work on the geological survey of that state furnishes further details of these lake basins, with citation of typical examples. They are frequent, often abundant, in all glaciated countries, being found by scores, hun- dreds, and thousands, throughout Canada, in our northern states from Maine to Minnesota, in the British Isles, and over north- western Europe, so far as the ice-sheet extended. But they do not include all, probably not so large a proportion as a third, of the vast number of lakes and lakelets on the areas of glacial drift. Many of these lakes and ponds lie in basins which are enclosed wholly or in large part by the unmodified gla- cial drift or till, which is spread in smoothly undulating sheets i89i.] 229 [Upham. and slopes upon the bed-rocks of plains and hills, or is amassed in round, oval, and elongated drumlins, or is irregularly heaped in the hillocks and ridges of terminal moraines. It is evident that these till-enclosed lake basins were formed by inequalities in the deposition of drift by the ice-sheet, without modification by water action. This class of drift lakes is probably twice as nu- merous as that discussed in the present paper. Glaciated regions have also two other classes of ponds and lakes, including those that lie in rock basins. Many tarns and small lakes in mountain districts fill hollows that have been scooped out of the bed-rock by glacial erosion. Lakes of this origin are less frequent or rare upon moderately hilly and even plain country, where inequality in the hardness of contiguous rock formations, or difference in their exposure dependent on their dip and strike, has permitted the ice-sheet to wear more deeply on some tracts than elsewhere all around them, producing lake basins. But if the drift covering the glaciated surface of the bed-rocks were removed, doubtless multitudes of shallow rock basins would be seen. This class of glacially eroded tarns and lakes contributes much to the beauty of many alpine landscapes, where the ice-sheet was efficient to abrade the rocks, rather than to deposit drift ; but it is scantily represented on the lowlands. It probably comprises only lakes of small or moderate size, up to limits of a few miles in length in mountain valleys, but to many miles on lower drift-bearing areas. The larger and very often deep lakes in rock basins of glaci- ated mountain districts, as the lakes of Geneva, Neuchatel, and Constance, the Lago Maggiore, and others in the Alps, and of continental expanses which have been covered by land-ice, as the great lakes of North America tributary to the St. Lawrence, the Nelson, and the Mackenzie, seem to me to constitute a fourth class, different in origin from the last, not being attributable to excavation by the ice, but to deformation of the earth’s crust through flexure and faulting, whereby portions of preglacial valleys of river erosion have become transformed into lakes. The more frequent occurrence of these lakes on glaciated than on un- glaciated areas seems to have been due to movements of elevation which with other conditions caused the ice accumulation, and to movements of subsidence which appear often or generally to have resulted from the pressure of the ice weight. Upham.] 230 [Feb. 18, Each of these four classes of lakes presents interesting ques- tions as to the causes and conditions by which their basins were formed 1 ; but we shall only investigate these questions for the lakes enclosed by modified drift, with which the others are here brought into comparison for the purpose of more clearly discrim nating and defining the characters of the class under considera- tion. Deep lakes of small area, as Walden and Cochituate, bor- dered by steep banks and adjacent plains of water-deposited gravel and sand, present first the difficult question how these beds could have been prevented from being spread where the lake basin now exists, as well as on the adjoining areas. What kept the gravel and sand from being carried into the hollow and filling it? We shall answer, from study of the final melting and de- parture of the ice, that large island-like ice-masses, remaining for some time after the recession of the main glacial boundary, occu- pied the places of these lakes and became surrounded by the beds of modified drift, so that when the ice-masses disappeared they left bowl-shaped or irregular basins filled with water. Next comes the inquiry, How could the gravel and sand be supplied in such abundance and be deposited so fast as to form the enclosing plains or terraces before the ice-mass occupying the lake basin was melted ? The reply must be that the lower por- tion of the ice-sheet contained plentiful drift upon many areas, and that the glacial melting was so rapid as to set free a great amount of this drift and to produce, with the aid of accompany- ing rains, broad drainage systems of rills, brooks, and rivers, by which gravel, sand, and fine silt were gathered from the drift exposed on the ice and swept forward to their place of deposition beyond the ice-border. Some writers on this subject hold that much of the drainage bringing these beds of modified drift was subglacial, flowing be- neath the ice and there forming in tunnels the long gravel and sand ridges called eskers or osars ; and certain features in the stratification of the sand plains formed along the ice-front are ascribed to the upflowing currents of subglacial streams. My studies, however, lead me to think that streams under the ice- sheet were exceptional and rare during its rapid final melting; 1See “On the Classification of Lake Basins,” by William Morris Davis, Proceedings of this Society, vol, xxi, 1882, pp. 315-381. 1891.] 231 [Upham. and the last of the several questions which this paper attempts to answer is, Do our modified drift deposits afford evidence of sub- glacial drainage in the Champlain epoch, that is, the closing stage of the glacial period ? Having thus outlined the intended scope of our investigation, let us survey the lakes and their bordering gravel, sand, and silt deposits which suggest these problems and may reveal how they can be solved. Lake Walden, formerly called Walden pond, is situated in Concord, Mass., beside the Fitchburg railroad, at a distance of about fifteen miles, in a direct line, west-northwest of Boston. Its low water level is about 152 feet above the sea at the mean between low and high tide, and it fluctuates six or seven feet to its high water stage, which is reached after a succession of several years having slightly more than the average or normal rainfall. This lake is endeared to naturalists and all lovers of poetic prose by its having been the place of Thoreau’s hermitage in the years 1845-7; and from his “Walden” portions of the following de- scriptive notes are transcribed. Thoreau calls it “a clear and deep green well, half a mile long.” Its width is nearly a quarter of a mile, and its area at low water is about 61 acres, as stated by Thoreau, and at high water probably about 65 acres, as given by Shattuck.1 Low stages of the lake occurred in 1824 and in 1845-7 ; and high stages about 1830 and in 1852. Last summer, on July 23rd, I found the water at or very near its highest level, as it overflowed the base of large trees. Thoreau’s soundings gave a maximum depth of 102 feet at the center of the lake, which would be 108 feet from the high level of last summer ; but to obtain the depth of the basin we must add the height of 40 to 45 feet from the high water to the surround- ing plain. The lake is wholly enclosed by beds of coarse gravel and sand, which in some places have an uneven contour of irreg- ular knolls and hollows, but mostly are nearly level to distances varying from an eighth to three-quarters of a mile from the lake, with their surface approximately 200 feet above the sea. On the south and west these plains abut upon hills of rock ; but north- ward, in which direction they extend farthest, their boundary is a sudden descent of about 60 feet to the fertile farming land near 1 History of the Town of Concord, 1835, p. 200, Upham.] 232 [Feb. 18, Concord. The modified drift enclosing Lake Walden is thus in- dented by a hollow a half mile long from east to west and a fourth of a mile wide, which now sinks about 150 feet and originally may have been considerably deeper. Obviously the strong currents bringing the gravel must have filled the basin if it had been empty when the plain was deposited. Lake Cochituate, from which water is supplied to Boston, lies in Natick, Wayland, and Framingham, about sixteen miles west from the state house. It is three and a half miles long from north to south, and about a third of a mile wide in each of its three di- visions, which are united by straits. At the high water level, 13 feet above the bottom of the water works conduit, lake Cochitu- ate has an area of 801 acres, and is 134 feet above tide marsh level of the sea, or 144 feet above mean low fide, which is the Boston directrix or levelling base. Below this high stage, the depth of the northern division of the lake is 64 feet ; of the cen- tral division, 50 feet; and of the southern division, 72 feet. Gravel and sand deposits, partly in knolls and ridges but mainly in low plains, almost wholly surround this lake, terminating at its shores in steep banks. Again we must conclude that the deep lake basin could not have been empty when the modified drift was spread upon each side. In Maine the remarkable kames, osars, and plains of gravel and sand described by Prof. George H. Stone,1 enclose many ponds and lakes of this class. The largest and most noteworthy ex- ample is Sebago lake, which is 263 feet above the sea, being about thirty feet above the highest level that was held by the sea on the Maine coast during the Champlain epoch. The maximum depth of this lake is reported to be 400 feet. Professor Stone finds that plains of modified drift hold it at least 100 feet higher than it would be without their barrier dam around its most south- ern bay ; and he believes that the lake basin was occupied by ice having a thickness of not less than 400 to 600 feet at the time of accumulation of the adjacent gravel and sand beds. In New Hampshire these basins are frequent, representative examples being Silver lake, or Six Mile pond, in Madison ; Upper Beech pond, in Wolfeborough ; Willand and Barbadoes ponds, 1 Proceedings of this Society, vol. xx, 1880, pp. 430-469. Proc. A. A. A. S., vol. xxix 1880, pp. 510-519. Am. Jour. Sci., Ill, vol, xl, 1890, pp. 122-144. *891.] 233 Upham.J near Dover ; Great and Country ponds in Kingston ; Otternic pond, in Hudson ; and Pollard and Cragin ponds in Greenfield.1 In my survey of the modified drift of the Connecticut river valley in New Hampshire and Vermont, a very interesting small basin of this kind was found in Thetford, Vt., on the high terrace plain of fine silt close to the river and 142 feet above it, having an area of only about two acres but a depth of 40 feet as determined by sounding.2 In Massachusetts, besides Walden and Cochituate, hundreds of other ponds and lakes enclosed at least in part by modified drift are shown on the map of the state recently prepared by Prof. N. S. Shaler and his assistants, for theU. S. Geological Survey, on which the various drift formations are distinguished by separate colors. The following are of this character : Kimball’s pond, in Amesbury and Merrimac ; Johnson’s pond, Groveland ; Pentucket pond, Georgetown ; Wenham lake, in Wenham and Beverly ; Suntaug lake, in Peabody and Lynnfield ; Haggett’s and Foster’s ponds, Andover ; Martin’s pond, North Reading ; Quan- napowitt lake, Wakefield ; Horn Pond, Woburn ; Mystic lake, in Medford and Arlington ; Fresh pond, in Cambridge and Belmont ; Jamaica pond, Boston ; Billington Sea, West pond, Beaver Dam, Long, Halfway, and White Island ponds, Plymouth, and indeed a large majority of the total ,365 ponds, which can be counted, ac- cording to popular belief, in Plymouth township ; a similar propor- tion of the many ponds in Barnstable county, which comprises the peninsula of Cape Cod ; the ponds of the morainic belt on Nan tucket, and part of those belonging to this belt on Martha’s Vine- yard ; Tyng’s pond, Tyngsborough ; Newfield and Hart ponds, Chelmsford ; Fort Meadow reservoir, Marlborough ; West Wash- accum pond, Sterling; Lake Quinsigamond, in Worcester and Shrewsbury; North pond, Worcester; and Wachusett pond, in Princeton and Westminster. In the city of Providence, R. I., as I am informed by Mr. J. B. Woodworth, Randall’s and Leonard’s ponds on the north, and Long, Benedict, Mashapaug and Spectacle ponds on the south, belong to this class. In Minnesota basins of modified drift are occupied by White Bear, Bald Eagle, Oneka, and Forest lakes, lying 10 to 25 miles 1 Geology of N. H.vol., iii, 1878, chapter, i, pp. 97, 109, 116, 128, 144-6, 150, 156, 161 , 2 Ibid., p. 36. Upham.] 234 [Feb. 18, north of St. Paul ; the Lake of the Isles, and Lakes Calhoun and Harriet, in Minneapolis, lying in a series along the preglacial course of the Mississippi river ; Sandy lake, the Twin lakes, and Palmer lake, on the modified drift bordering the Mississippi within a few miles north of Minneapolis ; many lakes in Anoka, Isanti, and Sherburne counties, which are mostly overspread with gravel and sand beds of glacial origin, having flat, undulating, and rolling or kame-like contour ; and probably 200 or 300 of the 1,029 lakes which are delineated on the government survey plats of Otter Tail county, called by Rev. C. M. Terry “the banner county of the state for lakes.” Of the 10,000 lakes, or more, in Min- nesota, perhaps 2,500 occur on areas of modified drift. Red lake, the largest wholly within the state, and the southwest part of the Lake of the Woods, are mostly bounded by such areas. Otter Tail lake, West Battle lake, and Lake Clitherall, situated near together in Otter Tail county, may be selected as typical, having respectively lengths of nine, six, and four miles, and widths about a third as great, with maximum depths respectively of about 60, 50, and 44 feet. The surrounding deposits of gravel and sand range in height from 10 or 20 feet to the Nidaros plain 100 to 125 feet above these lakes, which are respectively about 1,315, 1,328, and 1,332 feet above the sea. While the adjacent stratified drift was being laid down, these basins were doubtless filled with melting remnants of the waning ice-sheet.1 Let us endeavor to restore in a mental picture the unique con- ditions of the Glacial and Champlain epochs, covering the land with ice and anon melting it away, in order to discern how the ice-masses filling basins of the modified drift were left standing out in peninsulas beyond the general ice-margin or were severed from it as islands. Every hill and mountain of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire was enveloped in the ice-sheet, whose smooth, slightly undulating surface stretched as a vast merde glace from Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and Long Island northward to the Arctic ocean, and from Newfoundland and the Fishing Banks west to the Lauren- tian lakes, the great lakes of Manitoba and the Mackenzie, the Rocky mountains, and the Pacific coast in Alaska, British Colurn- 1 Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota, Final Report, vol. i, 1884; vol. ii, 1888. 1891.] 235 [Upham. bia, and Washington. In the Cordilleran region the high summits of the Coast range projected above the ice surface ; but the Rocky mountains were probably wholly covered in their northern portion and southward to the Peace river, where they rise only 6,000 feet above the sea or 3,500 feet above the adjoining country. Farther to the east the mountains of northern Labrador, about 6,000 feet high, the Catskills, but none of the Adirondacks, and the peak of Mt. Katahdin, but not that of Mt. Washington, were visible as islands of rock upon the ocean-like expanse of ice, like the nuna- taks of the Greenland ice-sheet.1 This was at the culmination of the second Glacial epoch, giving us a view of the maximum ex- tent and thickness of its ice-sheet, the departure of which was attended with the deposition of our modified drift and the forma- tion of these lake basins. The climatic conditions producing so great accumulation of ice were followed by the temperate or warm climate of the Cham- plain epoch, when it was melted away under the alternate influences of the sun’s heat and of rains. During the time of increase and culmination of the ice-sheet, we must believe that the conduction of heat from the earth’s interior to its surface, though of small amount, was sufficient to maintain there the temperature of 32° F., at which ice is melted, so that a feeble subglacial drainage would take place, producing probably in its main avenues of dis- charge considerable streams or even large rivers. The summer melting of the surface of the ice-sheet during its growth and greatest extension doubtless also added to the subglacial drainage by streams falling through crevasses and moulins. But in the Champlain epoch, or time of disappearance of the ice-sheet, the superficial melting was rapid throughout the warm portion of each year, while the subglacial melting went on at a very slow rate through both winter and summer, the same as it had been during the entire epoch of glaciation. Owing to the rapidity of the Champlain melting on the ice surface, and to the amount of drift thus exposed and subjected to erosion and transportation, which will be more fully discussed in a later part of this paper, the sub- glacial stream-courses were inadequate for the Champlain drainage 1 “Glaciation of mountains in New England and New York,” Appalachia, vol. v 1889, pp. 291-312; also in Am. Geologist, vol. iv, Sept, and Oct., 1889. “Glacial Lakes in Canada,” Bulletin, Geological Society of America, vol. ii, for 1890. Upham.] 236 [Feb. 18, and appear to have been mostly obstructed and closed by the transportation and deposition of modified drift. The waning ice-fields were then deeply incised by brooks and rivers pouring over them in the descent to their border and to the adjacent land lately uncovered by the glacial retreat. Hydrographic basins of the ice-sheet probably extended 50 to 200 miles or more from its margin, resembling those of a belt of country along a sea coast ; but the glacial rivers, and their large and small branches, had much steeper gradients than those of the present river systems on the land surface, and often or generally they flowed in deep ice-walled channels, more like canons than ordinary river valleys. The ablation of the ice-surface by sunshine and rains, and its deeper melting by water-courses, sculptured it into hills, ridges, and peaks, and these were doubtless most conspicuously isolated by deep intervening valleys close to the receding ice-margin. It is therefore easy to see how ice-masses would be left here and there as peninsulas or islands outside the waning glacial boundary, es- pecially where rivers debouched from the ice-sheet to the land ; and thus the basins of our lakes in modified drift were filled each with its hill of ice while sedimentation was going on around them. Evidence that a large amount of drift was contained in the lower part of the ice-sheet on certain areas near its border, where massive terminal moraines were being accumulated, is afforded by lakes Benton, Shaokatan, and Hendricks in southwestern Minne- sota, with deeply eroded glacial river-courses extending from them south westward through the high Coteau des Prairies ; 1 and on belts to which currents of the ice-sheet converged from large areas on each side, there was also much drift within the ice, as is shown by the osar or esker of Bird’s Hill, near Winnipeg.2 On each of these tracts the amount of material held in the ice, which President Chamberlin denominates englacial drift , was equal to a uniform thickness of not less than 40 feet. Wherever abundant gravel, sand, and clay deposits were spread by the waters of the glacial melting, the volume of the englacial drift was great. Only part of it is comprised in these beds of modified drift ; and the portion which was not carried away by the glacial streams but fell Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota, Ninth annual report, for 1880, pp. 322-6 ; Final report, vol. i, 1884, pp. 603-4. 2,< Glacial Lake Agassiz in Manitoba,” Geol. and Nat. Hist, Survey of Canada, An-, nual report, vol. iv, for 1888-89, Part E, pp. 36-42, 1891.] 237 [Upham. loosely on the land as the ice melted, forms the upper part of the till. The Piedmont or Malaspina glacier, bordering the coast of Alaska south of Mt. St. Elias, as described by Mr. I. C. Russell,1 is a very good illustration of the way that the drift which had been contained in the ice-sheet became at last exposed on its surface, when only a small depth of the ice remained. The supply of englacial drift thus indicated for many areas would be ample for transportation along drainage channels of the ice-sheet, flooded by its summer melting and by rains. We can readily believe that where these floods descending from the ice spread with slackened currents over the gently sloping land sur- face, or expanded into temporary lakes fringing the ice-border, their coarse sediments of gravel and sand would be quickly de- posited in great depth. Not more than a few years, or at the longest one or two decades, would be needed for their accumula- tion in so thick plains as are found enclosing lakes Walden, Cochituate, and the multitudes of other lakes of this class. It is desirable to add here, however, that some other portions of the ice-sheet are known to have contained very little englacial drift, presenting a remarkable contrast with the areas of its great- est abundance. Tracts several or many square miles in extent in some of the hilly and mountainous portions of New England, in northern New York, and in north-eastern Minnesota, have a total amount of drift not exceeding a few feet, that is, from two to five feet, in average thickness ; and most of this lies in hollows of the rock surface where it was deposited as subglacial till or ground moraine. One of these tracts comprises parts of Henderson, Hounsfield, Brownville, Lyme, Clayton, and other townships of Jefferson county, N. Y., bordering the east end of Lake Ontario. It has a flat, gently inclined surface, and consists of nearly hori- zontal beds of the Trenton limestone. A much larger area charac- terized by surprisingly scanty drift deposits lies north and east of Vermilion lake, Minnesota, consisting of Archaean schists, with very hilly contour and plentiful lakes in rock basins.2 The western, central, and southern portions of Minnesota, on the other hand, have mostly a very thick sheet of drift, averaging from 100 to 150 feet in depth. These and other such diversities in the distribu- 1 American Geologist, vol. vii, pp. 33-38, and 141-2, Jan. and Feb., 1891. 2Geol. and Nat. Hist. Survey of Minn., Final report, vol. i, pp. 117, 131. Minn. Horticultural Society, Annual report for 1884, p. 398. Upham.] 238 [Feb. 18, tion of the drift constitute a very important and significant part of the records of the Ice age, and suggest lines of observation and study to which little attention has been given. We come now to the last of the questions proposed for inves- tigation, relating to the proportion of subglacial drainage as com- pared with that which took place on the surface of the ice-sheet during its departure in the Champlain epoch. The glacial river- courses by which the modified drift enclosing these lakes and ponds was brought and laid down, being spread in plains close outside the retreating border of the ice-sheet, are shown by pro- longed ridges of irregularly bedded gravel and sand, which often extend in a series many miles, sometimes 20, 50 or even 100 miles or more in length. These ridges usually have steep sides and a narrow arched crest of variable height. Associated with them, and with the terminal and marginal moraines of the ice-sheet, are mounds, hillocks, and short ridges likewise composed of gravel and sand having a confused stratification, often somewhat anti- clinal in conformity with the slopes of the surface. Both the very long gravel ridges, or series of ridges, and the very short ridges, hillocks, and knolls, were formerly classed together, and were called kames, eskers, or osars ; but a useful discrimination has been proposed by McGee and Chamberlin, in accordance with which the term kames is now restricted to the gravel hillocks, knolls, and ridges of slight extent, while the long ridges are named osars or eskers.1 Several osars often occur parallel with each other, or one alone may be traceable continuously a score of miles in a somewhat meandering and river-like course ; and two or more series of osars occasionally converge and unite like the branches of a river. They are admirably developed in New Eng- land and in southern Sweden, and have a frequent or at least a scanty representation in all glaciated regions. While generally regarded as the deposits of rivers draining the ice-sheet during its final melting, much diversity of opinion has been expressed con- cerning their precise mode of deposition, some observers believing 1 W. J. McGee, in the Report of the International Geological Congress, second ses- sion, Boulogne, 1881, p. 621. T. C. Chamberlin, in the Third Annual Report of the U. S. Geological Survey, for 1881-82, p. 299; and Am. Jour, of Science, III, vol. xxvii, May, 1884, p. 389. President Chamberlin shows that the term osar (pi. osars), in this Anglicized form, has long been in common use by Jackson, Hitchcock, Desor, Mur- chison, and other writers. them to have been subglacial and others seeing proofs that they were formed in channels on the ice surface. Professor Stone, in the articles before cited, concludes that the many and very long series of osars in Maine were mostly depos- ited in narrow, canon-like river-courses on the surface of the ice- sheet where its melting had advanced so far that it had a thick- ness of only a few hundreds of feet, while its motion hd nearly ceased. My own opinion of the osars or eskers of the Saco, Mer- rimack, and Connecticut valleys, examined for the New Hamp- shire Geological Survey under the direction of Prof. C. H. Hitchcock, is that they were progressively deposited near the ice-front in channels which were cut backward into the retreat- ing edge of the ice by such superglacial streams.1 Prof. G. F. Wright has carefully studied the Haverhill and Andover osar series in northeastern Massachusetts, and, after seeing the sub- glacial and englacial rivers of the Muir glacier in Alaska, he refers the formation of our osars to streams produced by the final melting of the ice-sheet, and seems to agree with Professor Stone and myself that this drainage was mainly in superficial channels.2 Numerous osars observed in Minnesota by Prof. N. H. Winchell and the present writer have been attributed by us to streams flowing in channels on the wasting border of the ice-sheet ; 8 and in Manitoba I have found the same explanation applicable to osars near Winnipeg, where the gravel and sand of the glacial river were evidently underlain at the time of their deposition by a thickness of about 500 feet of ice.4 A different view is taken by Professor Shaler, whose studies of osars and kames on Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Cape Ann, in other parts of New England, and in New York, lead him to interpret them as deposits formed by subglacial streams flow- ing in arched tunnels beneath the ice-sheet during its recession ; and he further believes that their accumulation took place be- neath the level of the sea upon the coastal region, or beneath the ^roc. A. A. A. S., vol. xxv, 1876, pp. 216-225. Geology of N. H., vol. iii, 1878, chapter i. 2 Proceedings of this Society, vol. xix, 1876, pp. 47-63, with three maps; vol. xx, 1879, pp. 210-220. The Ice Age in North America, 1889, chapter xiv. 3 Geology of Minn., Final report, vols. i and ii. 4 Geol. and Nat. Hist. Survey of Canada, Annual report, vol. iv, pp. 36-42 E. Upham.] 240 [Feb. 18, surface of lakes bordering the receding ice, of which lacustrine class an osar extending seven miles from north to south in a valley of the southern Adirondacks at Chestertown, N. Y., is cited as an example.1 But the fact that the osars and kames of southeastern Massachusetts near the coast are destitute of marks of shore erosion, which, according to Professor Shaler, they must exhibit “if they were exposed even for a few days to the action of the Atlantic surf and tides, ” seems, without speaking of the lack of marine fossils of Champlain age, to be sufficient disproof of his supposition that this district was covered by the sea when the ice disappeared. Northward from Boston, along the coast of northeastern Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, marine submergence at that time is shown by fossiliferous beds overlying the till to a maximum height of about 230 feet in Maine ; and to this limit, but no higher, the osars and kames have been washed and remodelled by sea waves and currents. With the foregoing interpretation of the conditions under which these ridges and knolls of gravel and sand were formed, Prof. W. M. Davis agrees so far as to attribute them to subgla cial rivers ; but he finds no reason for asserting that they were submarine or sublacustrine. Writing of the structure and origin of sand and gravel plains,2 like those enclosing Walden, Cochit- uate, and this class of lakes, Professor Davis describes a back- wardly dipping stratification of the beds forming the edge of the plains where they adjoined the ice-sheet, and attributes it to the upflow of subglacial waters bringing with them the sediments which make the plain and reach to a considerable distance, hav- ing in their lower portion on far the greater part of their area the forwardly dipping stratification that is characteristic of deltas or of deposits swept by torrential currents into the slowly flowing broad expanses of flooded rivers. It seems to me, however, more probable that the back-set beds were formed by the down- ward and backward transfer of sand from the surface of the plain, to fill in succession the small spaces from which the ice-sheet was gradually withdrawn.3 1 Proceedings of this Society, vol. xxiii, 1884, pp. 36-44. Am. Jour. Sci., III., vol. xxxiii, pp. 210-221, March, 1887. U. S. Geol. Survey, Seventh annual report, for 1885-86, pp. 314-322; Ninth an. rep., pp. 549-50; Bulletin No. 53, 1889, pp. 18-21, 26, 42-47. 2Bulletin, Geological Society of America, vol. i, for 1889, pp. 195-202. 3 Compare Geology of N. H., vol. iii, pp. 131-137. 1891 -J 241 [Upham The idea that drainage from the waning ice-fields would be subglacial is most naturally suggestedby the river born at the foot of the Alpine glacier, and by the subglacial rivers of the much larger Alaskan glaciers and of the Greenland ice-sheet wherever its outlets of ice end, whether in the sea or above it. But the only large glacier known which has a drift-covered surface, simi- lar to that of the ice-sheets of the Glacial period during the latest stage of their melting, is the Malaspina glacier, where Rus- sell reports large rivers flowing partly in open channels and often with a considerable thickness of ice beneath them. In the sum- mers of the Champlain epoch the progress of ice-melting was very rapid, as is known by the rate of deposition of the modified drift enclosing lakes ; and for the reasons before stated I believe that then the drainage from the ice-sheet was mostly in channels on its surface, there depositing the osars, or eskers, and kames, while much of the finer gravel and sand was spread just outside the mouths of these glacial streams, where they descended to the land. If the osars were subglacial, we should expect them to be often covered wholly or partly with the englacial drift, as boulders and loose deposits of till, which would be permitted to fall upon them when their ice-roof was melted away. Such a roof would be more or less overspread with the drift that had been contained in the higher portions of the ice-sheet and was exposed on its sur- face by ablation. Sections indeed are occasionally found, where subglacial beds of modified drift have become covered by subgla- cial and englacial till but these usually differ widely in their character from the torrential osar and kanie deposits, which very rarely contain or bear upon their surface any considerable abun- dance of boulders or other drift materials that have not evidently been transported, worn, and assorted by water. In nearly all the localities where I have observed boulders or masses of till imbedded within osars or lying on their surface, the most proba- ble explanation of their derivation has been by falling from the enclosing ice-walls of channels open to the sky, or by being brought while frozen in ice-floes.2 At only one place, in Dover, 1 Geology of N. H., vol. iii, pp. 108, 131-137, 289-291. Geol. and Nat. Hist. Survey of Minnesota, Eighth annual report, for 1879, pp. 113,114: Final report, vols. i and ii. Proceedings of this Society, vol. xxiv, 1889, pp. 231-5, 237-9. 2 Geology of N. H., vol. iii, pp. 43, 46, 85, 88, 90, 92, 127, 145, 148, 158, 160, 162, Geology of Minn., Final report, vol. ii, p. 550. Geol. and Nat. Hist. Survey of Canada. Annual report, vol. iv, pp. 40-42 E. PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV 16 June 1891 Wright.] 242 [Feb. iS, N. H., I have found a portion of an osar covered with a deposit of boulders and till which may have fallen from a melting ice- roof, though another interpretation seems to me preferable.1 Weighing the opinions and arguments which refer the trans- portation of our modified drift respectively to superglacial and to subglacial streams, I confidently give my decision in favor of the former. But this dissent from Professors Shaler and Davis must be tempered by a grateful acknowledgment of indebtedness to the second of these authors for his very instructive study of the stratification of our sand and gravel plains, showing the rapid rate of 1 heir deposition in comparison with the contemporaneous recession of the adjacent ice. According to either of the expla- nations of the back-set beds of these plains, as given by Professor Davis and by the present writer, they occupy the space from which the ice retreated during the time of deposition of the much greater volume of top-set and fore-set beds. At certain times and places, therefore, in the Champlain ejmch of glacial retreat, sedimentation was exceptionally rapid. When this took place around peninsulas or islands of ice, left as remnants of the dis- solving front of the ice-sheet, their disappearance gave us lakes and ponds enclosed by modified drift. This paper was discussed by the President, and by Professor Niles, and Mr. Barton. The speaker last named mentioned the occurrence of series of eskers or osars which he has traced both southward and northward from the gravel and sand plain enclos- ing Lake Walden. The President presented the following communication : — ADDITIONAL NOTES CONCERNING THE NAMPA IMAGE. BY G. F. WEIGHT. At the meeting of the Society for Jan. 1st, 1890, I completed the presentation of evidence so far as I had then collected it, bearing upon the genuineness of a small clay image, one inch and Geology of N. H., vol. iii, p. 159, [891.] 243 [Wright a half in length, which was discovered by Mr. M. A. Kurtz of Nampa, Idaho, as it came out of the sand pump used in clearing an artesian well from a depth of 320 feet below the surface, fifteen feet being through fresh looking basalt near the surface, and the additional distance through alternate beds of unconsolidated clay and quicksand. For the communications of Mr. Charles Francis Adams and Mr. G. M. Gumming concerning the genuineness of the discovery, it is sufficient to refer to the Proceedings of this Society of the above-named date. Having spent a large part of the past summer in study of the lava deposits of the Snake River Valley, Idaho, and their points of comparison with similar depos- its in Oregon and California, it would seem desirable that I give a brief summary of the facts to this Society, so that it may have in its publications a complete account of the significance of this discovery at Nampa. And, first, I would say, that, while upon the ground and in the vicinity, I had repeated interviews with the gentlemen in whose presence the discovery was made, and feel entirely con- fident that there is no ground to question the fact that this image came up in the sand pump from the depth reported. I enclose with this a photograph of the derrick, showing in the foreground the iron pipe which was driven into the well, and near the middle of the picture the sand pump with the suction valve fastened upon the jar drawn out ; also photographs showing sections of lava in the vicinity. An important additional point of circum- stantial evidence confirming the genuineness of the image appears in some further comparisons I was able to make upon the ground between the encrustations of the red oxide of iron upon the image and similar encrustations upon various fragments of the clay balls which came up in the pump from the same stratum, and many of which I still found in the pile of debris remaining near the mouth of the well. The resemblance was so exact that no doubt could remain that the clay balls and the image had been subjected to the same influences, and must be equally old. Some facts, also, came out on close cross-examination of the parties which do much to diminish the inherent improbability of such a discovery. To many it has seemed in the highest degree improbable that a six-inch hole should chance to hit so small an object at so great a depth. Upon inquiry, however, I found that a very much larger amount of sand and gravel was brought up Wright. J 244 [Feb. iS by the pump from near the bottom than would be required to fill the six-inch hole, and that very likely there was drawn into the pump the material from a good many square feet about the bottom. The evidence of this is as follows: — As I had before ascer- tained, the water in the well rose to within about 85 feet of the surface, and remained constant at that depth. Now when the tube was being driven through the clay, it entirely shut off the water from above, but when going through the quicksand the water would again come in. At first, after the tube had been driven some distance into the quicksand, or near the bottom into the gravel, rapid progress would be made with the’sand pump until they had reached the bottom of the tube, when the pressure of water from above would force before it into the tube a consid- erable additional amount of sand and gravel. Toward the bottom of the well, when this operation took place, it would force up a great blast of air which had occupied the tube. Through this cause the work was greatly delayed, an.d, as they reported, an im- mense amount of quicksand and gravel had to be brought out. From this it will be evident that quite a large cavity was made near the bottom, some of them saying that the pile of material thus brought out was as large as a small house. But most of it, when I was there had been hauled away to make sidewalks. It is pretty evident, however, that most of this must have come from below the last thick stratum of clay, which was 250 feet below the surface. At any rate, it must all have come from the strata below the lava, and must be older than the lava flow. As bearing upon the age of the lava, I have been able to make some important observations. I estimate that about 12,000 square miles in Idaho are covered with basalt. Roughly speaking, this' maybe looked upon as coming from four centres of eruption : 1st. Three or four hundred square miles from a centre twenty or twenty-five miles north of the abrupt turn made by the Bear River near Soda Springs; 2d. A much larger area from fissures north and north-east of Market Lake, in the vicinity of Henry’s Fork of Snake River; 3d. A much larger area from fissures radiating from a line joining Big Butte and Pillar Butte, near the 36th meridian ; 4th. An area of several hundred square miles from cen- tres in the neighborhood of the Oregon Short Line R. R., ex- tending from 25 to 50 miles eastward from Nampa. iSgi.] 245 [Wright. Nampa is within five miles of the western edge of this last area, and no basalt appears for 75 or 80 miles at least lower down the valley. The age of this lava may eventually be determined by studying the problems of erosion presented, but I am not prepared at pres- ent to express even an approximate opinion. This western centre of dispersion which overran Nampa seems to be separated from the larger area to the east ; and from the fossils which I found un derlying it in the vicinity of Glenn’s Ferry, there can be no ques- tion that the lava is either post Tertiary or late Pliocene. Among iny specimens, Mr. W. II. Dali of Washington has identified the following: Goniobasis taylori Gabb (sp.), Lithasia antiqua Gabb, Latia dalli White, Sphaerium idahocusis Meek, and ? S. negosum Meek. “These fossils characterize the ‘Idaho formation’ of Cope ; the rocks belong to these dimentation of Cope’s ‘Idaho Lake’ and are Pliocene ; very likely middle or later Pliocene.” In a note, Mr. Dali adds: “These rocks were synchronized at one time with King’s Truckee group, formerly referred (on very in- sufficient evidence) to the Miocene.” As shedding some light upon the situation, it is important to observe that the most of this basalt is upon the north side of Snake River, and that in its outflow it has pushed the Snake River against a long line of Tertiary beds all the way along from a short distance below Shoshone falls to the Oregon line, while in the neighborhood of Nampa, the lava flow has been thrust in as a wedge, driving apart for some distance the Snake and Bois6 Rivers, and the deposits of quicksand and clay underneath the lava at Nampa did not take place in a lake, as I at first surmised, but are in all probability alluvial deposits in a river valley, when its drainage was suffering obstruction from the eruptions of lava and when (probably in connection with the glacial period) there was a much larger volume of water than now coming down from the mountains to the north and east. The correspondence between the conditions in the neighborhood of Nampa and those in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties, Cali- fornia, where Professor Whitney discovered human relics under the lava of Table Mountain, seem to me in a broad way very striking. There is about the same evidence of increased water flow ; the amount of erosion in the superincumbent lava is ap- proximately the same ; and the underlying fossils indicate the same general geological period. Wright.] 246 [Feb. xS I would add that while at Angell’s, in Calaveras county, Cali- fornia, I met Mr. Scribner, into whose hands the Calaveras skull first came after being brought out by Mr. Mattison, and from him and other persons whom I interviewed, I obtained some important circumstantial evidence confirming Professor Whitney’s conclu- sions as to the genuineness of that discovery. I also obtained in- formation concerning a stone mortar 6J in. in diameter, with a cavity 4f in. diameter at the top, and 2J in. deep, and of which I have secured a photograph from its present owner, which shows t to be identical in type with the others which have been reported ias discovered under Table Mountain. The discoverer was Mr. C. McTarnahan, of Sonora, assistant county surveyor of Tuolumne county, and I had the account from his own lips. It was found in the autumn of 1887 in the Empire Mine, which is in part owned by his father, and lies upon the other side of Table Mountain, and about a mile distant from the Valentine shaft at Shaw’s Flat, from which the part of a skull came which was given by Mr. Winslow to the Boston Society of Natural His- tory in 1857. Mr. McTarnahan found this mortar himself at a point in the tunnel 758 feet from the mouth of the tunnel, in the auriferous gravel, 175 feet in a horizontal line from the edge of the basalt wall of Table Mountain, and where the basalt is about 100 feet thick. No one can visit the locality, as I did, with- out seeing that there is no room for mistake, except in the case of deliberate falsehood. But in this case there was no temptation to falsehood. For as the object had not been looked upon by Mr. McTarnahan as a thing which he cared to preserve, he laid it aside near the mouth of the tunnel, when, soon after, Mrs. M. J. Darwin of Santa Rosa, while making a visit to their house on her way home from the Yosemite, saw it near the tunnel, and ex- pressed a desire to have it. Mr. McTarnahan’s mother at once told her to take it home with her, as they had no use for it. This she did without any suspicion of any special interest attaching to it, until my inquiries directed to her by letter since my return home. I shall soon have the object in my possession, and will then report farther upon it. But there can be no question, I think, of its having been found in place in the auriferous gravel under Table Mountain, and as confirmatory of previous evidence of the same character, it must be recognized as a discovery of the very highest importance. Oberlin, Ohio, Jan. 11, 1890. IS9I.J 247 [Crawtord The Secretary read by title the following. — NOTES ON CENTRAL-AME RICAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY. BY J. CRAWFORD, State Geologist and Mineralogist of Nicaragua. Managua Nicaragua , 7tli January , 1891. Professor Jules Marcou, Dear Sir : .... The Honorable Senator J. D. Rodriguez is the best in- formed man on the Cerro Amerrique and the Indians — as he is on many other subjects of interest and value to his country — in Nicaragua — and he is a conscientious, careful and reliable re- lator.1 Enclosed herewith is a hastily compiled paper written out from my numerous notes on the subject. It is necessary for me to visit the Amerriques Indians again. Many of the old ones have died since my visit to them in 1888. I fear that I had the last good opportunity to get tradition from that people. Very respectfully, J. Crawford. Cerro Amerrique and Traditions Preserved by the Amee. riques Indians in Nicaragua. Cerro Amerrique is a small, nearly isolated, mountain, about Lat. 12 deg. 18 min. N., and Long. 85 deg. 15 min. W. (from Greenwich) , in the gold mining part of the District of La Liber- tad, Department of Chontales in Nicaragua ; a small stream of water, often called Quebrada Amerrique, Hows rapidly along the base of the Cerro and empties into Rio Mico (or “Bushmass”) (“Rushwass” in Mapa de Nicaragua del Pablo Levy, 1873). This part of the district is intersected by several “true fissures” Extracts of two of his letters to me are in my paper: “Ameriques, Amerigho Vespucci and America” ( Smithsonian Ann. Report for 1888, p. 649, Washington, 1890.) Those two letters were published in full, and also one of President Ad. Cardenas, in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, vol. xxii, pp. 192-196 New York, 1888.— J. M. Crawford. J 248 [Feb. 18 pach containing gold in sufficient quantities to give profits to the mine and mill owners now operating there. The general surface of the District is hilly and well watered, the isogeothermal plane of invariable annual temperature is 18 to 20 feet below the sur- face, it dips down several feet below the depth in the adjoining sections of this country. Each cerro bears evidences of great erosion, and indicates the fact — now confirmed by practical min- ing there — that meteoric and other oxidizing influences have ex- tended deep into the body of the cerros, therefore, the gold near the surface is easily obtained even by crude Indian modes. A few melted masses of gold, weighing from one-half of one ounce to two ounces each, pierced with holes and in form supposed to have been made and used as ornaments anterior to Spanish oc- cupation times, have been discovered in that District, one piece near Cerro Amerrique. The fair inference is that the Amerrique Indians who occupied that part of Nicaragua at the time of its discovery by C. Columbo, September 1502, did pick up and occa- sionally mine, melt and use gold for sacred or ornamental pur- poses. The few small bodies, remnants of the once large tribe of Amerrique Indians, now existing in the pathless or dim “pica- doed” forests among the cerros, between La Libertad and Rama, about Lat. 12 deg. 10 min. N. and Long. 84 deg. 15 min. W. and Pearl Lagoon, about Lat. 12 deg. 32 min. N. and Long. 83 deg. 45 min. W., and the mouth of Rio Matagalpa (Awaltara) about Lat. 12 deg. 47 min. W. and Long. 83 deg. 33 min. W., are now usually called “Huleros” (or “Hule” — India Rubber — collectors) , their occupation being to find in the forests species of Siplionia , Castilloa etc. trees and deeply scarify them and collect the exuding emulsion and separate the contained elastic (“India”) Rubber; this “India” Rubber they carry for over 100 miles on their backs to sell to merchants in Rama or at the mouth of Rio Matagalpa. These Indians have now scarified to death nearly all the Elastic Rubber producing trees to be found in their wilder- ness : consequently a few, from necessity, work for several weeks each year in the mines in the District of La Libertad ; but recent railroad surveys in that district have influenced the Indians to move north, deeper into the uninhabited forests; on the Rio Seguio (a confluent with the Rio Mico of the Rio Escandido) where they have cleared, on the sides or tops of a few cerros, 1891. J 249 [Cravvtoid. small “milpas” or patches for growing maize. They do not fence their corn patches. They plant corn by making holes in the soil with pointed sticks, and they cultivate with long knives (about 2 1-2 feet long, called “machetes” (and made in Hartford, Conn., U. S. A.) by cutting down the weeds once or twice during each season. Two crops are usually grown each year on the same ground ; also, they grow in the narrow well-watered valleys small patches of plantains, bananas, etc. {Musa paradisica , Musa sapi- entum , etc.) Also, with bows and arrows, they kill wild turkeys, wild hogs (“Javerlies,” “Worras”) , etc., etc. Also, find on the cerros large quantities of excellent quality fruits, as Sapotas {Chrysophellum Acras-Sapote) , Anonas {Anona squamosa , etc.) They are usually well formed, 6 ft. 6 in. to 6 ft. 8 in. tall, are active, and appear strong and healthy, but they are dying out rapidly (I estimate not over 275 to 800 now living), and if this be the people from whose ancestral name “America” has been derived, — then, ere long, they will not be numbered among the living, proud claimants of that great name emblazoned on one of the World’s Hemispheres. The Amerriques Indians are unusually reserved as to their tra- ditions, history, etc. None of the present generation appear to know or care about the history of their tribe, none but the very old ones, and there are very few of those who remember legends, traditions, etc. In 1888 I had two old men with me, under good treatment, for over a month. Then I remained for several days in one of their villages, 5 to 7 small thatched roofs, huts with brush walls on one or two sides, before succeeding in getting the old men to relate some of their traditions. Their statements en- abled me afterward to question other old Indians of the Amerri- ques, Mosquitos, and Teucos tribes. There are some Indian mounds near the Pueblos of Acoyapa and La Libertad ; also near Cerro Amerrique, and the Indians were perfectly willing, for small pay, to open the mounds for me. They did not appear to know or believe that the mounds were the tombs of their ancestors ; but I was then (1888 and 1889) too much hurried by other Natural History investigations to give the time necessary to open and care- fully examine the contents of the mounds. There was almost a perfect correspondence in the following tales told me by each the Amerriques, Mosquitos, and Teucos Indians ; in many other traditions, legends, related to me by those three tribes there was no marked correspondence. Crawford.] 250 [Feb. 18, 1st. Each tribe was once very numerous and were continuously friendly with each other, so much so that they often visited, hunted, fished, etc., together, and assisted each other in wars with other tribes to the west and north-west, also in wars against the Spaniards ; also they often went together to the sea as far north as “ Cabo de Gracias a Dios” (discovered and named by Christo- pher Columbus September 15th, 1502) ; also were frequently together on Rio Segovia (“Wanks” or “Coco”) Matagalpa (“Grande” or “Awaltara”) Prinzapulka (“Tongla”) and Escon- dido (now called Blue field River by the Zambos occupying part of the Mosquitos Indians’ Territory) . 2d. There lived, soon after occupation of parts of this country by the Spaniards, a majestic and beautiful young prophetess, to whom all three tribes named gave allegiance and hearty devotion. She exhibited great power over all kinds of birds, insects, animals and reptiles, and she encouraged the young men to prepare them- selves for some great performance to which they were to be led by an ancient chieftain or prophet, long departed, but whose memory all then and now revere ; but, suddenly this prophetess became offended and left, going North, accompanied by about fifty old men and their wives. The Indians do not acknowledge it, but from their peculiar mode of telling about her departure, I suppose this prophetess was captured by the Spaniards when she was en route for Mexico ; — some of the Indians say that she was offended because their forefathers continued to wear rosaries. 3d. They all had, in very ancient times, a mighty prophet or Cacique, who appeared suddenly, full-grown, in the territory of the Amerriques, but was not of that tribe, to whom many tribes of Indians gave allegiance (even the war-loving tribe near the Yescca and Tooma Rivers, about Lat. 12 deg. 47 min. N., and Long. 85 deg. 48 min. W., related to me in early part of 1890 many traditions referring to this prophet) ; all declare that he led them through many successful wars on land, river, and sea, and that, accompanied by many of his people, he once met on the Eastern (Caribbean) sea coast numerous red-faced, white-bodied, tall people who arose from the white bottom (coral covered) of the sea, and that much conversation was held and many presents exchanged between the two parties. The Amerriques Indians could have made presents of gold, skins and feathers from birds. i89i.] 251 [Crawford. The Tucoas (Teucos) could have given topaz, translucent quartz, plumage of birds, and skins. The Mosquitos could have offered skins, feathers and gold from the rich gold placer deposits near the Rio Prinzapulka. And in this intercourse Christopher Columbus and his com- panions (if the tale is not a myth) would have first heard the name Amerrique in September 1502. 4th. The impalpable form of this very ancient chief has been seen by very old Indians (and they become almost wild with ex- citement as they gesticulate and relate it) proudly walking and gesticulating on top of Mesa Totumbla, that he sometimes points eastwardly (to the Caribbean sea) then westwardly to the Pacific ocean, both of which oceans they declare can be seen on a very clear day from the top of this Mesa ; that he is buried in or re- turns by day to a deep cavern in this Mesa, and that by his gest- ures he declares that he will ere long collect the Indians into one great army and in person lead them to many victories, etc., etc. This Mesa Totumbla is a mass of gneiss whose top, about nine square miles, has been carved out into a shallow channel about two miles wide from east to west and extending across the mountain from north to south, exposing umoutonn6es”-backed masses of rocks near the centre of the channel, and many large, loose, straited rocks along in the channel on its inner surface, and on the top of the Mesa ; and commencing precipitously, from the southwest, is a ravine over eleven hundred feet deep and about fifteen hundred feet wide at its upper surface and 30 to 70 feet wide at its bottom. This ravine has been cut by glaciers through the solid gneiss. It has no hydrographic area — excepting its nearly precipitous sides, and no water in it only for a few days after rain, it enters the broad, shallow channel, before described, and extends for about one mile northward. Both terminate at large deposits of boulders, clay, etc., near the Rio Viejo (Old River), which empties into Lake Managua a few miles nor'h from Volcano Mometomba) : Near the head of this deep ravine, in the solid gneiss, is a cavern about 320 feet below the surface of the Mesa. This was the tomb of the Great Prophet or Cacique about whom the Indians related so many tales. In November 1888, accompanied by Doctor M. Garcia, of Metapa, Nicaragua, we found this cave, although its entrance was well concealed and very difficult and dangerous ; and in the cave we found three era- Crawford.] 252 [Feb. 18 niums of Indians ; also some other bones of their bodies. These craniums were sent by the Government of Nicaragua in 1889 to the Exhibition in Paris, and in the latter part of 1889 tr msferred, I believe, to the National Museum of the U. S. A. (Smithsonian) in Washington city. A few crude beads or ornaments, evidently anterior to Spanish occupation in Nicaragua, were found and for- warded with the craniums. If any notice has been taken of them or anything written about them, I do not know, as I was either in the uninhabited part of Nicaragua or in the sparsely populated portions during the year 1890. I made several unsuccessful ef- forts, with good field glasses, to see either ocean from the top of Mesa Totumbla. I found no ruins, no evidences of ancient towns, in the unin- habited parts of Nicaragua. J. Crawford. Managua, Nicaragua , 14tli January , 1891. P. S. It seems to me that I omitted to say that there is a ridge of cerros, part of a monogenetic range, extending from five miles west of the Puebla of La Libertad, north-westward for about thirty miles, named u Sierra or Montana Amerrique,” on the south-eastern terminus of which is Cerro Amerrique, where the Indian town was ; also, that the Amerriques Indians’ tradi- tions say that they all, excepting a few, very long time ago, moved eastward or north of east, into the wilderness, probably from the Spaniards as early as about 1650. They were defeated several times by the Spaniards, but never were conquered. In reference to the Amerrique range, it, like all the mountains in this country, has in different localities along its course different Spanish names, given recently since the Spanish occupation ; but the Indians have only one name. This range at its southeast part is a distinct cerro named Amerrique, then northward on its west side, it has different Spanish names ; but, on its east side and five or six leagues northwest of La Libertad, where the path from La Libertad runs along the mountain’s eastern foot, it is called Amerrique ; but on the west side and a league further northwest (where the late Thomas Belt crossed it, near Juigalpa), it is called by the Spaniards cerro Juigalpa : the aborigenes’ name for the 253 [Whittle. 1891.] entire range was “Amerrique” ; the Indians have and use 110 other names.1 I will try and go there again soon and will then examine its length, on both sides ; also open two or more of the Indian mounds and write to you. The river emptying into the Caribean Sea just south of Point Mica (Monkey Point) and named Rio Rama on Levy’s Map of Nicaragua is called by the Indians Cariari or sometimes Mono (I spell the names by no rule nor previous information — only by the sound as the Indians pronounced). — Cariari is very near the name Cariai used by Colombo in his lettera rarissima. The Society then listened to the following communication. GENESIS OF THE MANGANESE DEPOSITS OF QLTACO, NEW BRUNSWICK. BY CHARLES LIVY WHITTLE. One of the largest deposits of manganese found in New Bruns wick is situated at the extreme point of Quaco Head, which forms the south side of the harbor of Quaco and extends inland as far as determined in a broad, curved band for a distance of over a mile. The association, position and occurrence of manganese ores excepting manganese-bearing veins with certain strata are 1 In regard to the spelling of the name by the Spaniards, President Ad. Cardenas of Nicaragua writes me : “The name Amerrisque is a corruption of Amerrique, because there is good ground for your observation that names ending in ique and ic are very common in Central America.” Senator J. A. Rodriguez says: “I must inform you that the word in question, as pronounced by the Spanish inhabitants of the region is sounded Amerrisque (with an s between the i and q) and Amerrique (without the s ) in the mouth of the natives of the tribe.” And Messes. Rodriguez and Crawford wrote me on the 17th of March, 1891: “Amerrique is the pronunciation in Nicaragua and Amerrisque is the spelling in Nicaragua of the same word. This people generally pro- nounce s so very softly as to be almost inaudible. Another example is Mosca, the people generally pronounce it Moca” So there is no doubt that the name is Amerri- que, without an s ; the Indians of that tribe being the best judges in regard to the pro- nunciation of their own name. (Note by J. Marcou.) Whittle.] 254 [Feb. 1 8, remarkably characteristic, at least as pertains to the deposits along our Atlantic coast region. Dawson in his Acadian Geology maps the rocks exposed on Quaco Head as carboniferous, although a small exposure of Trassic sandstone occurs on both north and south sides lying unconformably on the Carboniferous. We are only concerned with the lower horizon. In this, ascending geo- logically occurs first, a homogeneous melaphyre which though brecciated still remains as a non-schistose rock. Over this, and including in it near its base large angular to sub-angular areas of melaphyre lies a sub-crystalline limestone carrying scattered through it minute veins and round areas of psilomelane and pyro- lusite. At its upper portion it is somewhat shaley and carries manganese nodules in great abundance. There are three principal varieties : the first and most common is a porous, cavernous nodule composed largely of wad with scattered areas of bright pyrolusite crystals and showing remains of a concentric structure ; the second is a compact mass composed mainly of psilomelane, in structure concentrally arranged about either one or several nuclei. The third and least common variety is in the form of stalactites. Sections of these cut and polished show a central tube more or less irregular as in common stalactites of calcic carbonate with many ramifying cracks now filled with manganese oxide in a purer state than that making the outer portions of the stalactites. When polished the oxide filling these cracks stands salient showing its greater hardness. Over the ore-carrying strata are beds of a bright, somewhat incoherent brick-red slate revealing little evi- dence of bedding for several feet in vertical thickness. This origi- nally may have been comparable with the deposits of clay that occur at a depth of about 2600 fathoms on the present sea floor. The second variety, or “kidney ore” is very uniform at this locality as regards the presence of phosphorus and iron, — these two ele- ments existing in much less quantity than in the previous variety. Many of the nodules occur as mammillary masses simulating the bunches of grapes, potatoes, etc. Traversing the strata generally in a north and south direction are several veins of pyrulusite mixed with manganite. It is from these that the purest oxide of manganese free from iron and phosphorus is obtained suitable for decoloring glass. The veins occupy narrow fissures and characteristically vary in width giving a maximum thickness of two inches and thinning down to IS9I.J [Whittle. 255 mere films. The veins in the limestone are minute threads of ore crossing it irregularly for a short distance and then disappearing, and are associated with numerous round to elliptical areas of the same. Vermont ores of manganese occurring in Rutland and Winsor counties are similarly associated, although the country rock is Lower Cambrian and their geological position is at the base of the Stockbridge limestone as irregular lenses and small areas of porous earthy ore, carrying a large percentage of iron, in yellow or white clay. The limestone lying conformably on a flinty quartz- ite affords an excellent water way, and its alteration to clay has liberated the ore so that it can carry now be removed simply with pick and shovel. Here as at Quaco the rock at the base of the ore-carrying stratum is one of the least porous varieties. A section across the ore-bearing horizon in which the Crimora ores are found in Virginia presents the same association as found in Vermont. There again the manganese, occurring mainly as “kidney ore’’ is found in lenses and scattered masses in yellow clay, the product of a decomposed limestone such as makes the surface of the country in that region, which lies on a micaceous quartzite or quartz schist, — the layer of ore-bearing clay being next the quartzite. In the geology of the Virginias these rocks are classed as Silurio-Cambrian.1 One stalactite weighing sev- eral pounds was given me by a miner at Crimora who assured me he had found it pendent from the roof of a small limestone cav- ern. In Vermont lenses and geodes of limonite occur with stal- actites of psilomelane traversing the interior like bars. These bars in section show concentric bending. As regards the source of manganese nodules one cannot fail to notice the similarity of the more porous, earthy variety of ore occurring at Quaco to the manganese nodules found by dredging in the deep sea during the voyages of the Challenger and Blake. The two nodules not only resemble each other physically but chemically the resemblance is still more marked. Phosphorus exists in much larger amounts in the deep sea nodules and their specific gravity is less owing to their porosity. Analyses of the ores uniformily show the presence of phosphorus and iron in varying amount. The following are partial analyses of the com- Rogers, Report reprinted in 1884. 1S91.J 256 [Whittle. pact “kidney ore ’’and the porous variety occurring at Quaco made by Dr. A. M. Comey of Harvard College. Kidney Ore. Per cent. Porous Ore. Per cent. Manganese Dioxide 71.54 Manganese Dioxide 65.00 Metallic Manganese 58.20 Metallic Manganese 57.15 Insoluble Silicates 8.37 Insoluble Silicates 6.66 Ferric Oxide 2.19 Ferric Oxide 1.75 Phosphorus 0.02 Phosphorus 0.04 Calcium trace Calcium trace Sulphur 0 Sulphur 0 Three unvarying phenomena are associated with the occurrence of manganese in the three localities above mentioned : firstly, the presence of phosphorus and iron in all varieties : secondly, the distribution of the ores in or with a limestone or red clay hori- zon ; and thirdly, the presence of a practically impervious stratum at the base of the ore-carrying bodies. The first two factors point towards the source of the manganese ; the last one indicates the conditions under which manganese deposits were formed and why they occupy their present position as true bedded deposits. In Sir C. Wyville Thomson’s contribution to our knowledge of the character of the deep sea phenomena the association of mangan- ese nodules with red clay deposits and the uniform presence of phosphorus and iron in these is mentioned.1 Analyses made by Mr. Buchanan showed the manganese to be chemically combined as the peroxide and that by a process of substitution earthy peroxide appears to be changing to brilliant accilar crystals of pyrolusite, occurring scattered irregularly through the spongy earthy nodules.2 This, too, without hydration. Chemically the manganese occurs in the same combination in the porous nodules in the deep sea as in the most porous ores found at Quaco, and it is noticed that the phosphorus is much more abundant than in the compact “kidney ore,” being nearly double in quantity. The processes, begun before the induration of the deep-sea deposits and before their elevation from the sea bottom that tend to convert semi-crystalline into well-formed crystalline ore, are still going on in the red, calcareous shale and limestone, and the most porous nodules which simulate so closely both chemically and physically Voyage of the Challenger, vol. ii. pp. 7-8. 2 Ibid, p. 8. 1891.] 257 [Whittle. the deep sea nodules are but the remains of these. Structurally, evidence of one or several neuclei about which the oxide formed in rude concentric layers still remains as areas of red or white clayey material — the residum resulting from decomposition. In many cases the nodules were undoubtedly organic and careful search will probably reveal fossils ; but the zone of manganese ore owing to its being a water way is a zone of decomposition and hydration. Where the strata underlying manganese-carrying rocks are sandstone or other pervous rocks concentration does not take place, the grade is poor, and the ore is apt to occur with large quantises of silica or silicates, as on the Pacific coast, and it is disseminated irregularly so that it is valueless as a marketable ore. The occurrence of melaphyre at the base of the limestone on Quaco Head is paralleled by most of the European deposits ; but is not common in this country. Genetically considered the history of our manganese depos- its along the Atlantic coasts seems to me essentially as follows, ignoring the processes which build manganese, iron, and phospho- rus into concretionary masses in the great depths of the ocean : Primarily, nearly all manganese occurring as beds must have been derived from the sea water, which is well known to carry an ap- preciable percentage of it as well as phosphorus and iron. Various dredging expeditions have noted the intimate association of man- ganese and phosphatic nodules with red, calcareous diatomaceous ooze of the deep sea principally along the 2600 fathoms sounding. — The similarity in appearance and chemical composition of these nodules with those of Quaco have already been pointed out. Going back in the history of this deposit we find it occupying a position comparable to the deeper portions of the ocean floor at present. Alternating strata of calcareous red ooze and limestone having manganese nodules lay on a massive base of malaphyre. These strata have been indurated and elevated, and the mangan- ese whicli occurred in these as disseminated grains and nodules has by a process of concentration wholly or partially re-concreted into u kidney ore” and stalactitic masses, the impervious charac- ter of the stratum below permitting and causing this concentra- tion to take place at or near the top of the impervious layer, as this would be a zone maximum interstitial water. Theoretically stalactites would be entirely reconcreted matter, the “kidney ore” wholly or partially, while the porous varieties would probably con- PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. 17 May 1891. Shaler.] 258 [March 4, tain in some cases remains of the original concretion. A large portion of the manganese of Vermont is of this latter variety. By this process of concentration the percentage of manganese is increased in the “kidney ore” as compared to the earthy varieties, and the percentage of phosphorus and iron is decreased, while in the veins proper the oxide of manganese exists in nearly its pure state but as the sesquioxide. In a future paper several important deductions resulting from the recognitions of the character of the beds associated with the manganese ores will be brought out. General Meeting, March 4, 1891. Mr. S. H. Scudder in the chair. The following communication was presented. THE ANTIQUITY OF THE LAST GLACIAL PERIOD. BY N. S. SHALER. Published w by the permission of the director of the U. S. Geol. Survey. Certain geologists are now disposed to consider the end of the glacial period as very near to the present day. They base their conclusions upon the rate of recession of waterfalls, the des- sication of our dead seas, the measure of decay which has been brought upon the drift materials and upon the rock scored by the passage of the ice. The unmodified nature of the more delicate tojiography remaining from the glacial period in our Indian ridges and kettle kames has also been regarded as evidence that the glacial age was not very far in the past. Although the array' of this evidence appears at first sight strong, there are cer- tain manifest imperfections in the general nature of the proofs which it affords. In the first place, nearly all the groups of purely physical phenomena which find a place in the arguments concerning the lapse of geological time have the defect that they represent ac- tions which may have been so far discontinuous that they do not 1891.] 259 [Shaler. serve as good measures of duration. Thus the evidence from our salt lake basins where the arguments are drawn from the time required for the construction of ancient benches or for the evapo- ration of their waters with advancing dessication is liable to qual- ification from the fact that the rainfall may have varied since the ice sheet passed from the region in which they lie. ft is indeed rather unlikely that the series of climatal changes which have led from the extreme humidity of the glacial period to the relatively dessipated conditions of the present day has been perfectly contin- uous. It is in fact probable that the rainfall has been subject to various alternations in which the water in these basins has repeat- edly risen and sunk. The argument from the recession of water- falls such as that of Niagara gorge is also liable to grave criticism from the fact that the attitude of the continent for a considerable time after the close of the last ice period evidently differed much from what it has at the present day. On the Atlantic coast, in the same parallel with Niagara and the other waterfalls which have been brought into the argument, there was a great depression which manifestly .continued for some time after the ice disap- peared from the region. The elevated beaches and the marine scarfs on Mt. Desert and elsewhere show the long continued resi- dence of the sea at a height which, if extended inland, would bring the ocean level either above the summit of these falls, or so far diminish their depth, as greatly to retard their cutting. Thus this time required for the recession of these falls may represent only a small part of the period which has lapsed since the ice sheet left the surface of North America. The argument from the amount of change which atmospheric agents have brought upon drift materials affecting either their physical or chemical conditions is also subject to such qualifica- tions as destroys its value. It is evident that for a considerable, though undetermined time, after the close of the glacial period the surface of all the regions covered by the glacier was subject to a climate certainly as moist as that which now prevails in the region. It is also' likely that all this region even what is now the prairie district was thickly clad with vegetation. Under a dense mantle of forest growth the most delicate kame to- pography and the finest scorings of the rocks would remain m most cases essentially protected from atmospheric agents. Shaler.] 260 [March 4 The finely sculptured drumlins and the frail kames while overlaid by several feet of wet and spongy decaying vegetable matter would feel none of the influences of the frost, and so far as they were composed of siliceous material would be practically exempt from chemical decay. It is not reasonable to compare the action of atmospheric agents on these surfaces when cleared by the artifice of man with those which prevailed during the times before the settlement of the country by Europeans. There are good reasons to believe that many of our mountain tops and other elevated districts, which are now bare of vegetation, have thus been exposed within two centuries, particularly through the spread of forest fires. Thirty years ago the summits of the Mt. Desert mountains, which are now generally bare rock surfaces, were still covered with a mat of vegetation which has mostly disappeared by the frequent fires which have ravaged that district. Considerable areas now exhibiting glacial scratches were thus protected by a thick mantle of vegetable growth. It is easy to see that all these physical measures which have been applied to the lapse of time since the close of the glacial period are liable to give us gravely erroneous measurements for they all depend upon the result of exceedingly intermittent or variable actions. On reviewing the field whence information as to the lapse of time since the close of the glacial period can be obtained, it ap- pears to me that in addition to the bases of computation already noted, which alone have been made the subject of inquiry, there are two neglected classes of facts which on examination appear likely to afford more satisfactory measures. These are the work of the sea along our shores which has taken place since the disap- pearance of the ice and the migration of the vegetation of the continent from the regions of the south, where it survived the de- struction which the ice coating brought upon the northern part of the continent. At first sight it may appear as if the shore-line phenomena of the coast were not likely to afford any better basis for the com- putation than the ancient coasts of the lakes which have disap- peared by the withdrawal of the ice dams or dessication of the area in which they lie ; but on closer inquiry we perceive that there are certain reasons why the record of the duration made by the work done on the sea margins is on the whole more trust- 261 [Shaler. 1S91.J worthy than any other physical evidence of the lapse of time can well be. In the first place we know by more extended observa- tions the measure of marine erosion thnn we do that which occurs along the shores of freshwater lakes. In the second place the several levels of marine benches which have been formed along the shore probably owe their diversified attitude to the movement of the land, and not to the oscillations of the sea ; and in the third place the changes of level within the historic period along the shore are better ascertained than they are about the old lakes from which conclusions have hitherto been derived. It is now evident that at the close of the glacial period, after the ice had retreated from the border of the Atlantic throughout the northern portions of that basin the surface of the land was very much below its present altitude. The amount of this de- pression is not yet well ascertained, but it seems likely that a con- siderable part of the British islands and the northern part of the continent of Europe as well as the shorelands from Greenland southward to near New York were deeply depressed. I have re- cently endeavored to show on what appears to me to be indisput- able evidence that this depression on Mt. Desert Island certainly amounted to as much as 300 feet, and may have been more than 1500 feet. (See Memoir on the Geology of Mt. Desert. Eighth Annual Report of the Director, p. 993 et seq.) I am now inclined to believe that this depression extended inland and formed a broad sea over the regions about the great lakes. In no other way can we so well account for the existence of an extended sheet of evenly diffused drift fading out to the southward in the southern portions of Indiana, Illinois, and the region yet further to the west. The point which immediately concerns us, however, is as follows : From this condition of great depression, the surface of the land was gradually lifted until on the seaboard it attained an elevation somewhat above its present position, as is shown by the existence of numerous submerged freshwater swamps and forest beds along the Atlantic coast from New York to Newfoundland. This return of the surface to its present attitude was not accom- plished continuously but by successive rapid movements with long continued intervening periods of repose. In these times of repose the sea, where the circumstances where favorable, con- structed extensive marine benches ; so far as I have observed these beaches are best indicated on the southern face of the Mt. Shaler.] 262 [March 4, Desert hills. It is there clear that the sea remained in contact with the land for long periods at three different stages above the present level of the sea. The highest of these distinctly indicated benches is at an elevation of 300 feet above the present high tide mark. At that point, wherever the attitudes of the rock were favorable for marine action, the sea excavated a bench in the firm granitic material which is about as extensive as that which it has produced along the present shore line. At certain points this bench is cut back more than 200 feet from the original point of contact of the waves with the shore line, an amount of excavation which is very rarely, if ever, found along the existing coast line. At about 240 feet above the sea is another bench also deeply ex- cavated in the manner indicated in the above cited memoir. Again at about 90 feet above the sea is a third and less consider- able bench. The aggregate work done at these three levels is several times as great as that accomplished along the zone now attacked by the sea. After the formation of the lowermost of these benches the succeeding elevation of the land lifted its sur- face above the level of the present sea-shore. It evidently dwelt at that height for a considerable time as is indicated by the fact that extensive forests and jinorasses now submerged had time for their development. The amount of cutting done at this lower level is unknown for the reason that this bench is now submerged. Leaving out of account the somewhat doubtful work of the sea along the New England coast above the level of 300 feet, we thus have proof for as least four well developed coast lines marking levels of the sea before the present station was acquired and in- cluding the present coast line the total number of benches is not less than five. Whoever will attentively study the erosion on the present coast line will I think become satisfied that the time required for the accomplishment of the work of the waves and tides on the present horizon cannot well be less than 5000 years. If we consider only the growth of the marine marshes which are formed in the reentrants behind the sea margin, it seems necessary to allow at least this duration for the present shore level. I am therefore disposed to conclude that any such period as 10,000 years would hardly be sufficient to accouut for the marine work done along this coast after the burden of the ice was removed from it. 1891.3 263 [Shaler. It is evident that something of the same objection which has been made to the other physical indices of post-glacial time ap- plies also to this evidence obtained from the shore. We are in entire ignorance as to the amount of the elevation above the present coast line which has existed. We only infer that the land has been higher than at the present day from the evidence of submerged forests and swamps. There may have been half a dozen benches formed below the present plane of the sea. Never- theless, the positive evidence of the lapse of time since the disap- pearance of the ice from the shore leads us to the opinion that any such duration as 10,000 years is quite insufficient to account for the observed facts. Probably the most trustworthy evidence concerning the dura- tion of the time since the ice sheet began to disappear from the land is afforded by the distribution of the vegetation, which by migration has regained possession of the glaciated district. It is evident that a considerable time was required for the return of any forms of phenogamic plants to the field laid waste by the con- tinental glacier. Even in Switzerland where the retreating ice has recently exposed extensive accumulations of morainal matter, very near to abundant vegetation the plants only slowly secure a foothold upon the drift. The greater portion of our flowering species require a certain preparation of soil which is brought about by the action of cryptogamic forms before their roots can find adequate nourishment. We must conceive that as the ice retreated and gradually disappeared from the surface, a consid- erable time must have been required before the existing forests could have attained their organization. Besides the general impression as to the need of great time for the restoration of the plant envelope to the glaciated field we may obtain from a study of particular species certain approximate time ratios, which seem to me to afford proof that at least one hundred thousand years, and possibly a much greater time, has elapsed, since the ice began to disappear from the central portion of the continent. This evidence we obtain from the rate at which our large seeded species of trees can march into a new country. Where the seeds of a plant are small, as is the case with the wil- lows and birches, strong winds may carry them to great distances ; or they may be entangled in the mud which becomes affixed to the feet of water-loving birds and be conveyed in the migrational Shaler.] 264 [March 4, flight of these species, in a single season, for the distance of many hundred miles. It is possible indeed for such seeds to be carried in a north or south direction for a thousand miles in one or two days. Where the seeds are of somewhat larger size of such bulk or weight as would prevent them from being borne by the winds, or accidentally attached to the bodies of water fowl, they may be carried, though less far still over wide areas, in a rapid manner, in the crops of birds ; beech nuts, for instance, may be thus con- veyed by a passenger pigeon for a hundred miles or more without being so far affected by digestion as to lose their vitality ; the bird being then killed by accident the seeds may be cast upon the ground. It may even happen that the seed may pass, as is sometimes the case with those of fruits, unharmed through the digestive canal and be voided with the excrement and thus find a chance to take root. It is far otherwise with the nuts of our large seeded trees. Those of our walnuts and hickories are not liable to be borne to any distance by the ordinary winds ; they are not taken in an un- broken form into the digestive tract of animals and they are man- ifestly incapable of being accidentally conveyed into condition of attachment to the feet or feathers of birds. The only methods in which they can secure distant carriage appears to me to be as follows: They are readily conveyed by streams, and may thus be widely disseminated along the paths of the principal rivers throughout the region where the climatal conditions of the area through which the stream passes make the country fit for their occupancy. In a region traversed by tornadoes it seems likely that the seed, even the largest size, may be conveyed throughout the range of the whirlwind’s path. From observations made on the effect of carriage of these tornadoes in the Mississippi valley it seems likely that a single meteor of this description might well effect the transportation of walnuts for the distance of thirty miles or more. In the case of such plants as the walnuts and other equally large seeded trees the only method of diffusion, besides those above indicated, which depend upon other agencies than the plant itself, consists in the habit of certain rodents, particular the squirrels, which carry seed in their mouths or cheek pouches for a certain distance from the parent tree. From my own observa- tion on this nut carrying habit I am disposed to believe that rare- 265 [Shaler. 1891.J ly do these animals convey the nuts to a distance of more than two or three hundred feet from the point where they find them. I think it probable that the average dissemination of seeds brought about in this manner is not more than a hundred feet from the foot of the tree on which the nuts are borne. It seems to me that even two hundred feet is an excessive estimate, for in most cases the little animals properly economize their labor by storing their winter’s supply as near as is convenient to its source. We have last to notice the method of diffusion which is ac- complished by the processes of the tree itself ; this, which we may term the organic process of dissemination is brought about by the growth from the seed to the tree : in the case of our walnuts and hickories it requires about twenty-five years to bring the plant into the condition of development where it may in turn produce seed. At this age the branches of the tree may be computed as extending about 30 feet from the position of the trunk in a hori- zontal direction. Dropping from the extremities of these branches, the seed slightly affected in their falling by the action of the wind, may come to the ground at an average maximum distance of fifty feet from the place of the bole. My observations of walnut and hickory trees appear to indicate that fifty feet from the trunk of a plant which is a quarter of a century old is about the maximum of diffusion by this method. With these considerations in mind, and let us note the facts concerning the distribution of these large seeded trees in the re- gion to which they have won their way since the close of the glacial period. Without entering into the detail concerning the distribution of these forms in the drift covered district, a task which cannot be accomplished until we know more exactly than we now do the distribution of these large seeded trees, we may assume it as certain that our black walnut and our pignut hickory have between western Minnesota and the Atlantic coast, on the average, advanced for the distance of about 400 miles to the north of the ancient ice front whereunto their ancestors were driven by the presence of the glacial sheet. In the valley of the Mississippi the average length of this northern journey is probably near 600 miles. Counting it, however, as the lesser distance, let us see how far it seems possible to effect this transportation by other actions than by the growth of the tree itself. In the first place we observe that transportation by rivers may be practically ex- Shaler.] 266 [March 4 eluded, in the case of most parts of this field, for the reason that the prevailing course of the stream, is from the north to the south, which is entirely the case in the region west of Michigan where the transportation of these species to the north has been most ef- fectively accomplished. It is only in a small part of the field about the great lakes where this method of carriage would have had any influence upon the dissemination over the drift cov- ered surface. Tornadoes are doubtless agents which serve occasionally to con- vey the seed of our larger trees from south northward, the run of their paths is to the eastward with a slight inclination to the north. I am therefore not disposed to think that they could have accomplished any considerable part of the northward progress of these large seeded species of plants. Moreover, the march towards the pole of these forms is nearly as great in the eastern section of the United States, where these storms are rare, as in the coun- try where they most prevail. It appears to me therefore, that it is mainly to the natural spread of the seed, from the extremities of the boughs and by the carriage effected by rodents that we must look for the northward progress of these forms. Allowing that it requires an average of thirty years to bring a tree of these species to the point where it bears fruit, and that the average spread of the seed in each generation is about two hundred feet, we may estimate that it would require about twenty-five genera- tions for the form to extend for the distance of a mile. On the supposition that each generation advanced for the distance of two hundred feet, and required thirty years for the step, it would de- mand seven hundred and fifty years to traverse a mile; 15,000 years for one hundred miles, or to traverse a distance of 400 miles a period of 300,000 years. It is evident that this period, determined by the rate of pro- gress of large seeds, is altogether excessive. It is clear that other agents of transportatiomhave been in operation. It appears to me that the abbreviation in time can probably be accounted for by the occasional more extended carriage of the seeds by rodents, by the varied conveyance of them by tornadoes, and perhaps the rare transplantation by the action of the primitive races of men who inhabited this country. Making allowance for the action of these occasional means of dissemination, the impression remains 1891.] 267 | Shaler. that any such period as ten thousand years is insufficient to ac- count for the northward spread of these slow -marching forms. We cannot well conceive that if all our hickories and walnuts were removed from the northern forests down to the southern line occupied by the glacial ice, that they would succeed by the operation of all the agents of dissemination which we have noted in moving to the northward as far as they have attained at any- thing like the average rate of a mile in a century. If these forms occurred only sporadically in the northernmost part of the field which they occupy we might suppose that their implantation was due to chance action : The fact however that they extend in a continuous line from the Atlantic to Minnesota indicates that the advance has been accomplished by causes of a general and continu- ous nature. It thus seems to me that from the distribution of these large seeded trees we are led to the conclusion that any such period as ten or even twenty thousand years is totally inadequate to account for the changes which have taken place in the distri- bution of our forests since the close of the glacial period. The subject being thrown open to discussion, Mr. Upham sug- gested that the advance of the heavy-seeded trees northward might have been somewhat dependent on human agency, sup- posed paleolitlis having been frequently found in glacial detritus. He stated on the authority of Prof. Geikie that in Europe, where the Paleolithic and Neolithic stages of civilization can be readily distinguished, man had reached the more advanced condition before the close of the Glacial Period, and added that from con- siderations of the rate of advance of civilization as suggested by archaeological research, it seemed probable to him that subse- quent civilization from that point up to the present stage could have easily been accomplished in 7000 to 10,000 years — the time which, from the study of lakes and waterfalls, many geologists suppose to have elapsed since the retreat of the last continental ice-sheet. Prof. W. M. Davis read a paper entitled “ Illustration of the faulted monoclinal structure and topographic development of the Triassic formation of Connecticut by a working model.” General Meeting.] 268 [March 18, General Meeting, March 18, 1891. The President, Prof. F. W. Putnam, in the chair. Dr. George Baur spoke of the importance of a scientific explora- tion of the Galapagos Islands. Prof. W. O. Crosby read a paper “On the colors of soils.” (See Technology Quarterly, April 1891, vol. 4, no. 1.) General Meeting, April 1, 1891. The President, Prof. F. W. Putnam, in the chair. The President appointed Messrs. B. Joy Jeffries, Samuel Wells, S. H. Scudder, H. W. Haynes and G. II. Barton a com- mittee to nominate officers for the ensuing year. The President announced that he should decline re-election at the next annual meeting. Dr. H. C. Ernst spoke on the latest developments in the germ- theory of disease. Prof. F. W. Putnam referred to several ancient hearths dis- covered in the Little Miami valley by Dr. C. E. Metz. Durin the past season Messrs. H. T. Cresson and E. Bolk explorin for the Peabody Museum discovered an ancient hearth thirteen feet below the surface of the bottom land. This is the oldest hearth found in this region. Prof. Hyatt showed a Golden Eagle ( Aquila chrysaetus) shot at Rangeley Lake, Me., Sept. 19, 1890, and presented to the Mu- seum by Mr. Thomas Swan. The thanks of the Society were voted to the donor and also to the heirs of the late Mr. E. R. Mayo for a valuable collection of shells and conchological library. General Meeting, April 15, 1891. The President, Prof. F. W. Putnam, in the chair. The report of the nominating committee was presented. CTQ CfQ i89i.] 269 [Annual Meeting. Dr. R. R. Andrews read a paper on the development of the enamel of teeth. Mr. S. H. Scudder called attention to the appeal for the Natu ral History Gardens and Aquaria recently issued. Annual Meeting, May 6, 1891. President F. W. Putnam in the chair. The President announced the death of Prof. Joseph Leidy, a corresponding member of the Society since 1845. The following reports were presented : Report of the Curator, Alpheus Hyatt. In several of the preceding annual reports it has been the duty of the Curator to bring before the Society any facts of general interest bearing upon the history of our attempt to found Natu- ral History Gardens for the benefit of the City of Boston. In doing this he necessarily appeared for the time being to have lost sight of the present condition and needs of the Museum in which he is naturally, as well as by virtue of his office, more deeply interested than in any other department. It is, therefore, with a certain sense of relief, that he finds himself able to state that the Natural History Gardens has been erected into a distinct depart- ment of the Society and will in future be treated, as its impor- tance demands, by a special report made by the Chairman of the Board of Directors. It may be well to call the attention of those who feared that this new departure might detract from the interest heretofore shown in the work of the Society and the progress of its Museum to the fact that so far the results have not justified their prognostications. On the contrary the movement has enabled us to attract atten- tion in a very advantageous way to the past history and achieve- ments of this Society and the importance of the work to be done has increased the interest felt in us by the public. We shall undoubtedly continue to gain in this respect for a number of years to come and probably be able to enlarge our corporate mem- Annual Meeting.] 270 [May 6, bership in advantageous directions. The establishment of the Natural History Gardens will not only enlarge our influence among classes of people not reached by other work done by the Society and greatly add to our membership among them, but has already had one immediate effect worthy of special mention. It has brought into more active co-operation with us a number of gentlemen now on the Board of Directors, and in the Chairman of this board we welcome, as an addition to the ranks of our executive officers, a gentleman who has held all the official posi- tions in the gift of this Society, and who has been noted for his untiring devotion to its interests for a period of thirty-five years. The Curator has often had occasion to remark the exceptional plasticity of the organization of this Society and the practical directness of its modes of procedure, which have been demon- strated by the ease with which reforms have been introduced and carried into effect. This capacity for adaptation to new circum- stances and the quiet but efficient modes of working were never better illustrated than by the history of the past few years. In the annual report for 1889 it was remarked that u It is certainly very creditable that a conservative body of people having a fixed policy and a successful history could be moved to undertake a new enterprise involving so much labor for the benefit of the public, and it is an unusual event in the history of similar institu- tions.” This comment has. become still more significant in view of the important reforms carried into effect during the past offi- cial year. The Society has replaced its ancient Constitution and By-laws by a simpler and more direct set of regulations under the single title of By-laws. This and the reorganization of the Society was necessary in order that we should be able to enlarge our membership for the benefit of the Natural History Gardens and at the same time hold the old organization intact and safe from interference within the new one. Two years of work by different committees were required before this work was com- pleted, and presented by the Council to the Society. This seems an unnecessary length of time but it had been obvious from the start that it was far more important, in view of our responsi- bility to those who have intrusted us with funds to be adminis- tered for the benefit of science and the public, to make no mis- takes, than to conciliate impatient criticism through any hasty or ill-considered action. 1S9I.] 271 [Annual Meeting. The truthfulness of the view expressed above, that our Museum is to take its share in the general increase of activity, will be more apparent next year than this, but at present it suffices to call at- tention to the fact that there are three persons not mentioned in previous reports who have been working more or less constantly for the benefit of the Museum during the past official year. .Miss J. M. Arms has accepted the appointment of Assistant in charge of the Synoptical collection. Dr. Robert T. Jackson has occu- pied one of our workrooms and appears for the first time in these reports. Mr. Grabau has been studying the various departments of the Museum under the supervision of the Curator in order to fit himself to act as guide to the collections during public days. The possible development and importance of this undertaking is better shown by the following remarks which have been already published elsewhere in a somewhat different connection. “ A criticism often made upon public museums in all parts of the world is that they fail to give any rational explanation of the in- teresting and instructive laws which govern the relations of ani- mals to their surroundings. A short paragraph in a printed guide-book may, perhaps, name the country to which an interest- ing group of forms belongs, or may add a few words about their habits ; but no notice is taken of the wonderful adaptations of their structures to the work they have to do, and the effective parts they perform in the great drama of existence. Museums cannot afford, it is said, to print works giving such facts properly. Although not disposed to believe this to be wholly impracticable, we may still grant it for the moment, in order to suggest a simple remedy. Instead of a book, which at best can never be ample enough to make all the replies that every visitor looks for in its necessarily brief descriptions, we would substitute an educated man. This officer could not only satisfy all reasonable curiosity, but at the same time could awaken interests and make impressions that would be of permanent benefit. This is no idle suggestion, but one based upon observations made in this Museum for several years past. Owing to the generous interest taken in the matter by a lady of this city, educated young men, who had been pre- viously taught how to explain the collections, have, for several months in each year since the spring of 1888, been employed as guides in our Museum. The increased interest they excited was evident from the beginning and experience has left us confident Annual Meeting.] 272 [May 6, that good results can be easily obtained. It has also been ascer- tained, that no popular lectures can be so effective as such a well ordered series of talks made with the objects before the hearers. ” We have received an important addition to our Museum in the conchological collection of the late Edward R. Mayo. This was donated to the Society by the heirs of Mr. Mayo’s estate, and is adequately noticed farther on under the title of the proper division. Important changes have also taken place in the policy of the Teachers’ School of Science which are noticed under the proper heading. Permission to visit and study in the Museum on days when the public is not admitted has been granted to eight teachers representing eight schools and two hundred and nine pupils. Pupils from the Mass. Institute of Technology frequently apply for the privilege of studying in our collection of Mineralogy and Geology on closed days and are admitted. Professor Crosby uses our collections for the benefit of his classes at the Institute, and Dr. E. G. Gardiner has used the collections of anatomical preparations with his class and has had the privilege of opening the cases. Although this has been the practice for many years with reference to the Institute of Technology it has not been customary to notice the facts in the annual reports except in con- nection with the library which is also used by students of the Institute. Dynamical Zoology. Dr. R. T. Jackson has picked out series of molluscs to illustrate the following dynamical principles. The mechanical origin of the ostrean form of shell. Geomalic growth. The relations of the upper and lower sides of organisms to the influence of light. The progressive reduction in animal growth with increasing age in the individual. Some of these series are not completed, but they will be as soon as possible, and they, with others in prepara- tion, will be placed on exhibition in the dynamical collection in the Vestibule. A remarkably perfect and in some respects unique model of a fresh water perch has been completed by Mr. Denton, and will be placed in this collection. This, with other models and drawings 273 [Annual Meeting. 1891.] will be used to illustrate the relations of animals to the earth as shown by the position of the centre of gravity in their bodies. The topographic model of the Island of Oahu has been finished by Mr. James Emerton and was exhibited at one of our meetings during the winter. A case was built for its reception in the hall and now stands against the wall in one of the windows. The Gulick collection of Achatinellinae has been arranged and put in order by Mr. Henshaw and tables showing the distribution of different species drawn up by him. The Curator has spent considerable time in following out the series and in trying to trace the history of the supposed lines of evolution and migration. No literature exists which can guide one through this labyrinth, and it is not only necessary to do this original work, but to corre- spond with various experts in order to obtain reliable information with regard to the habits and characteristics of the animals of the different species. Geology. The Guide to the petrographic collections, including both lithology and petrology, is finished, and it is to be hoped that it may be speedily published. The accessions have been few in number but are valuable additions, because they consist chiefly of material collected by Prof. Crosby for the New England col- lection. They include, among others, a very instructive example of contorted and eroded gneiss from Paris, Me. ; specimens from Bland ford, Mass., showing the derivation of soapstone from actinolite rock ; and a complete series of the kaolin or residual clay of Blandford, showing its derivation from the coarse pegma- tite or vein granite. Prof. Crosby has published during the year a full account of this interesting remnant of the sedentary detritus which probably covered all New England in pre-glacial times as it now does the southern states. There is also a com- plete series of residual clays from the District of Columbia to be used in the Dynamical collection. These illustrate a communiJ cation made by Prof. Crosby at a recent meeting of the Society on the Colors of Soils. There is also a series of specimens of a finely stratified or banded glacial clay from the vicinity of Con- cord, N. H., showing very clearly, in the regularly alternating light and dark layers, that the deposition of the clay went on at 18 Aug. 1891. PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. Annual Meeting.] 274 [May 6. a very uniform rate, each complete alternation probably repre- senting the amount deposited in a single year ; a series of the colored Miocene clays from Gay Head ; a specimen of clay from Nomini Cliffs, Va., which last is an admirable illustration of joint-structure in unconsolidated deposits. There is also a vein of quartz in banded diorite from Algoma, Ontario, accompanied by faulting of the bands of the diorite. This is known to be a common feature of veins in the rocks but it can rarely be shown on a small scale in Museum specimens. Prof. Crosby’s time has been largely devoted to carrying out the plan which was outlined in last year’s report for a comprehen- sive and systematic representation of the geology of the Boston Basin. Detailed observations on both the hard rocks and the surface geology have been extended over the greater part of the basin ; and for a portion of the area the work is already com- pleted and in course of publication. It is proposed to publish this work, as fast as each natural division is completed, in the “Occasional Papers” of the Society under the general title of “ The Geology of the Boston Basin,” as described more particu- larly below. It will be illustrated by cuts and sections and also by colored maps. There will be, first, a series of sectional maps, on a uniform scale of 2400 feet to the inch, each sheet being restricted to con- venient and natural limits. These will necessaril}'- be somewhat overlapping, and will embrace the entire area of the basin. They will show not only the distribution and relations of the hard rocks, but also the superficial geology and topography, includ- ing the drumlins, kames, drainage lines, ponds, fresh and salt marshes, etc. Then, second, the limited areas of exceptional complexity and interest will be mapped on a scale of 600 feet to the inch. These special maps will not only show in colors the theoretical distribu- tion and structure of the rocks in much greater detail than the sectional maps, but the actually observed facts, the individual outcrops or ledges of the different kinds of rocks, will be printed in black, the aim being to make these maps very perfect com- binations of fact and theory. The topographic representation will also be more perfect, the relief features being shown by con- tour-lines at vertical intervals of five feet. Finally, the comple- tion of these detailed descriptions of the different sections of the 1891.] 275 [Annual Meeting Boston Basin will be followed by a summary of the whole, a correlation of all the more important facts in one connected and logical statement of the geological history from the earliest period to the present; and this will be accompanied by a general map of the entire basin on a scale of one mile to the inch. The Museum exhibit will comprise a general relief map or model of the Boston Basin on a horizontal scale of 2400 and a vertical scale of 600 feet to the inch. This will be colored geo- logically and will exhibit approximately the same geologic and topographic details as the sectional maps already described. Although necessarily the last to be constructed, it will be the principal feature and centre-piece of the exhibit. It should occupy a table-case in the middle of a room, the wall-cases of which should be devoted to the exposition of the geology of the different districts or sections of the basin, including: First, reproductions in relief, with geological coloring, of the special maps, on a horizontal scale of 600 and a vertical scale of 3000 feet to the inch ; second, pictures and colored sections and models, illustrating the structural details ; and, third, complete series of typical specimens, showing every phase of form and structure in the different districts. This exhibit plan is now approximately completed for the southeast corner of the Boston Basin, including two natural geo- logical divisions-or areas. These are (1) Nantasket [Hull] and Oohasset, and (2) Hingham. The two monographs on these areas are also, as stated above, in course of publication. They will be illustrated by one sectional rmip and four special maps (one for Nantasket and three for Hingham), and about 15 pic- tures and sections. The three special maps for Hingham are already printed. Botany. In consequence of the unabated generosity of Mr. John Cum- mings, the Curator is able to report an important advance in this department. The final revision and cataloguing of the herbarium has been carried through the Endogens by Miss Carter, and her report on the entire collection of Phaenogamous or Flowering plants pre- served in the herbarium is as follows : Annual Meeting.] 276 [May 6, Polypetalae contain 10098 specimens, representing 81 orders, 1116 genera and 6440 species. Gamopetalae contain 108252 specimens, representing 43 orders, 1111 genera and 5468 species. Apetalae contain 1965 specimens, representing 34 orders, 286 genera and 1247 species. Gymnosperms are represented by 3 orders, 17 genera, 59 spe- cies and 109 specimens. Endogens contain 4729 specimens, representing 30 orders, 508 genera and 2312 species. Sum total of Phaenogamous plants : 25153 specimens, repre- senting 191 orders, 3038 genera, and 15526 species. Considerable work has also been done on the Lowell Herbarium in revising and poisoning the plants. The following accessions are hereby acknowledged : George E. Stone, seven specimens of New England plants ; Miss Cora H. Clarke, fifteen specimens of algae ; Robert T. Jack- son, one hundred and ninety specimens of European plants, chiefly ferns and Alpine plants. It is a pleasure to note that the number of persons who consult the herbarium for study and reference is continually on the increase. Synoptic Collection. Early in October Miss J. M. Arms accepted the position of Assistant in the Museum, and this collection was assigned to her care for the purpose of completing the series on exhibition and ultimately writing a guide. The synoptic collection is intended, like the rest of our collections, to represent those obvi- ously natural relations of forms which can be illustrated by series of animals and explanatory drawings and microscopic prepara- tions. The special object of the work done this year has been the arrangement of characteristic forms of the Protozoa according to the principles of a natural classification, beginning with the most primitive organisms in each group and passing to the sec- ondary or specialized forms in the same series. In attempting to do this it became desirable to illustrate by drawings the possible origin of the nucleus, and its subsequent differentiations among the higher Protozoa, the general relations of the Protozoa to the cells of the tissues in the Metazoa and so on. The amount of 1891 •] 277 [Annual Meeting study necessary for such work is very great and consequently, although a general plan of the rearrangement has been sketched out and Miss Arms has devoted her energies to this collection for three days in each week, it will probably be some years before we can hope for a final report. Several drawings of different forms of Monera and Amoebinae for exhibition in this section have been made by Miss Martin and a descriptive text for these two groups and a part of the Forami- nifera prepared by Miss Arms. This last is a step towards the preparation of the Guide Book. Mr. Henshaw reports that he has done considerable work for the benefit of the entomological section of this collection and has revised the classification of the forms. Miss Martin has, under his direction, made preparations showing the external anat- omy of Periplaneta, Anabrus and Belostoma ; also a series of 25 drawings of rare or minute forms. The following are the genera drawn : Linguatula. Psocus. Phylloxera. Apanteles. Tyroglyplius. Nirmus. leery a. Pteromalus. Tetranyclius. Menopon. Pulvinaria. Platygaster. Atax. Hemimerus. Phorodon. Strebla. Lepisma. Heliotkrips. Tingis. Lip ura. Haematopinus. Stylops. Oligotoma. Pediculus. Hexaplasta. Paleontology. Mr. Henshaw with the assistance of Miss Martin has unpacked and sorted the collection of paleozoic fossils purchased some years since from the Peabody Academy of Science. These are already in part named and mounted, and all are catalogued, but at present there is no room for the exhibition of desirable speci- mens in our Museum. It is now stored in 95 trays in our base- ment. Protozoa, An extensive series of models of the shells of Foraminiferae has been received as a donation from the Peabody Academy of Science at Salem. Annual Meeting.] 278 [May 6, Mollusca. Mr. Henshaw has sorted and labeled considerable miscellaneous material including the collection given by Mrs. J. P. Townsend. Work done upon the Achatinellinae has been noted above under the head of Dynamical Zoology. The E. R. Mayo Collection of shells was received from the heirs of his estate in March, and this is by far the most important accession to this department since Miss Pratt’s memorable dona- tion. Mr. Henshaw, assisted by Dr. R. T. Jackson, packed all the specimens at the house of the late Mr. Mayo. They were transported here without accident, and have already been un- packed by Mr. Henshaw. They fill 119 trays contained in five cases stored in the gallery of the Anatomical Room. Mr. Mayo estimated the collection as containing 6000 species, which is probably less than the actual number. A more accurate report upon this collection will be made in the next annual report of the Curator. Other donations have been received from Messrs. II. K. Burrison and C. B. Cory, and Dr. R. T. Jackson. Insects, Mr. Henshaw has studied, arranged and labeled portions of the general collection as follows : Pseudoneuroptera, Neuroptera, Hemiptera, Coleoptera and Hymenoptera. The collection of Lepidoptera formed by our late member Mr. Holmes Hinkley will add somewhat to our general collection and also furnish fresher and better specimens for the New England collection. Many of the specimens in this collection having been on exhibition for twenty years need renewal. Mr. C. B. Cory has given us small collections from Florida and Antigua and Miss Martin brought several hundred specimens from California. We have also received accessions from Mr. Henry Brooks, Miss C. H. Clarke, Messrs. P. H. Dudley, J. H. Emerton, H. A. Hagen, F. L. Harvey, S. Henshaw, J. G. Jack, and S. II. Scudder, and Miss C. G. Soule. Fishes, Early in the year Dr. H. E. Davidson gave the Society the fishes prepared by him during his visits to Bermuda, the Mediter- 279 [Annual Meeting. 1891.] ranean and the south of England. These number a few over 100 specimens and have been mounted and in part distributed among the general collection. Although they are known to have come from the three regions mentioned, most of them are without special labels and it requires considerable time and care to determine them. The death of Dr. H. E. Davidson has deprived us of an active friend in this department. Dr. Davidson had a room in this building for several years and during that time added a number of fishes to the collection, prepared by a method he had himself invented and in which he was very expert. Besides those noted above he had already prepared and mounted for us 32 species, represented by 45 specimens for the New England collection, 31 species represented by 40 specimens for the General collection coming from Bermuda, Florida, New York and other localities. Birds. The card catalogue of the general collection of mounted birds has been completed by Miss Clark, under the direction of Mr. C. B. Cory, who has generously defrayed the expenses of this work. Under Mr. Cory’s supervision Mr. Henshaw has assorted about two thirds of the collection of skins into families. The accessions consist of a collection of Panama birds received from Mr. Nathan Appleton, a Golden Eagle shot at Rangeley Lakes, Me., from Mr. Thomas Swan, and the following birds purchased for the New England collection : Hooded Merganser, Lophodytes cucullatus, Yellow bellied Woodpecker, Sphyrapicus varius $ , White rurnped Shrike, Lanius excubitorides, and Lou- isiana Water Thrush, Seiurus motaoilla, $ 9. Teachers’ School of Science. The liberal action of the Trustee of the Lowell fund in defray- ing the expenses of the lessons and also in granting the use of Huntington Hall has enabled the Society to continue its efforts to extend the benefit of instruction in this School to teachers in all the neighboring towns as well as those living in Boston. The agents who acted in the adjoining towns and villages last year continued their kind offices, distributing and receiving applications and also tickets according to ihe plan which was described in a Annual Meeting.] 280 [May 6 , former report. The Superintendent of Public Schools in this city has also kindly assisted us by attending to similar technical details in Boston. Dr. J. Walter Fewkes gave a series of ten lessons during the winter of 1890-91 on “Common Marine Animals from Massa- chusetts Bay.” The average attendance at these lessons was 63.6. The general scope of this course embraced the ordinary marine animals of New England, and special attention was given to the mode of life, differences in external forms, local distribution, habi- tats, methods and proper time to collect the eggs, young, and adults. The anatomy, embryology and morphology of the species considered were also dealt with incidentally wherever these branches of research could be used advantageously. The relative abundance of species and individuals, local causes which influence distribution, the rocky or sandy nature of the shores and their characteristic faunae, and the influence of depth of water, tides, and temperature were also considered. The relations and boundaries of the marine fauna of New Eng- land were treated of under the following headings : comj)arison of the fauna of Massachusetts Bay with that of Narragansett Bay and the Bay of Fundy, and causes of the differences observed ; pelagic animals ; littoral and shallow-water genera ; introduced and indigenous marine animals ; marine animals which inhabit both brackish and fresh water. A course in Historical Geology, so far as it relates to the history of animals whose remains have been preserved as petrifactions in the rocks, was given by the Curator. A series of lessons upon this subject had been in contemplation for many years, but it had been felt that it should not be undertaken until after ample opportunities for preparatory studies in zoology and geology had been given. The class was limited by the number of seats in the Laboratory and there was no attempt to get over any specified amount of ground, the study of specimens in hand being as thorough as practicable without prolonged laboratory work. The types of fossils were treated of side by side with selections from their living representatives. The periods of the occurrence of fossilized remains in the rocks were noticed and the character- istic forms of different periods mentioned, but these stratigraphi- cal details were held subordinate to the traqing out of the relations 1891.] 281 [Annual Meeting. of animals and the explanation of the laws that governed the evolution of their forms. Special attention was given to those classes whose history is most complete and which afford the best opportunities for obtaining materials for examination. The work was continued through the Protozoa, Porifera, Hydrozoa and Actinozoa. There were thirty-eight seats in the lecture room and the average attendance was thirty-eight. The Curator had the satisfaction in his last annual communica- tion to report that Mr. Lowell had put the courses of lessons on Field Geology, which take place during the autumn and spring, under the patronage of the Lowell Fund. He now has the pleasure of announcing that this gentleman, without solicitation from anyone, has taken the Laboratory course on Lithology and Petrology under the patronage of the same fund. The assistance thus given to the School is clearly understood to be dependent on an annual grant from the Lowell Fund, but the fact that the Trustee of that Fund has sufficient confidence in our School to support four of its courses for the instruction of the teachers of Boston is a matter for sincere gratification, and it is one of the best evidences that we have been doing good work. The course in Field Geology for the spring of 1890 was begun and completed, the average attendance being twenty-one. The attendance at these field courses and the deep interest shown by teachers of all grades in the geology of our own neighborhood are excellent indications that there are a certain number of persons in our public schools who are anxious to avail themselves of really good opportunities for obtaining sound information upon scien- tific subjects. Ten lessons upon the geology of the vicinity of Boston were given by Prof. George H. Barton by means of excursions and field work during the autumn, beginning on September 6th and ending November 8th. The average attendance at this course was twenty-two. The spring half of this course which began April 18th is not yet completed and will be reported upon next year. A laboratory class in Lithology was formed by Prof. Barton and fifteen lessons were given of two hours each. A definite portion of the subject was covered by each lesson and illustrated by specimens. The first part of each lesson was devoted to an examination of specimens covering all of the ground gone over up Annual Meeting.] 282 [May 6, to that time. This served to fix the knowledge already gained and gave much satisfaction to the members of the class. The last lesson was devoted almost entirely to an examination cover- ing the whole course. The seating capacity of the room, originally only for thirty-six, was enlarged to accommodate forty-eight, and this number of A tickets were given out. Besides these, nineteen B tickets were issued, entitling holders to admission but not to reserved seats. The largest number present at any one time was fifty-eight, and the smallest forty-four, the average being 49.73, one and seventy-three one hundredths above the seating capacity of the room. The results of this course, which has, in some respects, been the most thorough ever given in the School, are very significant and show that the changes we propose to make in the policy of this department are well founded. The audiences at the general courses have been steadily decreasing for ten years. The most interesting subjects treated in the best manner and by the ablest teachers we have in the vicinity did not prevent the gradual and steady lowering of the average of attendance. This is due to several causes. When these lessons were begun in 1870 there were very few teachers in Boston who knew anything about natural history. There was, however, among this class a feeling that the subject ought to be cultivated. The School began at this favorable time and we had audiences of five hundred on Saturday afternoons. These kept up for several years, but gradually, those who had some knowl- edge got enough, or what they thought to be enough, a propor- tion turned their attention to other and more novel things, and our audiences slowly but surely decreased until it became evident, that, after twenty-one years of usefulness, the interest felt in them by the teachers did not warrant their continuance. These lessons to large audiences had in fact accomplished their mission : they had sown general information broadcast, and given away specimens by the hundreds of thousands ; they had demonstrated the possibility of handling enormous classes, and giving observa- tion lessons to five hundred people at a time, each person with the specimens in hand ; and they had finally brought up a class of persons, who had become too well educated to find any longer the proper food for farther advance in the general information they were capable of giving them. These results are not matters of opinion, but have been demonstrated by the fact, that while the general lectures were declining, the special prolonged laboratory 283 [Annual Meeting. 1891.J courses, which had been carried on more or less continuously since 1885, were steadily gaining, and by the replies made by teachers themselves upon a circular sent to them asking for information. It was thus made apparent, that there was a demand for solid instruction by a limited number of Boston teachers, and that it would be a more enlightened policy to satisfy this demand more completely, and abandon, for the present at least, the general courses. Mr. Augustus Lowell having consented to this change of policy, it will be carried into effect during the next official year. Teachers’ School of Science, 1890-1891. Number of tickets distributed. To teachers. Toothers. Common Marine ) Animals of Mas- >* 445 227 218 sacliusetts Bay. ^ Historical Geology. 55 36 19 Field Geology. 76 65 11 Lithology. 61 48 13 Total, 637 376 261 COMMON MARINE ANIMALS FROM MASSACHUSETTS BAY. Boston Public Schools. Out of Town Schools. Tickets distributed to Tickets distributed to Principals, 6 Principals, 14 Masters and Sub-Mastei •s, 13 Masters a nd Sub-Masters 8 4 Assistants, 117 Assistants, 73 Total, 136 Total, 91 LIST BY TOWNS. Belmont, 1 Everett, 6 Neponset, 1 Boston, 136 Hingham, 1 Newton, 1 Bridgewater, 3 Hyde Park, 1 Quincy, 12 Brockton, 4 Malden, 1 Rockford, 111., 1 Cambridge, 33 Melrose, 1 Somerville, 24 Waltham, 1 Total, 227 Complimentary, 135 Miscellaneous, 72 Private Schools. 1 11 445 Annual Meeting.] 284 [May 6, Report of the Board of Directors of the Natural History Gardens and Aquaria, Samuel H. Scudder, Chairman. The Board of Directors of the Natural History Gardens and Aquaria was established by the Society at its first January meet- ing in the present year and its members were chosen by the Coun- cil on January 14. At the present time, therefore, it has to report upon the work of only a few months. Fortunately the Board inherited the result of the labors of the Council and its Committees and of the Society during the past three or four years ; and in these years a very large amount of preliminary work had been finished, in deliberation and elaboration of plans, in consultation and correspondence with the Park Commissioners, and in the fundamental reorganization of the Society itself — a work which could not be done wisely without careful and full discussion ; indeed none but those who were themselves engaged in this work can be aware of the time and thought given freely to the interests of the Society by busy men. The organization and appointment of a Board of Directors has now concentrated the direction of the new work the Society had resolved to undertake. Before its appointment, agreements had been made with the Park Commissioners by which three distinct parcels of land within their control had been reserved for the Society’s use, for the establishment severally of a Marine Aquarium, a Fresh Water Aquarium, and a Natural History Garden, which the Society could occupy as soon as its friends should contribute for the support of the undertaking a guarantee fund of two hundred thousand dollars ; with the proviso that as soon as one third of this sum had been raised operations might begin at the Marine Aquarium at City Point. It had been further decided by the Society that at least one half of the sums offered in support of the Gardens should be funded as a perpetual endowment, that . every available precaution might be taken to ensure the Society against involving itself in debt, and that the Gardens should not be wholly dependent upon gate fees. To still further encourage the enterprise, and by the same instrument that created the Board of Directors, the Society provided the machinery for 1891.] 285 [Annual Meeting. building up a new class of members tributary to the Natural History Gardens, and destined, it is believed, to be one of their strongest sources of support ; to these members it promised not only the freest entrance to the Gardens but also special privileges in the Society’s museum, library, and meetings, and even a share in its very organization, thus connecting the Gardens with the Society by an inalienable bond. The Council, in preparation for this new order of things, had meanwhile considered and prepared a general Appeal to the Citizens of Boston and vicinity for the monetary aid which alone could make the Gardens possible (the text of which is annexed to this Report) , and placed it in the hands of the Board for publication at such a time and in such a manner as was deemed best. Such was the condition of affairs when the Board was appointed. The Board at once decided that in order to secure for the Appeal the best consideration of our friends, it was desirable to present it in a form so attractive as to demand attention and to accom- pany it by such plans and illustrations as should make the oppor- tunities open to the Society by their favor as clear as possible. The Directors also consulted with a large number of gentlemen of influence in the vicinity who cordially permitted their names to appear as supporting our claim to consideration. Securing these names and also obtaining the desired illustrations through the favor of friends and by the employment of artists necessarily consumed much time, and it was only a couple of weeks ago that we were able to place in your hands and that of the general pub- lic (in which we were also aided by a friendly press) the little pamphlet describing what we hope to do and what favors we confidently look to receive. As it has barely been published, it is quite too soon for the Society or the public to expect us to make any definite statement of results from its publication. That must be left to the next Board. We can only say that it has met with the very friendliest reception, and besides immediately eliciting direct subscriptions, has induced some already to enroll themselves as applicants for Garden Membership. The money for the endowment of the Gardens, however, can not be secured by ordinary Garden Membership. It must come by the direct sub- scription of money ; and when so many calls are before the pub- lic, the raising of a large sum even for so popular an object as this is destined to be, is a severe task ; we need therefore the Annual Meeting.] 286 [May 6, personal and direct aid of every one interested in the Gardens and the Society. The Board has not limited itself entirely to the issue of the Appeal, although this was necessarily the principal work first demanded of it. Foreseeing some delay in its publication, it early gave a wide distribution to a pamphlet on the general sub- ject prepared by one of its members and which also received additional circulation by being reprinted in full in one of our weekly papers ; this served to inform the general public. Sev- eral of its members also addressed a very largely attended meet- ing of the Women’s Education Association, and as a result of this and a subsequent meeting, the Association not only consid- erately voted and has already paid over to our Treasurer the sum of two hundred dollars to be expended for preliminary expenses, but has also appointed a strong committee of five of its own number to directly aid in the work of soliciting subscriptions. We cannot be too thankful for the kind and timely assistance offered by these ladies, and hope from it the best results. Nor should we omit mention here of the kindness of several friends who bore a part in the mechanical production of the Appeal, for generous aid which both greatly lessened its cost and added to its artistic appearance. In distributing the Appeal, a form of subscription was added, by which all subscriptions are made conditional upon our success in raising one third of the two hundred thousand dollars (the sum needed before we can begin work on the Marine Aquarium) before the annual meeting of the Society in May, 1892. It therefore be- hoves all who are interested not to delay any effort or subscrip- tion they wish to make, for the necessary funds must be secured within a year if we are to have our contemplated Gardens. In conclusion the Board of Directors has a single recommenda- tion to make. It is believed that it would be a further element of strength and permanence for the Gardens, of security for the Society, and of confidence on the part of the general public, if the funds which may be secured for the Natural History Gardens were to be placed in the hands of special trustees ; so that the institution shall have the advantage of being developed under the control of a union of men of affairs and men of science. The following is the appeal referred to : 287 [Annual Meeting. 1891.] ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS AND AQUARIA FOR BOSTON. The Reports of the Park Commissioners and of the Natural History Society have informed the public from time to time of certain movements on foot to secure for Boston suitable Zoological Gardens and Aquaria. It is the purpose of this circular to announce the completion of the general plans, and to show the practicabilit}7 and desirability of establishing these institutions under the most favorable auspices. These plans have been worked out with the greatest care by those most familiar with such establishments else- where, and most competent to judge how they can be developed to serve the best interests of the community. Foreign institutions have been copied only so far as they are best adapted to our wants, and at every step the interests of the general public and of education have been independently studied, as well as the best methods of exhibiting natural objects and their modes of life. WHERE THEY WILL BE SITUATED. The establishment is to be divided into three distinct departments, in accordance with a natural distribution of organic forms; and incidentally a great advantage will thereby be gained, since the inhabitants of different parts of the city will be brought into near proximity to some part of the ground occupied. These three divisions are to be placed at Franklin Park, in the neighborhood of Jamaica Pond, and at City Point. Annual Meeting.] 288 [May 6, THE NEW ENGLAND ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN AT FRANKLIN PARK. This is to be installed on the city side of the Playstead at Franklin Park in a charming bit of rocky woodland of about twenty acres with very diversified surface, called Long Crouch Woods, a piece of land which, on account of its lack of water, is only suitable for the exhibition of terrestrial and aerial animals. A collection of tropical or subtropical quadrupeds and other vertebrates could not be kept up here without an expenditure far too great to be undertaken in the initiation of an enterprise as varied and extensive as the present. It is deemed best, there- fore, to exhibit fully only the animals of the North Tem- perate zone of America, and thus to display to the best advantage those which one might see within the northern United States. As it is easier to obtain and maintain the animals from near home, by far the larger part of this col- lection will at all times be made up of those now or once natives of New England ; but side by side with our native animals a few of the corresponding types from other quar- ters of the globe will* be shown, in order to illustrate some of the more important features of the general distri- bution of life on the earth. An Insectary is also proposed in connection with this division, in which the transformations of our larger insects can be seen, and their ways of life, many of which are very interesting, can be followed ; ants can be made to reveal to the curious visitor their hidden ways and to teach wisdom, and the processes of experimentation for scientific purposes can be made intelligible to the public. Much of this will be an object of interest only or mainly during the warmer season, but a winter garden under 1 89 1 - J 289 [Annual Meeting. glass is also projected, where one may walk in a comfort- able, well-lighted enclosure in which the varied vegeta- tion, the ponds and fountains with their inhabitants, the songs of birds, and the pleasing habits of curious strange creatures will tend to make him forget the wintry surroundings. THE FRESH WATER AQUARIUM AT JAMAICA POND. A piece of land adjoining Ward’s Pond north of Jamaica Pond, and covering about fourteen acres, with ample room and opportunities for ponds and running water, has been secured for the Fresh- Water Aquarium, which will in- clude not simply creatures that inhabit the water, but also those which live upon or near its banks. A Fish- hatchery may have its place here, and also a small In- sectary to illustrate the transformations of those insects which are aquatic in early life, but afterwards crawl up the stems of water plants, and by means of curious changes of structure finally become suited for flying in the air. Fresh-water animals and plants are modified descend- ants either of marine or terrestrial organisms, and it is intended to exhibit this striking but rarely considered fact by series of living objects side by side. Even the steps of the transformations by which certain shrimp-like, brine- inhabiting animals become fitted for living in fresh water can be directly exhibited in a series of aquaria. The edu- cational value of such displays, which have not, so far as we know, been attempted in similar popular exhibitions, is obvious. This division of the Garden does not require strict limitation, and there will be room enough to make the display of animals sufficiently extensive to include not a Aug. 1891 PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV 19 Annual Meeting.] 290 [May 6, few of such tropical and subtropical forms as will bear a winter confinement ; and nothing short of the necessary public support need prevent this division from becoming not only the first in New England but one of the most important in the world. THE MARINE AQUARIUM AT CITY POINT. In the territory at City Point, now being reclaimed from the sea by the Park Commissioners, is another spot of about eight acres bordering upon the partially enclosed bay at the Marine Park. This affords a good opportunity for salt-water pools and basins of considerable size, suit- able for seals and the smaller Cetacea, — dolphins, por- poises, and white whales, — and also for wading birds and all such animals as frequent the borders of the sea and can be most advantageously shown in the open air. The more varied and interesting collections will be placed in aquaria protected by a suitable building. The visitor will first enter a hall devoted to the exposition of the relations of animals and plants to their surroundings, together with a small synoptical collection which, by the aid of dissections and proper guides, will unfold the dif- ferences between the great groups of animals and marine plants, and the correlations between their habits and nat- ural surroundings and also between these and their struc- ture. The suitability of organisms to do the work they have to perform will be illustrated in many ways, and clear ideas of some of the fundamental laws of organic modification will be presented to intelligent visitors and students. Thus, the changes which have taken place in the structure of the descendants of air-breathing land animals in order to fit them for life in the sea will be abundantly illustrated. 291 [Annual Meeting-. 1891.] The main collection will show in separate groups the animals found associated in the different oceanic areas and in the distinct zones of life found between the shore and the deep sea. Here again only the measure of the success attending the undertaking will mark the limit to which it will be possible to go in displaying the inhabitants of dis- tant waters. The fauna south of Cape Cod is in large part easy of acquisition, the animals exceedingly varied and even brilliant, and they would be well represented in special series of aquaria. Our own marine fauna and flora will be kept apart and in the foreground, and its ex- hibition will astonish all but the professional naturalist with its strangeness and beauty, while even he will re- ceive new revelations of its extent and significance. It is believed that neither of the other divisions can compete with this in the novelty, variety, and attractiveness of its displays. As the halls will be lighted only through the aquaria, the visitor will observe the creatures as if himself beneath the sea. CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH THEY CAN BE ESTABLISHED. The plan of establishing such Gardens has been before the Natural History Society for more than twenty years, during all of wdiich time a special committee has had the matter in charge ; but it is only within a few years, since the Park Commissioners were found to be independently entertaining similar plans, that any prospect seemed to be open for the practical consummation of our hopes. The correspondence between the Society and the Commis- sioners will be found in the several Reports of the latter body from 1887. The Commissioners have set apart the three parcels of land referred to above for the purposes Annual Meeting.] 292 [May 6, mentioned, whenever the friends of the Society shall have raised for the establishment and endowment of the Gardens and Aquaria the sum of two hundred thousand dollars. The Council of the Society has further been authorized by the Society at large to proceed with such establishment whenever the sum named has been raised for that express purpose, with certain provisions which guarantee the integrity of the funds. Convinced that it would not be wise to attempt to begin with the three proposed divisions at the same time, the Council further obtained consent to the beginning of operations at City Point with the same provisions as before, whenever one third of the required sum shall have been obtained. THE BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY THEIR PROPER GUARDIAN. Our Natural History Society is an institution well known to the Boston public. It celebrated its semi-cen- tennial ten years ago. It was through its initiative that the State Survey in the last generation was instituted, and its members were selected to carry it out ; this they did to such good purpose that it has served as a model to other States, and some of the works produced are regarded as classics. The Society obtained from the State the land on which its building now stands, and it has so well mer- ited the confidence of the citizens of Boston that it has received large endowments from them, and notably the means of building its present home. It has taken a prom- inent and effective part in educational matters, as the reports of the Superintendent of Schools and the Super- visors will testify. It also places freely before the public its treasures accumulated through decades of hard work 293 [Annual Meeting 1S91.] and arranged with rare skill. No other institution of the kind in the country has manifested its activity in so many ways or with greater success. If such an establishment as the proposed Gardens and Aquaria is to be anything more than a mere pleasure ground, either a new organization, expressly established for the purpose, must be formed, or the work must be undertaken by one already equipped. It is believed that besides the saving of the cost and labor of a new organi- zation, the confidence of the public, without which the undertaking is impossible, will be extended with greater freedom to a Society that has already proved its usefulness and its power to undertake a work which is only an ex- tension of its present operations. The Society, however, has no funds to use in this direction, all that it now con- trols being trust-funds devoted solely to such work as it has already in hand. It has, therefore, by a distinct vote determined that the new undertaking must be supported through funds obtained for that express purpose. It is only just and proper to state that the Society and its officers have entered upon this undertaking with no desire or object beyond a feeling of duty to the public, and they have freely contributed much valuable time and labor towards the attainment of this great addition to the cause of public education and enjoyment in Boston ; success can give satisfaction, but remuneration is not possible. Annual Meeting. J 294 [May 6, PUBLIC ADVANTAGES TO BE GAINED. The interest taken by the general public in our natural history museums must be seen to be appreciated ; and if dead creatures and their bare skeletons can attract multi- tudes of visitors, of how much deeper interest will living creatures prove. Such an exhibition will give the city child, whose knowledge of the world about him is so piti- fully meagre, a new and vivid enjoyment. It will offer a healthful and instructive pastime to many otherwise des- tined to become idlers. It will open the eyes of all to the wonders and attractions of earth, air, and sea, and be a source of strength and life to the recovering invalid. It will plant deep in the hearts of the people a simple love of Nature, which, like all refining influences, will become a corrective of mischief and wrong, and a source of pure enjoyment. In the crowd of entertainments catering in a greater or less degree to evil passions, it will afford a nobler and purer, because simpler and healthier, amuse- ment. To many it will be the beginning of a new and natural life, while to the student of the laws of Nature it will offer unparalleled fields for investigation. The establishment of such institutions under the imme- diate auspices of the Natural History Society, and upon grounds leased of the Park Commissioners for the special purposes herein set forth, is a distinct assurance that they will be so conducted as to merit the approval of all good citizens ; and we confidently anticipate that when it has been shown what these establishments can fairly do they will be the recipients of the utmost favor from those who possess the means for their endowment. :89i.] 295 i” Annual Meeting. WILL BOSTON RESPOND? It is proposed to begin with the Marine Aquarium at City Point, since it is nearer the centre of population, and will be on the whole the most attractive and novel of the three divisions. Its situation can be seen on the accom- panying plan. It is easily reached. In a very short time the ground will be ready for the erection of the needed buildings, but no step requiring outlay can be taken until one third of the final two hundred thousand dollars is obtained : and it is hoped that many friends, new and old, of the Boston Society of Natural History, of the cause of education, and of this particular mode of instructing and elevating the masses, will respond with their contributions. It is in no sense a scheme for the enrichment of those in- terested in it. Every means will be taken to have it grow by its own strength, and every gain will only enrich and enlarge it and its power of instruction and enjoyment. No cause not purely charitable appeals to so many classes and conditions of men. All employers of men and women must be anxious to provide so commendable a source of rational enjoyment aud recreation for themselves and for their employees. Every one interested in education must feel a responsive chord vibrating in his heart. Every public-spirited citizen will see in it an addition to the forces which increase the intelligence of the voter and thereby tend to make Boston a more desirable place of residence. It is hoped that this simple statement of facts will au- swer all the purposes of a more elaborate appeal ; but any further information will be gladly given by the Secretary of the Society, Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, who ma}~ be addressed at the Society’s Museum on Berkeley Street, or by the in! Meeting-.] 296 [May 6, Annn Treasurer, Mr. Charles W. Scudder, whose office is at 4 Post Office Square, and to whom contributions and pledges may be sent, or by any member of the Council, whose names are hereto appended. The Society will also gladly welcome to its membership any willing to aid in this enterprise, and offers to all a share and an interest in the work it has on hand. Corre- spondence or personal application in this direction is de- sired, and may be addressed to the Secretary or to any member of the Council. Frederick W. Putnam, President. S. L. Abbot. George H. Barton. Edward T. Bouve. Thomas T. Bouve, Ex-President. Henry P. Bowditch. William Brewster. Edward Burgess. John Cummings, Ex-Vice-President. J. H. Emerton. Edward G. Gardiner. [dent. George L. Good ale, Ex-Vice- Presi- Henry W. Haynes. Samuel Henshaw. Alpheus Hyatt, Curator. B. Joy Jeffries, Vice-President. John Amory Jeffries. Edward S. Morse. William H. Niles, Vice-President. Ellen H. Richards. Charles W. Scudder, Treasurer. Samuel H. Scudder, Ex-President. William T. Sedgwick. N. S. Shaler. Charles J. Sprague. [dent. D. Humphreys Storer ,Ex-Vice-Presi- B H. Van Yleck. Samuel Wells. James C. White, Honorary Secretary. J. Walter Eewkes, Sec. and Libr. *** A letter from the Council to the Park Commis- sioners, giving fuller details as to what it is proposed to show in the three exhibits at Franklin Park, Jamaica Pond, and Marine Park, can be had on application to the Secretary. iSgi.j 297 [Annual Meeting. Report of the Secretary and Librarian, J. Walter Fewkes. Since the last report of the Secretary the Society has remod- elled its Constitution and By-laws in order to adapt them to certain new requirements necessary to perfect the plan of a Nat- ural History Garden and Aquaria. Among important changes which have been made are the consolidation of Associate and Corporate membership and the introduction of a new class known as Garden members. The election of all members by the Council is an important change which it is hoped may facilitate elections and lead to a great increase in the number of members. Every step which has been taken in the change from the old Constitu- tion and By-laws to the new By-laws has been adopted with no great opposition from the members of the Society or Council. Much of the work necessitated by this change has naturally fallen upon the Secretary whose steps have been guided by the deliber- ations of the various committees which have had the matter in charge, and by the instructions of the Council. A pamphlet containing the revised By-laws to which a list of members is appended has been printed and sent to every member of the Society. A revised list of members was very much needed as the preceding one had become somewhat antiquated and was almost out of print. A new set of Standing Rules for the Coun- cil has also been prepared and is now under consideration. The several changes necessitated by the adoption of the new By-laws have increased the routine work in the Secretary’s office to about double what it was in former years. We can nbw judge fairly well of the workings of the new By-laws, and it may be said with confidence that they give every evidence of being well adapted to the future needs of the Society in the new departure upon which it is about to enter. During the summer the Secretary spent three months at Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, engaged in studies of the linguistic and religious ceremonials of the Pueblo Indians. Some of the results of his studies, and those of his assistant, Mr. J. G. Owens, were presented at meetings of the Society and of the National Academy which met in our rooms in November. Some of these studies are published in the Journal of American Ethnology and Archaeology of which the Secretary is editor. Annual Meeting.] 298 [May 6, During the past winter the Secretary gave a course of ten lec- tures before the Teachers’ School of Science on “The Common Marine Animals of Massachusetts Bay.” This course treated the subject from the taxonomic side and was illustrated with dia- grams and specimens, over three thousand of which were given to those attending the lectures. The course was accompanied by a small illustrated pamphlet entitled “An Aid to a Collector of the Coelenterata and Echinodermata of New England,” which was especially prepared for and distributed among teachers at- tending the course. The customary information in regard to membership, meet- ings, publications and library will be found below. Membership. The present membership consists of 15 Honorary, 337 Corpo- rate, 142 Corresponding and 2 Garden members. During the past year we have lost 2 patrons, J. II. Wolcott and E. S. Tobey, and 3 Corresponding members, Filipe Poey, Alex. Winchell and Jos. Leidy. Messrs. J. C. Sharpe and Henry D. Minot, Life members, have died. The names of Le Baron Russell and Charles K. Dillaway should be added to the necrology of 1889. Five corporate members have died and five have resigned. Eight corporate members were dropped from our roll for non- payment of assessments. While the number of members has in the past two years re- mained constant it is probable that it will be somewhat in- creased in the immediate future. The plan of a Natural History Garden and Aquaria would necessitate a large increase. The effect upon the scientific character of the Society of such an in- crease will be regarded with interest. Meetings. Fourteen general meetings of the Society have been held dur- ing the past year, five of which were illustrated with the stereop- [891.] 299 [Annual Meeting. ticon. The average attendance has been 44 ; the smallest 22 ; and the largest 112. It will be seen by a comparison with that of last year that we have" slightly increased our attendance. This is the largest average attendance which has been recorded since 1888 and looks encouraging for the future of the Society. The papers which have been read were of exceptional interest and cover the most important subjects to which the Society is devoted. While there is a marked predominance of communica- tions on certain sciences the Secretary has endeavored to preserve a proportion which would prevent an undue predominance. He has been unable to assign dates for one or two speakers on ac- count of the numbers who have volunteered to read papers. This increase in the numbers of those who are willing to read communications is very gratifying. Five papers have been read by title. The Council has held frequent meetings, all of which have been well attended. The amount of work which has fallen on the Council in revising the reports of the Committee on Organization and the discussion of the articles of the new By-laws has been very great. Library, The additions to the library have out-numbered those of any single year since 1886. In order to increase our shelf facilities we have purchased a new case which has greatly im- proved our library, but still a second case is needed to prevent the absolute crowding of our shelves. The usefulness of a library is in point of fact greatly impaired by the limitation of shelf room . The largest addition which the library has received during the past year is the magnificent gift to the conchological department. This gift from the estate of Mr. E. R. Mayo, the well known naturalist, is particularly rich in systematic works on conchology, many of which are very rare. It renders our conchological al- coves the richest of any in Boston or vicinity. We have also received most welcome additions to our small collection of ethnological works. Dr. Crehore continues to supply the library with the Anthropological Journal and Revue d’Ethnographie, files of which he gave last year. Annual Meeting-.] 300 [May 6, ADDITIONS TO THE LIBRARY. 8vo. 4to. Fol. Total Yol umes 316 112 18 446 Parts 1673 308 6 1987 Pamphlets 338 38 2 378 Maps 8 8 Total 2819 Books bound : 143, and 50 vols. of Proceedings, xxiv. Books borrowed : 844. New exchanges: Missouri Botanical Garden, Wagner Free In- stitute, Illinois state laboratory of natural history, Commission des Travaux geologiques du Portugal, Deutscher wissenschaft- jicher Yerein, Mexico. New subscription : Library Journal. Publications. The past year has been a particularly busy one with the Publication Committee. By the adoption of the new By-laws it was found necessary to make a change in the personelle of the Committee, and to amalgamate the Library and Publication Com- mittees. The publications have not suffered by this change. The number of pages printed during the past year is larger than in any former year, except in 1880, when the Memorial volume appeared. We have printed and distributed two Memoirs, Yol. iv, No. 8, The Phylogeny of the Pelecypoda, by Robert Tracy Jackson, and Yol. iv, No. 9-12. New Types of Cockroaches from the Carboniferous Deposits of the United States. New Carboniferous Myriapoda from Illinois. Illustra- tions of the Carboniferous Arachnida of North America, of the orders Anthracomarti and Pedipalpi. The Insects of the Triassic Beds of Fairplay, Colorado, By S. H. Scudder. Yol. xxv, Part 1, of the Proceedings has been printed. As in past years, we have sold one or two complete sets of our publications. The calls for exchange are about the same as last year. The Librarian has succeeded in adding [i89i. 301 [Annual Meeting several copies of the rare signatures of old Proceedings to our small number of duplicates. These gifts have resulted from a circular sent out at the beginning of the year, ask- ing members to favor us with Society publications which they did not wish. The Librarian is confident that the num- ber of our duplicates could be much enlarged by adopting a similar plan in the future. The Publication Committee have this year made a new con- tract with our printer, and our work for the present will be done in Cambridge. It is expected that the mechanical part of the work will still keep up to the high character of that done in the past by the Salem Press. Walker Prizes. The Walker Prize Committee presented the following sub- jects for competition during the past year : 1 . An Original Investigation in Relation to the Develop- ment of any Plant or Animal. 2. Comparative Study of the Habits of two or more nearly allied Species of Terrestrial Vertebrates. 3. Original Investigation on the Physiology of Flight. The Secretary deemed it best near the close of the year to call the attention of the Council to his intention to resign his official position. Increased routine work in the department under his charge had so limited his time for study that he was unable to carry on researches which he had undertaken and in which he had come to be profoundly interested. At the request of the Council the present incumbent has continued to perform the duties of his office to the close of the year. The Council appointed Mr. Samuel Dexter as Assistant Secre- tary, by whom a share of the work in the department has been performed during the last month. In voluntarily withdrawing his name as a candidate for re-election, the Secretary desires to thank the Society for the many honors conferred upon him and to express his willingness to give what time he can in the future to aid in the advancement of the work of the Society. Annual Meeting-.] 302 o P3 w P CO W H W Hi H Ph O H O Ph w PH 03 o g fi <3 03 P H <1 Ph O h H M 5 o m 125 o H c» O PP OlOOSOOiCOOfMOOO NotooNcjn^offi (JO kJ iO >0 CD Oli CO ' VO CM CO ^00CO£J~H° 3 O Ph p p .2 M -13 O Ph O TO O © w -3 OOO^HvOioOO O O O ffl ffl h- © © a oi o fi o ® H o N H O rH TH h* rH 'HH O co . . O t-H t— CM © 05 CM T-H I 2 J CD ^ H Tj O p s * £ .s © Ph - -H ~ !>n S W o ^ OO rH .2 &h I Pk fac •2 B £ 5 H O CM 00 VO t- 00 pq Q co tC W h3 e« » s [May 6, CHARLES W. SCUDDER, Boston, May 1, 1891. Treasurer i8qi.] 303 [Annual Meeting. Mr. C. T. White declined an election as Councillor, and nomi- nations to be voted upon at the next meeting were made. The Society then proceeded to ballot for officers for 1891-92. Messrs. Henshaw and Jackson were appointed a committee to collect and count the votes, and they announced the election of the following : OFFICERS FOR 1891-92. PRESIDENT, GEORGE L. GOODALE. VICE-PRESIDENTS, WILLIAM H. NILES. B. JOY JEFFRIES. SAMUEL WELLS. CURATOR, ALPHEUS HYATT. SECRETARY, SAMUEL DEXTER. TREASURER, CHARLES W. SCUDDER. LIBRARIAN, SAMUEL DEXTER. COUNCILLORS FOR THREE YEARS. S. L. Abbot. Henry P. Bowditch. William M. Davis. William G. Farlow. COUNCILLORS George II. Barton. William Brewster. Miss Cora II. Clarke. Augustus Hemenway. Edward G. Gardiner. Henry W. Haynes. Mrs. Ellen H. Richards. Charles J. Sprague. FOR TWO YEARS. Robert T. Jackson. Edward S. Morse. William T. Sedgwick. Nathaniel S. Shaler. Annual Meeting.] 304 [May 6, COUNCILLORS FOR ONE YEAR. Samuel Henshaw. John Ritchie. William A. Jeffries. Warren Upiiam. Miss Susannah Minns. Alfred P. Rockwell. Edwtard Wiggles worth. members of the council, ex-officio. Ex-President Thomas T. Bouve, Ex-President Samuel H. Scudder, Ex -President F. W. Putnam, Ex-Vice-President D. Humphrey Storer, Ex- Vice- President John Cummings. Dr. C. S. Minot read a paper on the evolution of the head. General Meeting, May 20, 1891. Vice-President B. Joy Jeffries in the chair. The Society proceeded to ballot for a Councillor to serve one year in place of Mr. C. T. White declined. Messrs. W. A. Jeffries and Barton were appointed a committee to collect and count the ballots. They announced that Mr. E. T. Bouv6 was elected. The resignation of Mr. A. Hemenway as a Councillor was accepted. It was announced that Messrs. W. W. Castle, James Means, Laurence Minot, F. H. Peabody, Mrs. J. C. Phillips, Dr. H. P. Quincy, Mrs. W. B. Rogers, and Drs. Edward Wigglesworth and Harold Williams were elected Garden Members at the meet- ing of the Council May 13. Prof. W. O. Crosby read a paper on the geology of Hingham. A brief description of a glacial Pot-hole at Pearl Hill, Fitch- burg, Mass., was given by Mr. G. H. Barton. Prof. W. O. Crosby and Mr. Warren Upham mentioned simi- lar Pot-holes in eastern Massachusetts and in Hew Hampshire. The following note by Prof. R. H. Richards was read : There is a huge pot-hole which has not, to my knowledge, been described, on the railroad connecting White River Junction with Burlington, Vt., at a little village called Bolton. The pot- 305 fUpham 1891.] hole is about one-half mile east of the station, and appears to be the basin of a waterfall, the stream coming in on the north side of the valley. This pot-hole measures 43 feet diameter in one direction, and 45 feet in another at right angles to the first. Its diameter is a little greater below the rim than at it. At the time I visited it (1874) it was nearly full of gravel ; its depth can only be surmised. But judging from its great diameter and its remarkable evenness, appearing almost as if it turned in lathe, it must have considerable depth. November 4, 1891. President G. L. Goodale in the chair. Seventy-two persons present. The President announced the death, during the summer vaca- tion, of Dr. D. Humphreys Storer and Mr. Edward Burgess. The following paper was read : — RECENT FOSSILS OF THE HARBOR AND BACK BAY, BOSTON. BY WARREN EPHAM. Fossil marine shells of the Postglacial or Recent epoch have been lately discovered at several places in the vicinity of Bos- ton. indicating slight postglacial changes in the relative levels of land and sea, and proving considerable changes in the tempera- ture of the sea here. These fossils have been carefully collected and studied by Miss D. L. Bryant, of the class of 1891, Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology ; and, with topographic and geologic notes of the localities of their occurrence, they were the theme of her graduating thesis, to which I am indebted for a large share of both the observed^facts and the conclusions drawn from them, as here presented. Another interesting collection has been made by Mr. Collier Cobb, instructor in geology and palaeontology, of the Institute of Technology. Miss Bryant gives lists of species obtained by excavations and dredging in three localities. 1. Grading and deep trenches along the valley and estuary of Muddy River, adjoining Brookline and forming the western con- PROCEEDIX GS B. S. X. H. VOL. XXV. 20 MARCH, 1892. Upham.] 306 [Nov. 4, tinuation of a new park of the city of Boston, encountered a fossiliferous clayey stratum a few feet thick, lying near the pres- ent level of low tide, underlain by stratified clay, and directly overlain by a bed of peat about one foot thick, which is succeeded by the latest fine muddy alluvium of this stream, from five to twelve feet in thickness. In the upper part of the clay, the thir- teen species noted by asterisks in the first column of the following table were found, occurring in abundance together, except that the oysters were restricted chiefly to one place. 2. In the dredging of the Charles River during the construc- tion of the new bridge from the Back Bay district of Boston to Cambridgeport, at a distance about one and a half miles west of the State House, there were brought up first river mud, which had a thickness of several feet, and next sand containing shells of twelve species noted in the second column of the table. The river here is a broad tidal estuary, a great part of which has been filled and now constitutes the Back Bay district ; and the ground where these fossils were dredged forms part of the deepest channel of this bay or enlargement of the Charles River back of the original peninsula of Boston. The fossiliferous sand was ten feet or more below mean low tide level, above which the mean height of the tide, both in the Charles River and in Boston Harbor, is ten feet. The most abundant species here, occurring in great numbers and of large size, are My a arenaria , Venus mercenaria , Pecten irradians , and Ostrea virginiana. Some of the shells of the long clam (Mya) measure five inches in length and three inches in width. A small oyster shell in this bed is exceptional, the usual length being eight inches, with a width of from two to three inches ; while many are ten inches long, and one valve has a thick- ness of one and a half inches. 3. At City Point, the eastern extremity of South Boston, dredg- ing is in progress for deepening an adjacent part of the harbor, and the mud and sand thus removed are used in the extension of City Point for the site of the Marine Park. The depth of water where the dredging is being done, midway between the Point and Castle Island, is about ten feet below mean low tide, and the ex- cavation goes several feet lower, bringing up an abundance of fossil shells. Twenty-one species, noted in the third column, have been identified here. iS9i-] 307 [Upham. Table of Recent Fossils , Boston , Mass.1 Species. Muddy River. Charles River. City Point. Present geographic range. Balanus balanoides Stimpson. * Shores of whole North Atlantic. Tritia trivittata Adams. * * i * Fla. to G. of St. Lawrence. Ilyanassa obsoleta Stimpson. * * * G. of Mex. to C. Cod; local north • to G. of St. Lawrence. Urosalpinx cinerea Stimpson. * * * Same as preceding. Purpura lapillus Lam. * E. end of Long Island to Arctic Ocean. Anachis avara Perkins. * G. of Mex. to Mass. Bay. Lunatia heros Adams. * *■ * Ga. to S. Labrador. Crepidula fornicata Lam. G. of Mex. to Mass. Bay; local north to G. of St. L. Crepidula plana Say. * 1 Same as preceding. Littorina rudis Gould. * N. J. to Arctic Ocean. Utriculus canaliculatus Stimpson. *■ S. C. to Mass. Bay. My a arenaria L. * * * 1 S. C. to Arctic Ocean. Tagelus gibbus Gray. | * W. Indies and G.'of Mex. to Cape Cod. Macoma fragilis Adams. * * * Ga. to Greenland. Mactra solidissima Chemnitz. * Texas to Labrador. Mulinia lateralis Gray. * * * I Texas to Mass. Bay. Venus mercenaria L. * * * | Fla. to Mass. Bay; local north to 1 G. of St. Lawrence. Laecicardium Mortoni Perkins. * G. of Mex. to Cape Cod ; local north to N. S. Astarte undata Gould. i * ! L. I. Sound toG. of St. Lawrence. Lucina Jilosa Stimpson. * Conn, to Maine. Modiola plicatula Lam. I * * 1 * i Ga. to Casco Bay, Maine; local 1 north to G. of St. L. Pecten irradians Lam. 1 G. of Mex. to Cape Cod; local north to N. S. Pecten tenuicostatus Mighels. . * N. J. to Labrador. Anomia glabra Verrill. * Fla. to Cape Cod ; local north to Cape Sable, N. S. Ostrea virginiana Lister. * * * G. of Mex. to Cape Cod; local N. to Bay of Chaleurs, G. of St. L. 1 Within the time between the reading and printing of this paper, the material being dredged and brought to land at City Point has been carefully examined for its enclosed shells by Mr. Warren W. Herman, who has thus collected all but one of the species found there by Miss Bryant (excepting only Lucxna filosa), besides twenty- six other species. In the determination of these shells he was aided by Mr. E. W. Roper. The additions to the previous list from City Point, kindly supplied by Mr. Herman for this note, are as follows, with their present geographic range and habitat, according to Professor Yerrill’s ‘‘Report upon the Invertebrate Animals of Vineyard Sound,” U. S. Fish Commission Report, 1871-72. Buccinum undatum L. N. J. to Greenland. Littoral to 100 fathoms. A sty ns lunata Dali. N. Fla. to Mass. Bay. Low tide to 10 fathoms. Neverita duplicata Stimpson. Yucatan and Fla. to Mass. Bay; local and not com- mon N. of Cape Cod. Littoral, sandy shores. Triforis nigrocinctus Stimpson. S. C. to Cape Cod. Low tide to 10 fathoms. Bittium nigrum Stimpson. S. C. to Cape Cod ; local farther north, in Boston Har- bor, and in south part of G. of St. Lawrence. Low tide to 8 fathoms. Upham. J 308 [Nov. 4, The four species mentioned for their abundance in the Charles River are also very plentiful at City Point, having similar large size, which shows that in both places they had favorable con- ditions for luxuriant growth. Chief among these conditions are mild temperature and clearness of the water, such as are found in estuaries and shallow bays, sheltered from the waves of storms. Taken as a whole, the twenty-five species comprised in the identified fauna of these localities belong in their present geo- graphic range to a somewhat more southern and warmer portion of our coast. Fourteen are distinctly southern, and reach their Crepidula convexa Say. Fla. to Mass. Bay; local 1ST. to G. of St. Lawrence. Littoral. Littorina rudis Gould. N. J. to Arctic Ocean. Littoral. Littorina palliata Gould. Range and habitat like the preceding. Littorina litorea Menke. Doubtless superficial, not fossil ; introduced from Europe (see article by W. F. Ganong, Am. Naturalist, Nov., 1886 and March, 1887); first ob- served on our coast about fifty years ago in Nova Scotia; not reported south of Cape Cod by Verrill in 1872. Littoral. Lacuna vincta Turton. Circumpolar, S. to Long Isl. Sound and Staten Island. Low tide to 5 fathoms. Odostomia fusca Gould. N. J. to Cape Cod. Littoral. Turbonilla interrupta Adams. S. C. to Cape Cod. 3 to 10 fathoms. Acmaea testudinalis Forbes and Hanley; also the var. a Trews Verrill . Circumpolar, S. to Long Isl. Sound. Littoral. Melampus bidentatus Say. Texas to Mass. Bay. At and above high tide. Utriculus canaliculatus Stimpson. S. C. to Mass. Bay. 2 to 8 fathoms. Clidiophora trilineaia Carpenter. Fla. to G. of St. Lawrence. Low tide to 30 fathoms. Ensatella americana Verrill. Fla. to Labrador. Low tide to 20 fathoms. Angulus tener Verrill. Fla. to G. of St. Lawrence. Low tide and downward. Petricola pholadiformis Lam. G. of Mex. to Mass. Bay; local N. to G. of St. Lawrence. Littoral and downward. Tottenia gemma Perkins. S. C. to Labrador. Littoral and shallow water. Cyprina islandica Lam. E. end of Long Isi. to Arctic Ocean. 6 to 90 fathoms. Cyclocardia borealis Conrad. N. J. to Labrador. 3 to 80 fathoms, Kellia planulata Stimpson. Long Isl. Sound to Greenland. Low tide to 15 fathoms. Yoldia limatula Stimpson. N. C. to G. of St. Lawrence. 2 to 30 fathoms. Mytilus edulis L. Circumpolar, S. to N. C. Littoral to 50 fathoms. Modiola modiolus Turton. Circumpolar, S. to N. J. Low tide to 80 fathoms. Ten of these species belong mainly or exclusively to the fauna which is limited on the north by Cape Cod ; but the greater part or possibly all of the ten continue spar- ingly north to Massachusetts Bay, or occur in the colonies of southern mollusks north- ward to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The remaining sixteen range southward to Long Island Sound or beyond. Perhaps the most interesting one of the southern species is Turbonilla interrupta, of which Verrill writes (p. 657) : “I have received from Prof. E. S. Morse specimens of this shell obtained from mud in the harbor of Portland, Maine, but they are dead and bleached. I am not aware that it has been found living so far north on our coast.” iS9x.] 309 [Upham northward limits at Cape Cod or in Massachusetts Bay, and in one instance near Portland, Maine ; excepting that several of them occur in isolated colonies far north of their general and continuous range, as in Casco and Quahog bays, Maine, and es- pecially in the shallow southern part or Acadian Bay of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, from Cape Breton Island to the Bay of Chaleurs.1 The occurrence of these southern mollusks, which are mostly now absent or local and rare north of Cape Cod, shows that the sea here during some part of the Recent epoch has been warmer than at the present time. Six of the fourteen, namely, Ilyanassa obsoleta, Urosalpinx cinerea , Mulinia lateralis , Venus mercenaria , Modiola plicatula, and Ostrea virginiana, are found in each of the three localities noted and indicate the contempo- raneousness of these deposits. All of the eleven northern species, some of which extend to the Arctic Ocean, but including one found only on the coast of New England, range to south- ward limits beyond Cape Cod. In short, the temperature of the sea in Massachusetts Bay and in the estuaries of its rivers, at the time represented by these deposits, was evidently like that of the sea now on the southern coast of New England, which, be- sides the increase of the sun’s heat due to the lower latitude, receives some contribution from the warmth of the Gulf Stream, whereas the waters of the Gulf of Maine and Massachusetts Bay are chilled by a coastal current from the north. The relative heights of land and sea were apparently almostJ.the same as now. Every one of the twenty-five recorded species flourishes on the shore between the levels of high and low tide, or at the plane of extreme low tide, or in shallow water of a few fathoms. In the list of each locality are species that prefer a 1 After the presentation of this paper before the Society, the author learnediof Mr. W. F. Ganong’s admirable memoir, “Southern Invertebrates on the Shores of Acadia,” published a few months ago in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol. viii, sec. iv, for 1890, pp. 167-185. Mr. Ganong gives a history of the discovery of the character of the colonies ; a list of the marine invertebrates belonging to the Virginian fauna, which occur upon the coasts of Acadia and Maine, with tabular reference to their known localities ; and a discussion of their recent extinction on intervening por- tions of the coast thence south to Massachusetts Bay and Cape Cod. He accepts the explanation of Verrill and Dawson, noticed on a following page, for the present re- frigeration of the sea here ; but also points to the recent increasing severity of cold in Greenland and Iceland, and suggests that the marine currents there likewise have been lately warmer than now. Upham.] 310 [Nov. 4, depth slightly below the lowest tide, and each also has other species that are chiefly restricted to the shore above low water mark. Probably the best interpretation is that suggested by the layer of peat at the first locality, immediately overlying the fossils, near the low tide level. The water there was gradually becoming shallower, and the land was finally lifted above the reach of the tide at the time of formation of the peat. Subse- quently it has been depressed at least several feet, which latest movement has now apparently ceased on this part of the coast. Postglacial oscillations of considerable amount, thus lifting the land and afterwards depressing it, are known to have affected a large part of our Atlantic seaboard ; and Professor A. E. Verrill1 and Sir William Dawson2 believe that these recent changes of level have been sufficient to explain the important changes of tem- perature of the sea here, whereby southern mollusks were per- mitted to extend northward to the Gulf of St. Lawrence but have since been exterminated, excepting isolated colonies, north of Cape Cod and Massachusetts Bay. Both these authors are in- clined to attribute the northward extension of the southern fauna to a recent time of greater elevation of our coast, which is abun- dantly attested to a certain amount, varying from ten to at least forty feet,3 by stumps of forests, rooted where they grew, and by peat bogs, now found submerged by the sea at many places along all the distance from New Jersey to Newfoundland. Professor Verrill suggests that the strait of Belle Isle, which is about ten miles wide and 180 feet deep in its narrowest and shallowest part, may have been closed by the elevation, shutting out the cold waters that pour through it, carrying small icebergs and floes into the Gulf of St. Lawrence ; while as great an uplift of the exten- sive shallow Fishing Banks would ward off the Arctic current far into the ocean. If we had to consider this coast alone, the ex- planation would seem very acceptable ; but evidences of such warmer postglacial temperature, both of sea and land, succeeded 1 Am. Jour. Science, III, vol. vii, pp. 134-8, Feb., 1874. 2 Acadian Geology, Third edition, with supplement, 1878. 3 According to Sir William Dawson, 1. c., p. 31. Since'this paper was prepared, the author finds that Mr. Robert Chalmers reports a peat bed under the Tantramar salt marsh at the head of the Bay of Fundy, about eighty feet below the present high tide level (Annual Report of the Geological and Natural History Survey of Canada, new series , vol. iv, for 1888-89, pp. 42 A and ION), now by a moderate degree of refrigeration, are found to extend over all the North Atlantic region, including also Greenland, Ice- . land, northwestern Europe, and even Spitzbergen1. We there- fore must conclude that these climatic changes probably have depended in common on further reaching causes and conditions, which may yet have consisted chiefly in geographic movements of elevation and subsidence, with their effect on the general oceanic circulation. Between the time of departure of the ice-sheet, at the close of the Glacial period, and the time of northward migration of the southern marine fauna, a very imp >rtant upward movement had taken place, affecting the eastern provinces of Canada and the northern two thirds of New England, extending south to the lat- itude of Boston. To speak more strictly, however, this uplifting of our part of the continent was limited southeastwardly by a line drawn approximately from the mouth of the Hudson northeast to Boston and onward through Nova Scotia. When the ice-sheet was withdrawing from this region, the country south of this line stood somewhat higher than now, as is shown by the chan- nels of streams that flowed away from the melting ice and ran across the modified drift plains which form the southern shores of Long Island, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Cape Cod. A subsequent depression of the land there, continuing perhaps to the present time, has brought the sea into these old river courses. But north and northwest from this line the lan l at the time of re- cession of the ice-sheet was lower than now, and the coast and estuaries were more submerged by the sea. At Boston and north- ward to Cape Ann the depression appears to have been no more than from ten to twenty-five feet. Eossiliferous beds overlying the till show that the vertical amount of the marine submergence in the vicinity of Portsmouth was about 150 feet ; along the coast of Maine, from 150 to about 300 feet ; on the northwestern shore of Nova Scotia, about 40 feet ; thence increasing westward to about 200 feet in the basin of the Bay of Chaleurs, 375 feet in the St. Lawrence valley opposite the Saguenay, and 520 feet at Montreal ; 300 to 400 feet, increasing from south to north, in the basin of Lake Champlain; about 275 feet at Ogdensburgh, and 450 feet 1 (James Geikie, Prehistoric Europe, Chapters xx and xxi, 1881. Warren Upham, “On the Cause of the Glacial Period,'’ Am. Geologist, vol. vi, pp. 327-339, Dec., 1890. Upham.J 312 [Nov. 4, near the city of Ottawa ; 300 to 500 feet in the country southwest of James Bay ; in Labrador increasing northward to 1,500 feet at Nachvak, according to Dr. Robert Bell ; and in northern Greenland and Grinnell Land, from 1,000 to 2,000 feet. That the land northward from Boston was so much lower while the ice-sheet was melting away, is proved by the occurrence of fossil shells of Leda arctica Gray, which is now found living only in Arctic seas where they receive muddy streams from existing glaciers and from the Greenland ice-sheet. This species is plentiful in the stratified clays resting on the till in the St. Lawrence valley, in New Brunswick, and Maine, extending south to Portsmouth, N. H. But it is known that the land was elevated from this de- pression to about its present height before the sea here became warm and the southern mollusks migrated along this coast to the Gulf of St. Lawrence ; for in the extensive lists of the fossil fauna of these beds none of the southern species are included, excepting perhaps the oyster in southwestern Maine.1 From the Champlain submergence attending the departure of the ice, the land was raised somewhat higher than now, and its latest movement from New Jersey to southern Greenland has been a moderate depression. The vertical amount of this recent subsidence is undetermined, beyond that known b}^ stumps and peat now covered by the sea ; and it is difficult to estimate how far this recent and probably slight oscillation may have tended to produce formerly warmer and now cold sea currents, with the faunal migration that is represented by the marine colonies of southern species. It seems unlikely, however, as before re- marked, that the warmer marine temperature was due to local conditions of our coast, since it prevailed throughout all the North Atlantic Ocean. The fossils of the Champlain beds of our northeastern shores and also of northwestern Europe show a gradual change from an Arctic and glacial climate at the maximum of the depression to a cool temperate climate, nearly the same as now, before the re-elevation brought the land up to its present height. After this level was generally attained or somewhat sur- 1 C. H. Hitchcock, “The Geology of Portland,’’ Proc. A. A. A. S., vol. xxii, for 1873, pp. 163—175. A. S. Packard, “Observations on the Glacial Phenomena of Lab- rador and Maine,’’ Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History, vol. i, 1865, pp. 210-262. J. W. Dawson, Notes on the Post-pliocene Geology of Canada, 1872, pp. 112 (from the Canadian Naturalist, new series, vol. vi). i89i.J 313 [Upham" passed, tlie southern warmer temperate species spread northward along both sides of the Atlantic to boreal and even Arctic regions, where they are no longer able to live excepting in isolated colo- nies that are preserved here and there in sheltered shallow bays. Looking lor causes of these changes of temperature in the North Atlantic and the adjoining countries, it seems to me very probable that they were due mainly to a formerly larger volume of the warm oceanic current which is named the Gulf Stream because a considerable part of it issues from the Gulf of Mexico, flowing through the Strait of Florida, while perhaps a larger part leaves the tropics east of Cuba and the Bahamas. This very broad current pours northward to the Arctic regions and there enters an otherwise almost completely enclosed ocean, from which counter currents nearly at the temperature of melting ice flow back along the Labrador coast and in the depths of the Atlantic under its warmer surface. But within the Recent epoch, during which these climatal changes have taken place, an elevation of a large region of Alaska and eastern Siberia has been in progress, slowly diminishing the depth and width of Bering Strait.1 The recency of this uplifting, probably still going on, is shown, like that of the basin of Hudson Bay, by drift-wood on the sea shores, lying far above the level now reached by storm waves at the high- est tides. Mr. Hall reports that the current of the shallow Ber- ing Strait, which has a maximum depth of only 180 feet and is about thirty-six miles wide, passes north into the Arctic Ocean2; but this may have been reversed when the strait was formerly much larger, being thus an outlet for a part of the waters carried north by the Gulf Stream. The North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean could then have received more of its northward warm current, giving a milder climate to northeastern North America and northwestern Europe and adjacent Arctic lands. On the other hand, an outflow from the polar sea through Bering Strait would be a frigid current, carrying greater cold to Alaska, British Co- lumbia, and the Pacific Coast of the United States. So nicely balanced are the conditions on which variations of climate depend, that the former depression of Bering Strait, through resulting changes in the oceanic circulation, may have 1 William H. Dali, Alaska and its Resources, pp. 462-466, 2 Ibid., p. 285, Upham.J 314 [Nov. 4, been a very important element, re-enforced probably by con- temporaneous greater elevation of the Cordilleran mountain belt from the St. Elias range to the Sierra Nevada, in causing these mountains and t.he adjoining lower ground to bear very lately, as Russell and Becker have shown, extensive glaciers or even ice- sheets, which have now disappeared from the southern part of this belt and are fast retreating in Alaska.1 The last 500 or 1,000 years, according to Russell, have been marked by rapid gla- cial recession in the St. Elias region. But during the same or a longer time the North Atlantic area has been growing colder, gradually excluding the southern mollusks, causing the ice-sheet of Greenland to increase again, and giving to that country a much less hospitable climate than during the prosperous period of the Norse colonies, from 900 to 500 years ago. Both the de- crease of the Alaskan glaciers and the increase of cold and of ice accumulation in Greenland are attributable, as I believe, to the present partial closure of the passage between the Arctic and Pacific oceans. In another way, however, which is perhaps more probable, that is, by assuming that the principal current through the for- merly enlarged Bering Strait flowed as now northward, we may almost equally well explain the climatic changes of both the western Cordilleran belt and the North Atlantic area. Such in- creased northward outflow from the Pacific would be subtracted from the warm Kuro Siwo or Japan current, the greater part of which passes to the east and south along the shores of Alaska, British Columbia, and the Pacific States, and would thus tend to produce the cold of the recent Cordilleran glaciation. The formerly large branch of the Japan current entering the Arctic Ocean by Bering Strait would be partly, and probably almost wholly, carried thence eastward along the northern coast of North America and through its archipelago to Baffin Bay, Davis Strait, and the North Atlantic, bringing somewhat milder cli- matic conditions to Greenland and to all those shores where the 1 I. C. Russell, Geological History of Lake Lahontan, U. S. Geol. Survey, Mono- graph xi, 1885, p. 273; Bulletin, G. S. A., vol. i, 1890, p. 142; Expedition to Mount St. Elias, Alaska, National Geographic Magazine, vol. iii, 1891, pp. 64, 93, 98, 100, 104, 112, 173. G. F. Bocker, Bulletin, G. S. A., vol. ii, 1891, p. 196. Warren Upham, Am. Jour. Science, III, vol. xli, pp. 41, 51, Jan., 1891; Am. Geologist, vol. viii, p. 150, Sept., 1891. southern marine mollusks are known. With the subsequent de- crease of the size of Bering Strait, during the past 1,000 years, sending more of the Japan current to our Pacific coast, the Cor- dilleran and Alaskan glaciers would be melted away or greatly reduced, as to-day, but Greenland and the North Atlantic area would become colder, as seems to be well proved within the pres- ent historic period. To the same very late date we must assign the extinction of the southern molluscan species on the eastern coast of New England and the southern coast of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. During the time of accumulation of the aboriginal shell- heaps or kjokken-raoddings of Maine, and even within the 270 ygars since the first settlement in Massachusetts, very significant restriction and extinction can be shown. For example, Professor Verrill states that dredging reveals the occurrence of great beds of oyster shells a few feet beneath the harbor mud at Portland, where they are associated with the quahog ( Venus mercenaria ), scallop ( Pecten ir radians) , and other southern species; and that the oysters and scallops “had apparently become extinct in the vicinity of Portland harbor before the period of the Indian shell- heaps, for neither of these species occurs in the heaps on the ad- jacent islands, while the quahogs lingered on until that time, but have subsequently died out everywhere in this region, except at Quahog Bay.”1 Still later and more surprising is the extinction of the oyster from many localities on the coast of Maine and east- ern Massachusetts.2 Native oyster banks in the Charles and Mys- tic rivers two hundred years ago were so productive that an enumeration of the exports from Boston to the West Indies and Spain in 1687 included “oysters salted in barrels, great quanti- ties of which are taken here.” Now there probably remain, ac- cording to Ingersoll, only two localities on the New England coast north of Cape Cod, where native oysters survive, these be- ing Great Bay in New Hampshire, back of Portsmouth, and the Sheepscot river in Maine. They are likewise almost wholly wanting on the Canadian continuation of the coast until Cape Breton Island is reached ; but thence westward in the Gulf of St. 1 Am. Jour. Science, III, vol. vii, p. 137. 2 Ernest Ingersoll, Report on the Oyster-Jndustry of the United States, Tenth Cen* gus, 1881. Dexter. | 316 [Nov. 4, Lawrence they are plentiful, with numerous other southern spe- cies, to the Bay of Chaleurs. The extinction of oysters, and of their southern associates, has been rapidly going on from Nova Scotia to Cape Cod since the earliest settlement of the country, due probably not so much to their exhaustion by being gathered for food, or to any and all other causes, as to a progressive re- frigeration of the sea ; and this seems referable, as before indi- cated, to changes in the volume and warmth of marine currents, which changes ultimately may have been caused by the former depression and present uplifting of the region of Bering Strait. Prof. G. L. Goodale in a brief account of some of the natural history museums of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, de- scribed those at Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart, Invercargill, Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland. As a whole they may be characterized as devoted to ethnology, the local faunae and Horae, and useful products ; the exhibits are well labeled, attractive and instructive ; they are well supported and recognized as essential in education. The tenacity with which the Australasian museums cling to all specimens of archaeological and ethnographical interest was highly commended. It was announced that on October 21st the Council elected Messrs. W. W. Castle, E. G. Conklin, W. W. Herman, F. H. Herrick, A. D. Morrill, E. E. Norton, E. W. Ricker, C. S. Sar- gent, W. C. Sturgis, and Miss Edith A. Parkhurst, Corporate Members, and Messrs. J. M. Forbes, C. P. Putman, J. J. Put- man, Roger Wolcott, and Miss H. E. Freeman, Garden Members. The following letter was read : Adirondack Mts ., Oct . 26th, 1891. Dear Sir : It is with great regret that I hereby offer my resignation as Secretary and Librarian of the Boston Society of Natural His- tory, as my health obliges me to spend the winter away from the city. Yours truly, [Signed] Samuel Dexter, To President Bost. Sue. Nat. Hist. $ec. and Libr. 1891.] 317 [Davis. On motion of Professor Hyatt it was voted that in accepting the resignation of Mr. Dexter the Society express its regret at the necessity for his action and the hope that his health may soon be restored. November 18, 1891. President G. L. Goodale in the chair. Fifty-nine persons present. Dr. George Baur gave an account of his visit to the Galapagos Islands. Chatham, the most eastern of the islands, was reached June 9th, and during the following months all the islands south of the equator, with the exception of Narborough, were visited. Large collections were made. The collections and observations seem to prove the continental origin of the islands. The harmo- nious distribution of the animals proves that these volcanic islands are but the tops of volcanic mountains of a greater area of land which has sunk below the level of the ocean. All the islands were formerly connected, forming a single large island ; through sub- sidence the single island was divided into several islands. The conditions on the various islands being different, each island pro- duced its peculiar races. It is highly probable that a large continent formerly spread out where to-day we find the Pacific ocean. Another result anticipated by Dr. Baur, when his collections shall have been fully worked up, is that the change of the species can be followed stage by stage on the different islands. Variation goes on in definite lines determined by the environ- ment ; the surroundings are the most important factors of varia- tion, natural selection plays a secondary part. Prof. W. M. Davis said that he could not accept Dr. Baur’s conclusion that because the islands were once united to one another they were also united to the mainland ; the probability of the great oceanic and continental changes seems even more doubtful. The minimum depth between the several islands measures the amount of emergence by means of which they will be brought into a single large volcanic island. This is much less than the Davis.] 318 f Nov. 18. emergence required to unite them with the mainland. Is it not, moreover, possible that part of the present depth between the islands is due either to volcanic action, allowing subsidence, or to erosion among the islands by the active marine currents ? The following paper was read : THE CATSKILL DELTA IN THE POST-GLACIAL HUD- SON ESTUARY. BY WILLIAM MORRIS DAVIS. 1. Introductory sketch of the history of the Hudson valley lowland : its Tertiary excavation in an elevated peneplain of Jur- assic-Cretaceous denudation ; the post-Tertiary trench cut in the Tertiary valley-lowland ; glacial action ; submergence of the trench into estuarine conditions and deposition of the Champlain clays ; subsequent elevation and partial trenching of the clays ; slight depression of the trench in the clays, letting the tide reach Troy, 150 miles from New York. 2. Merrill’s account of the deltas of lateral streams in the Hudson-Champlain estuary. 3. The delta of the Catskill in the Hudson-Champlain estuary. The Cobble-field near Cairo ; the smaller delta of the Potuck ; the extension of the sands over the clays about Leeds. 4. The terracing of the sands and clays. Variation in the width of the present flood-plain ; control of its level by the Cor- niferous ledge at Leeds. Preglacial course of the Catskill. 5. Review. 1. Introductory Sketch of the History of the Hudson Valley. An examination of a general section across the Hudson valley in the neighborhood of the Catskill mountains discloses traces, more or less distinct, of several stages in its history. It is not a constructional valley, like the so-called valley of California, a great trough between lateral upheavals ; the Hudson valley is a true valley of denudation. The general valley lowland, CD, fig. 1, some twenty or thirty miles broad, diversified by subordinate ridges and stream courses, lies at a general elevation of 150 to 400 feet above sea-level; it is excavated in an ancient upland, AB, whose altitude is indicated by the high levels of its remnants in the Highlands of the Hudson, and in the rolling surfaces of moderate relief high up among the Catskill mountains. Before the valley lowland was excavated, I think that these remnants 319 [Davis must have been united in the continuous surface of a broad plateau, at a height of about 1500 feet in the Highlands, and rising gently northward to 2000 or 2500 in the Catskills ; and 1 believe that this ancient broad plateau was produced by the eleva- tion, with slight southward tilting, of a rolling lowland, a surface of deep denudation during Jurassic and Cretaceous time ; but the original mass on which the forces of denudation worked to wear out this ancient lowland is lost in the distant past. The ancient lowland once being uplifted, probably about the close of Cretace- ous or the opening of Tertiary time, the excavation of the present valley lowland began ; being cut deep in the north, where the old lowland was raised high, and shallower in the south, where the elevation was less ; and being worn wide open where the rocks are weak, as above Newburgh, but still remaining narrow where the rocks are resistant, as in the gorge of the Highlands.1 If this view is correct, the present Hudson valley must be essentially of Tertiary excavation. When sitting on the front cliffs of the Catskill mountains, A, fig. 1, and looking across the beautiful lowland to the eastern remnants of the old plateau in the mountains of western Connecticut and Massachusetts, B, w E one must certainly at first doubt the correctness of assigning so recent a date for the beginning of so great a work ; and in this feeling of general incredulity, I have had my share; but general incredulity should not be allowed to guide the judgment against legitimate geological arguments, such as have been urged else- where, and which seem to lead fairly to the conclusion here stated regarding the age of the valley. Moreover, if our measure of Tertiary time is taken from the west, where this late division of the geological scale is well represented, and not from our Atlantic slope, where Tertiary deposits are comparatively insignificant, it becomes less difficult to admit that Tertiary time may have wit- nessed large changes in our Atlantic slope topography. 1 See The geological dates of origin of certain topographic forms on the Atlantic slope of the United States. Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., ii, 1891, 570. Davis.] 320 [Nov. 18, Within the lowland valley of the Hudson, the river has cut a trench, T, a mile or more wide, and of unknown depth below pres- ent tide- water. The side streams have followed their leader to the best of their ability, but their depth of cutting is naturally less than that reached by the large river. The trenches are for the most part of later date than the origin of the valley lowland in which they are sunk ; they are therefore of late Tertiary or of post-Tertiary bo* ginning. The Hudson valley should then be regarded as a valley lowland, excavated during Tertiary time, roughly speaking, in an uplifted lowland of Jurassic-Cretaceous denudation, and some- what dissected by river and stream trenches of moderate depth and of post-Tertiary date. The river and stream trenches, as well as the general valley lowland and the enclosing remnants of the ancient plateau are all glaciated. Some of the depth of the trenches should be ascribed to glacial erosion, especially when the trend is to the southward, as is the case with the trench worn on the monoclinal outcrop, M, of the weak Marcellus shales, west of the Hudson, between the bluffs of the hard Hamilton sandstones, Hm, and the hills formed on the anticlines of the firm Helderberg limestones, Hg. The general absence of till except in relatively thin veneers on the hill slopes, is clearly indicative of an ability on the part of the great Hudson ice-current to drag away the detritus that it brought from further north and to gather more waste from the ledges of the lowland down which it here flowed. Over many of the west- ern states, the preglacial rock topography is lost in the shroud of glacial drift which now determines the form of the surface ; in New England, alternation of rocky ledges and accumulations of drift — sometimes forming drumlins — is the rule ; but in the mid- dle Hudson valley, the drift is so scanty that the features of the surface are nearly as closely dependent on the rock structure as in the non-glaciated states. It is for this reason that the “Little Mountains”, as I have called them, formed by the erosion of the corrugated limestones and shales of the Helderberg series, Hg, west of Catskill, have been for several years past selected as one of the stopping places for a week’s work by the Harvard Summer School of Geology1. The Hudson valley indeed appears to have l See The Little Mountains east of the Catskills. Appalachia, iii, 1882, 20-83. — Th e folded Helderberg limestones east of the Catskills. Bull. Museum Comp. Zoology, Geol. Series, i, 1883, 311-329. x89i.j 321 [Davis. been a run- way of a great ice-current, constricted between the highlands on the east and west ; and naturally gaining increased power of erosion and transportation with its increased velocity. Yet, although more destructive than usual, it would not be safe to infer that the detail of topographic form over the valley low- land is of glacial origin ; the occurrence of well opened transverse notches and water-gaps in the longitudinal ridges indicates that a large share of preglacial form is preserved to us. Aqueo-glacial gravels are as inconspicuous as deposits of till on the rolling lowland west of Catskill ; but they are seen in the Catskill trench, by the village, under the clays described in the next paragraph. One of the gravel beds, excavated for road making, in the bottom of a clay pit on the west side of Catskill creek just south of the iron drawbridge, shows a distinct normal faulting of its beds near its sloping margin ; and this faulting ap- pears to have taken place before the present cover of clays was laid over the gravels. This suggests a relationship of the gravels to eskers, in which faulting is common ; it being regarded there as the result of the withdrawal of the enclosing walls of ice, between which the gravels were laid down. The gravels in the pit here mentioned do not rise more than forty or fifty feet above tide- water. The blue clays, shaded with horizontal lines in figs. 1 and 2, weathered yellowish near the surface and overlain by a thin de- posit of fine sand, occupy the river and stream trenches to a height of 130 to 150 or even 180 feet over tide-water ; the greater height being towards their lateral margins away from the deep Hudson trench. These belong to the immediately post-glacial or Cham- plain period, as named by Dana. Their sandy surface forms broad even fields, nearly always cleared and cultivated, while the isolated ridges of Hudson river sandstones that rise to a little higher level are commonly left wooded. The clay flats maybe followed up the trenches of the larger streams, such as the Catskill and Ivaaterskill ; and in the longitudinal Marcellus valley, above mentioned, they are extensively developed ; indeed, it is only here and there that the weak Marcellus shales are now seen be- neath the clays. The clays are well bedded, very fine and tough, without fossils as far as my search has extended ; but I believe it is in similar clays that the bones of cetaceans have been found imbedded farther north. They are extensively worked near the 21 MARCH, 1892. PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. Davis.] 322 [Nov. lS, river for brick -making. The bricks from these clays, the flag stones from the Hudson river series and the winter ice-crop from the river itself constitute the chief geological products of this great water way. The Champlain clays are well known as the product of a late glacial or post-glacial submergence of the valley, allowing a long estuary to connect the Hudson, the basin of Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, leaving New England and the Provinces cut off as an island. The deposition of the clays directly on glaciated rock surfaces may be seen at various points ; for example just north of the bridge over the Kaaterskill at Belfast Mills, a mile west of Catskill ; and on the gravels in the pits in Catskill, above mentioned. Their fine texture and even bedding indicate comparatively deep and quiet water ; and the sands lying on their surface should probably be interpreted as a deposit made as the land was rising from its depressed position.1 Before the recent elevation of the land, by which the further accumulation of es- tuary clays was stopped, the clays formed a covering of even surface, F, fig. 2, but of variable depth in the Hudson trench and its deeper lateral branches ; they were essentially bottom de- w c Fig. 2. posits, not littoral ; and taken alone they would give no clear indi- cation of the amount of depression of the land during their formation. This amount must be determined by the associated littoral deposits, of which more below. Since the recent eleva- tion, the even surface of the clays has been greatly cut away by the Hudson and to a considerable extent by its tributaries. All stages of valley growth can here be traced ; and of these none' are more interesting than those in which the streams have unwit- tingly sunk their channels on buried rocky ledges, thus producing water-falls by superimposition ; as is the case with the Kaaterskill, at Belfast Mills, above mentioned ; the Esopus at Saugerties ; the l Merrill interprets these sands as indicating a difference in the materials carried into the estuary by the lateral streams (Amer. Journ. Science, xli, 1891, 463), and sug- gests that the absence of sands while the clays were forming might be explained by so great a submergence that the streams then had little surface drainage, and hence little volume and carrying power. rSfjr.J 323 [Da vis. Fishkill at Matteawan ; and elsewhere. All these falls are em- ployed for water-power, and a number of them have determined the sites of villages. The depth of the Hudson channel, G, in the clays, allowing tidal oscillations up to Troy, 150 miles from New York, and the same estuary-like features at the mouths of many of the lateral streams, seem to indicate a slight and recent depression of the land since the clays were cut by the streams; and this is a change of great value in the development of the Empire State, from the increase of navigable waters thus gained. The Hudson is not a large river, if measured by the area of its basin or by the amount of water that it discharges ; but as a result of the slight depression that its basin has lately suffered, its course below Albany has been transformed from a river of moderate size into a navigable tidal estuary, H, fig. 2, somewhat shallow and more or less encumbered now with islands and bars in its northern part, but deep and broad further south, except where locally narrowed in the passage through the hard rocks of the Highlands. The very recent date of this dejn-ession is inferred from the small delta-growth at tide-level in the tributary streams. It should not be imagined that the earlier stages of the history of the Hudson were free from the smaller oscillations here mentioned as characterizing the last chapter in its life ; small oscillations pre- sumably occurred at all times as frequently as recently, but the records of the more ancient of these trifling changes are merged into average results. The Jurassic- Cretaceous denudation of the ancient lowland, now a dissected highland, must not be regarded as accomplished while the land stood absolutely still ; but the oscil- lations of level during this great denudation were averaged into a general baselevel, AB, fig. 1, down towards which the antece- dent land mass was eroded. So with the valley lowland ; its roll- ing surface, so finely displayed in bird’s-eye view from the cliffs of the Catskill mountain front, presumably represents the aver- age of many oscillations during Tertiary time, none of great value. For all we can say, the trenches below its general surface were begun in some of the higher oscillations of that series, and com- pleted to their present form in the post-Tertiary cycle. They may have several times been filled with clays like those they now contain, and as often cleaned out again; for it is manifest that such episodes are short-lived. Davis.] 324 [Nov. 18, 2. This over-long introduction has been written out in order to place before the reader a general history of the valley that contains the deposits made by the Catskill stream when its post- Tertiary trench was estuaried ; in order that the special study of the deposits here recorded may be viewed in their relations to the earlier stages of the history of the great valley. The post-glacial submergence, during which the clays were deposited, has been referred to as of sufficient amount to allow beds, that are now raised 150 or more feet above tide-level, to have been laid down as bottom deposits in relatively still water. The even upper surface of the clays cannot itself give close indi- cation of the amount of depression during their deposition ; this must be measured by means of the position of correlated littoral deposits, such as the deltas of inflowing streams. There is little mention of these deltas in our geological litera- ture. In the Geology of the First District of New York (1843), Mather said : — “The larger sand and gravel deposits, as the supe- rior members of the quaternary [the Champlain clays of the Hudson], have been deposited at the confluence of great valleys” (p. 148) . He mentioned the great plains of sand about Saratoga, where the Hudson river enters the great Lake Champlain-Hudson valley from the west ; the vast plain with dunes between Schenec- tady and Albany, where the Mohawk enters ; and others of less size ; but he did not regard them as deltas. The recent account of these deposits by F. J. H. Merrill1 gives more definite information as to the amount of post-glacial submergence. It is indeed in good part from the incentive of this article that I made the observations on the Catskill here recorded, during the visit of the Harvard Summer School of Geology at Catskill, last July. Mr. Merrill states that “the post- glacial deposits of the Hudson River valley .... are of two gen- eral types : estuary formations of stratified clay and fine sand depos- ited in still water, and cross bedded delta deposits of coarser material. . . . Their materials were apparently brought into the estuary by tributary streams which dropped the coarser particles near their mouths, while the finer rock flour was carried on in a state of suspension, and was finally precipitated to form beds of 1 On the Post-Glacial history of the'Hudson River valley. Amer. Journ. Science, Xli, 1891, 460-466. 325 [Davis . 1891.] clay. . . . North of New York City the altitudes of the terraces have been determined at a few points as follows : Mouth of Croton River, 100 feet ; Peekskill, 120 feet ; West Point, 180 feet ; Fish- kill, 210 feet ; Schenectady, 340 feet.” The terraces here men- tioned seem to be regarded as approximately indicating the level of the water in which they were formed ; their height at New York City being 75 to 80 feet, and increasing northward. 3. Catskill lies about half way between Fishkill and Schenec- tady, and therefore should indicate a depression of an amount intermediate between the figures given by Merrill for these two points. According to the best determinations that I could make by aneroid on two visits, the Catskill delta front stands at a height of 280 feet above sea-level. Those who wish to examine this interesting deposit and the fine terraces subsequently cut in it by the stream, should take the narrow gauge railroad from Catskill village to Cairo ; a mile walk north to the iron bridge over the Catskill brings one to the face of a great “ cobble field,” as it is well named, a remnant of the old delta ; following down on the left bank of the stream by the road to Leeds as far as the foot-bridge back of Salisbury Manor, S, fig. 3, and there crossing to the right bank and going on to Gillig’s flag station, G, fig. 3, near Leeds, the best remnants of the delta and the trench deposits may be examined in an easy day’s walk ; reaching the. flag station in time to return by train to Catskill in the early evening. The accompanying sketch map is constructed by tracings of a county atlas, with hurried notes in the field. The sketchy contours indicate the slopes of the hills of Hamilton sandstones, enclosing the Catskill trench ; the cobble and pebble fields are dotted, the clay flats in the Marcellus valley near Leeds are marked with broken lines ; the Helderberg rocks at Leeds are shaded with close lines ; and the present flood plains are left blank. The altitudes in the text are determined by aneroid, and need revision. In the following account of the stream deposits, and their present terraced form, I shall first describe the remnants of the valley filling, and infer from these the conditions that existed at the close of the estuaried stage in the history of the region ; after this, the present form of the valley will be considered, and the changes from the preceding to the present stage determined. Davis.] 326 [Nov. i8, The great cob- ble-field, a mile north of Cairo (see figure 3) lies near the junction of two lateral tributaries, the Shinglekill and the Y ondebocker1 with the Catskill. Its elevation above tide- water is 280 or 290 feet. I examined only its south- eastern border, where the num- ber of large water- worn stones strewn over the field was truly surprising ; they are of all sizes up to 15 or 18 in- ches in diameter ; mostly some- what flattened, but always well rounded; sand- stones for the greater part, but o c casionally limestones and c r y s tallin e s. The field stretch- ed from side to side of the val- ley, except where cut by the streams Fig. 3 1 Also called “Johndebackus ” by the farmers: the spelling in the text was fur* pished by my cordial host, Mr. Walters, of Cairo, 1891. J 327 [Davis. and back to the west for half a mile, when its further extension was hidden by woodland. There can be no question of the fluviatile origin of this field ; and as stones of similar size and form are now found in the bed of the Catskill, it seems warrant- able to regard this great spread of cobbles as the work of the Catskill at the time when the clays were forming in the Hudson trench. If so, the surface of the cobble-field should slant gently down stream, and terminate in a steeper descent, the delta margin of the stream in the estuary. Moreover, the under strata of the cobble-field should be finer ; at a depth of ten or twenty feet there should be sand with few pebbles, and below that there might even be beds of clay, these being formed early in the estuary stage of the valley, before the stream had built its delta so far eastward into the quiet waters. Inquiry was made of the farmers near by as to the materials under the cobble-field, but none of them knew of any cuts or wells by which the deeper beds would be revealed. The extension of the cobble-field up stream was not examined for lack of time ; but if the interpreta- tion here made is correct it should be found continuing at a gentle angle of ascent, the angle of the profile of equilibrium of the ancient Catskill, when it was well supplied with sand, peb- bles, and stones from the recently glaciated slopes of its basin ; and as it is likely that this angle is smaller than the slope of the preglacial stream-bed, here deeply buried, the upper end of the cobble-field should be found where these two sloping lines inter- sect. I hope to extend the study of the valley further up stream, another season, to determine if this view is correct ; but as it Is an essential part of the explanation given, it is here stated, though at present only hypothetical. About a mile and a half down the road on the left side of the Catskill, there is a high level bench of coarse cobbles lying against the enclosing slope of the valley. Its height is about 280 feet. Its surface appeared to slope gently towards the hill-side of Hamilton strata. This bench is very narrow at its western or up-stream end, and widens to a third of a mile further on, where it is cut across by a side stream from the Hamilton hills. Its highest bench descends by terrace slopes to several successive terrace steps at lower levels, down to about 220 feet above tide. The view across the valley to the south is obstructed by trees on the outer terrace bank ; but as far as the southern Ham- Davis.] 328 [Nov. 18, ilton slopes could be seen, they possessed no distinct bench lines ; - and I infer that any remnants of the old delta on that side of the valley are small and inconspicuous. The road soon descends from the remnant bench just men- tioned and for half a mile skirts the broad flood-plain of the Catskill ; a beautifully smooth expanse of well cultivated fields at a height of about 180 feet. It then rises abruptly to a level of 270 feet, where the surface is again stony and pebbly, but the stones are seldom over six inches in diameter. This flat is cut on the south into successive benches, forming a broad stretch of terraces towards South Cairo ; but the surface of the upper flat itself seems to descend eastward and northeastward towards the valley wall ; this needs further study, but from our brief view of it, I am inclined to regard it as standing near the front of the i main delta of the Catskill. At any rate, there is no other well marked remnant at so great a height as this until reaching the mouth of the Potuck valley, a stream of moderate size coming from the north where its head lies in Albany county, above east Greenville, about fifteen miles away. Here a flat field of small water- worn pebbles lies at a height of 280 feet ; its extension up the Potuck valley may be seen for a third of a mile before it is hid in trees ; but its front in the Catskill valley is of more im- portance, for it possesses well-marked, divergent lobes, distinctly of original constructional form, not the product of subsequent erosive action. The lobes are not so smoothly formed as is often • the case with the frontal lobes of the glacial sand plains that I have studied in New England, but they are of definite form enough to convince one that they are not the product of wasting since they were made. The hollows between the lobes lead up to the level of the pebble plain, receiving no back country drainage, and hence not gathering enough water to cut the hollows out. The sketch map shows that in the first remnant 3 of the delta below the great Cairo cobble-field, a small stream comes down from the Hamilton hills on the north and cuts a trench across the terraced sands and gravels ; but elsewhere the margins of the terrace benches are smoothly curved, as they were left by the meandering Catskill ; hence we may be sure that the general wasting of the surface has not been sufficient to form « interlobate hollows not occupied by streams, such as occur on the front of the Potuck delta. They must be of constructional 329 [Davis . 1891.J origin, and as such offer the best means of defining the height of the water surface in which the delta was formed ; for on fol- lowing up the axis of a lobe along its gentle ascent to the plain in which all the lobes unite, the height at which the ascent of the lobe changes to the flat of the plain can be determined within five or ten feet at the most; and this height is manifestly that of the standing water in which the delta was built. The agreement of this with the height of what has been taken to be the front of the Catskill delta, north of South Cairo, is satisfactory ; the Potuck delta front being about 280 feet, and that of the Catskill, 270 feet. The upper surface of the Potuck delta is gravelly, with well- worn pebbles up to three or four inches, but commonly smaller. On asking a farmer about these gravel-fields elsewhere in the valley, he pointed to a remnant of the Potuck valley-filling half a mile farther north, saying the pebbles were coarser there ; he added that the pebbles extended only about a foot and a half below the surface, and beneath that there is a great depth of sand ; his well was sunk fifty feet in pure sand without meeting rock ; and from this he argued that the gravel field (the Potuck delta on which we stood) was “made land”, meaning thereby that it was loose material carried to its present position ; but he had gained no clear idea of the process and conditions under which it was carried . A fine view is gained from the lobes of the delta eastward over the next broad stretch of flood-plain meadows bordering the Cats- kill ; and crossing these for nearly a mile to the southeast, one may pass the stream by a foot-bridge in the rear of the old Salis- bury Manor, a large stone house built a hundred and fifty years ago. Here some of the harder gray layers of the Hamilton sandstone cross the stream ; they may be traced southward, ris- ing obliquely eastward up the valley-side until they form one of the stronger ledges in the front of the Hamilton bluffs, there known as Yedder’s Hill. Some thirty feet of these sandstones may be seen in the bank of the stream ; their strike is close to the meridian, with a dip of ten degrees to the west; the bedding is uneven, with conchoidal fracture ; two of the beds, four or five feet thick, are extremely irregular, like tumultuous flows of muddy sands ; the upper of these is overlain by three or four inches of conglomerate, writh flinty pebbles of oval form, up to Davis. | 330 [Nov 18, three inches in diameter, black, gray, or white ; and occasionally small Spirifers with long wings lie among the pebbles ; these be- ing the only fossils seen in the ledges. The Hamilton sandstones elsewhere seen along the valley walls are barren, often cross- bedded, with shaly beds generally of reddish color. Their dip decreases to the west, and near Cairo the beds lie almost hori- zontal. Passing from the foot-bridge southward, one soon rises to the level of a stretch of flat fields, ‘220 feet above tide, all pebbly on the surface : but these small pebbles are unlike the coarse cob- ble-stones on the delta flats above Cairo. The pebble-fields may be traced to their margin against the valley walls on the south, as at the toll-gate, T, fig. 3, a mile west of Leeds, and nothing like a river deposit is to be found above them ; I therefore sup- pose that they mark the highest level of the valley deposits at this point ; and that their pebbles correspond to the sands that lie on the estuary clays, marking a time of rising land and shallow- ing waters. The pebbles rapidly become finer and the surface of the flats descends on going down stream, and when the beautiful Marcellus valley1 is reached (M, fig. 1), between the Hamilton bluffs and the Helderberg limestone ridges, the level of the sand- covered clay fiats is only about 180 feet. Near the Hudson, the clay fields are thirty to fifty feet lower. The excavations made by the Catskill in terracing its old valley-filling are so extensive near Leeds that the pebble-flats by Salisbury Manor cannot be traced continuously to the clay-fiats of the Marcellus valley ; but to the eye, one seems to descend into the other. 4. Although the valley-filling is now deeply terraced, one can- not doubt that when the land rose and put a stop to the estuary stage in the history of the Hudson valley, the Catskill trench was filled from side to side with sands and pebbles up to the height of the cobble- and pebble-fields that now remain in frag- ments on its enclosing slopes. Estimating the distance from Cairo to the Marcellus valley at five miles, the breadth of the valley at the level of the pebble* and cobble-fields at three-fourths of a mile on the average, and the depth of the filling at the moderate measure of 150 feet, it appears that the amount of 1 There is no local name for this well-marked topographic feature, nor for the notched range of Hamilton bluffs next west of it : I have therefore called them after the rocks by which they are determined. i89i.j 331 [Davis. material washed into the trench of the Catskill between its evacuation by the ice and the elevation of the land was at least one tenth of a cubic mile — a surprisingly large measure. The terracing since the elevation of the region has excavated more than half of this amount, over a twentieth of a cubic mile of sand and gravel. To be sure, this excavation has been wrought in unconsolidated materials, but it is of surprising quantity in any case ; and when it is remembered that this double work of filling and cutting away has been done in the brief time since the ice retreated, during which our kames and eskers and drumlins have lost so little of their constructional forms, the contrast between the rates of surface-wasting and of stream-carrying is clearly brought out. There is another impressive contrast to be seen between the stability of the solid rocky walls of the valley and the rapid growth and wasting of the loose valley-filling. The valley walls have not changed materially since the ice left them ; indeed, they are not now much different from their preglacial form. During the excavation of such a rock-walled valley, there might be many episodes of filling and washing out again, such as that now illustrated by the terraced post-glacial sands and gravels. The most notable feature in the excavation or terracing of the valley-filling is the great variation in the width of the present flood-plain ; and in this, one may see good reason for accepting the conclusion stated above, that the whole valley was at the end of the period of depression filled with sands and clays from side to side as high as the present terrace benches. When ter- races on either side of a valley stand at about equal distance apart, the question is sometimes raised whether the intervening space was ever entirely or even for the greater part filled with the terrace deposits ; but in the case of the Catskill, such a ques- tion would hardly arise. The farmer who told us of the deep sands in the Potuck delta mentioned a fact of interest concerning the broad flood-plain meadows of the Catskill : the fine soil of the meadow is under- lain at a depth of five or more feet with coarse water-worn cobbles, such as now occupy the channel of the Catskill. From this, it may be fairly inferred that at one time or another, since the acceptance of the present local baselevel as determined by the falls at Leeds (see below), the stream has swung from side Davis.] 332 [Nov. 18, to side of the flood plain, always leaving a layer of cobbles at the level of its bed, and always building up its flood-plain over the cobbles on the side of the channel from which it was swinging away. The cause of the variation in the width of the flood-plain is not clearly apparent. At Walcott’s Mills, M, fig. 3, the flood- plain practically disappears, although it is half a mile or more in width above and below this point. Here the stream has cut through the sands and a little into the bed-rock, which rises slightly above the flood-plain level at this locality, and for that reason cannot easily swing about laterally. But if this be the control of the narrow space here opened it may be concluded that the opening of the flood-plain elsewhere was for the most part accomplished after the stream had cut down to the ledges that hold it at Walcott’s Mills ; and hence that the change of level of the land from its former depressed to its present ele- vated position was brought about in a small share of the time that has elapsed since the period of depression was ended. Otherwise, a wider excavation should appear in the sands at Walcott’s Mills. But the narrow flood-plain near South Cairo does not appear to be controlled by ledges ; at least none were visible as I drove up the valley ; nor at Salisbury Manor is the river held in a fixed course by the ledge, although the sandstone beds then encountered do prevent its easy meandering further south than its present course. The control of the width of the flood-plain does not seem to be entirely determined by ledges on which the channels have been superimposed ; and I have there- fore ventured on another supposition, which is here offered tentatively. At Leeds, shown at the eastern margin of the map, the Catskill crosses the Marcellus valley and escapes from it by a gap in the Corniferous limestones on the east : it is these hard lime- stones, here encountered by the stream for a distance of several hundred feet, that constitute the effective- local baselevel with reference to which the flood-plain has been formed. At this point, where the stream cuts the hard limestones, it can swing laterally only at a very slow rate : it is practically held in a fixed position, compared with the ease with which it meanders about in the valley-filling further up stream. The meanders, however, are not altogether at random ; it is well known that far a stream. 1891.] 333 [Davis. of certain volume and slope, the form of its curves is tolerably well defined ; the radius of curvature seeming to depend chiefly on the volume of the stream, and the arc of the curve increasing as the slope of the stream decreases. May it therefore not be possible that as the stream is held in a fixed position at Leeds, its lateral oscillations above this point have a maximum value at certain distances up stream, and a minimum value, or node of no oscillation, at other distances. The fact that the several nodes, where the upper terrace plain is broad and the flood-plain is narrow, occur at tolerably regular distances lends some color to this possibility. There is a trifling but interesting example of an encroachment upon a small stream by the lateral swinging of the Catskill half a mile south of Leeds. The clay-plain, with its thin sandy sur- face layer, is here beautifully cut out in a concave curve, the manifest work of the Catskill, when its meandering course lay further south than now. Such an excavation of the clay-plain was the result of gradual cutting on the convex side of the stream. Most of the curve is margined by the clay-plain at its full normal height ; but at one point there is a gap, and on pass- ing south through this, it is found to lead into a small stream course, independent of the Catskill at this point, but joining it a mile to the southeast. It is clear enough on the ground that this little side branch once had a greater length than now, and that it then headed up on the normal level of the clay-plain, just as its many fellows still do ; but that its original length has been decreased by the encroachments of the meandering Catskill. The natural dam formed by the Corniferous limestone at Leeds has been mentioned as the local controlling baselevel for the flood-plain further west. It is clear, however, that the shales of the Marcellus valley beneath the ridge of the Corniferous limestone and the range of Hamilton bluffs, are excavated distinctly below this local baselevel. Part of this excavation may be of glacial origin ; but the depth of the gap by which the Kaaterskill escapes eastward through the Corniferous ridge a few miles further south leads me to believe that part of the excavation was preglacial. The cross valley by which the Kaaterskill, a smaller stream than the Catskill, turns east to join the Catskill before they jointly enter the Hudson is deeper than the notch by which the Catskill escapes at Leeds ; and hence the Kaaterskill has Davis.] 334 [Nov. ig, terraced the clays of the Marcellus valley ranch deeper than they are terraced by the Catskill. The cross valley of the Kaaterskill is evidently not post-glacial ; it is too wide for a valley of so young a date ; and it can hardly be regarded as of glacial excavation, as it extends across both the local rock struc- ture and the trend of glacial motion. It must therefore be chiefly of preglacial origin. As such, it offers a much more likely course for the preglacial cross valley of the Catskill than the present shallow notch at Leeds. But even the Kaaterskill cross valley is not so deep as the rock bottom of the Marcellus valley ; and hence it is highly probable that both of these trans- verse stream courses are of post-glacial, superimposed origin. The preglacial course of these streams east of the Marcellus valley cannot now be certainly defined. The course of the Catskill southeast from Leeds is chiefly upon the rocks for two miles ; but the walls of the valley are not often so nearly vertical as in most post-glacial gorges or chasms ; it is therefore probable that the Catskill here flows along the course of some small preglacial stream, whose head may have been near Leeds ; its divide from the Marcellus valley being naturally placed on the hard rim of Corniferous limestone, over which the Catskill now falls. Had it not been for the compara- tively high level and considerable strength of this rim, the valley filling above Leeds would be much more deeply terraced than it is. 5. Briefly then, the Champlain submergence of the Hudson valley allowed the formation of the cobbly delta near Cairo in the fiorded valley of the Catskill, and the deposition of the Hudson clays in the deeper waters of the main valley. Since emergence from the Champlain depression, the Catskill above Leeds has excavated a flood-plain meadow in its valley-filling; but below Leeds it has been turned from its former course and superimposed on the Corniferous ridge. The height of the old delta of the Catskill is now 280 feet above sea-level ; and the flood-plain near Leeds is a hundred feet lower. The latter would be lower, still if the notch in the Corniferous ridge at Leeds had been deeper. Baron Gerard de Geer, of Stockholm, spoke of his exploration of the fossiliferous marine beds, belonging to the Champlain 1891.] 335 [Hyat. epoch, which extend on the St. Lawrence to the mouth of Lake Ontario, on the Ottawa to a considerable disance above the city of Ottawa, and along the whole length of Lake Champlain. He exhibited a map colored to show the area thus occupied by the sea immediately after the departure of the ice-sheet. On this map a narrow strait of the sea was represented as extending from the ocean at New York northward along the Hudson and Lake Champlain to the broader bay which then stretched far in- land from the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Baron de Geer believed that the Catskill delta was formed at a time when New England and the contiguous portion of Canada were made an island by this strait on the west and the enlarged gulf on the north. Mr. Warren Upham attributed the Catskill delta to deposition 4 in a glacial lake bounded on the north by the barrier of the ice- sheet during its retreat from the basin of Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence valley. The barrier of this lake on the south was thought to have been land beyond the present mouth of the Hudson, which afterward sank beneath the sea level. The subsidence of this coast is still going on ; and the submerged channel of the Hudson has been mapped by the U. S. Coast Survey. The absence of marine fossils from the post-glacial beds of the Hudson River valley was cited as evidence that this valley has not been occupied by the sea, either as an estuary or strait, since the Ice age. December 2, 1891. Vice- President W. H. Niles in the chair. Thirty-two persons present. The death of the Society’s former Secretary and Librarian, Mr. Samuel Dexter, was announced. The following paper was read : REMARKS ON THE PINNIDAE. BY ALPHEUS HYATT. The paper of which the following is an abstract arose from an effort to follow out the phylogeny of the group for the purpose Hyatt*] 336 Dec. 2. of making the shells useful in geologic and paleontologic research. The want of sufficient materials of the younger stages of modern forms and shells of all ages in the Carboniferous is evident, and I hope that my results will prove of such interest to those having collections, that they will be disposed to aid me in further researches. PINISTIDAE. All of this group1 whose interiors have been seen have the an- terior muscle divided into two parts, either by a distinct ridge or by a deflection of the lines of growth in the nacre. Sometimes the median line is very slight but it can generally be seen especially on the posterior border of the impression. The divid- ing line appears to have some connection with the carina until it is found to be present in Atrina as well as in other genera with- out carinae. The nacreous layer is thicker proportionately in the young as compared with the fibrous layer, the latter being excessively thin in the young of some shells. The nacre thins out posteriorly and is replaced finally by the fibrous layer. The fibrous layer alone often occupies more than one half the entire length of the valve. The length of the nacre on the dorsal area is apparently gov- erned largely by the position of the posterior muscle, or perhaps it is merely a correlative character dependent upon the same cause, since the two do not invariably coincide so closely as they do in A. nigra and some other common forms. There are certainly two species in Atrina, ex. A. seminuda , identified as figured by Reeve, and an unnamed form allied to a smooth variety of A. pectinata , and others in Cyrtopinna mentioned below in the description of that genus, in which the nacreous layer of the dorsal area extends considerably beyond the posterior borders of the posterior muscular impressions. In most species of Pinna also there is a slight but distinct extension of the nacre of the dorsal area beyond the posterior limit of the muscle. The length of the nacre on the ventral area is variable, being sometimes longer than 1 The muscular impressions of Aviculopinna are so slight that they cannot be seen on the casts. Those of Sulcatopinna are also very slight but they do not differ, mate- rially at least so far as the posterior ones are concerned, from those of Pinna. 337 [Hyatt. 1891.J that on the dorsal area but the characteristics to be derived from the study of the outlines of the nacre on these two areas can cer- tainly be used to distinguish species in some cases. The internal posterior area occupied by the naked fibrous layer is continuous with a zone on the ventral border reaching to the apex, which is also unsupported by nacreous deposits. In most full- grown shells the fibrous layer is absent from the exterior near the apex, having been worn off by attrition. It is evident that the nepionic stage in all carinated forms is without carinae, since although shells at these very young stages have not been studied, the carinae are less developed at the apex and must have arisen during the later nepionic or early nealogic stages. It is also equally evident that the young were smooth, since the gradual introduction of longitudinal ridges beginning always near the dorsal border may be studied in most species. Jackson lias shown that the young have an extended hinge line indicating the existence of a transient stage similar to Palaeopinna of the Devonian. The appearance of carinae in the shells of this family during the Trias and early Jura shows that Pinna was even then distinct from the acarinate forms. Unfortunately the apex in all speci- mens of the Pinnidae is destroyed by attrition. This is doubt- less due to the habit of living partly buried in the sand. There is therefore no way of proving that the umbones are absolutely terminal as has been generally asserted in all descriptions. The umbones are doubtless more nearly terminal than in Aviculopinna, but it is not safe to go beyond this assertion and even that is an inference from the general outline of the shell and the lines of growth in young shells and has not been proven by direct obser- vation . The hinge occupies the dorsal side and is internal, consisting of the usual elastic cushion of fibrous conchiolin coextensive with and inside of the nacreous layer. Adults of species of Atrina, having, like A. nigra , comparatively short straight hinge lines, may have the power of opening the shell to some extent in adults and old specimens, but the irregularity of this line or its concav- ity in many species shows that it is not used. The mechanism of opening the shell by the elasticity of an internal cushion of conchiolin cannot operate with an irregular hinge line or a con- 22 APRIL, 1892 . PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV, Hyatt.] 338 [Dec. i. cave one. A force applied along the center from an internal elastic cushion would not act upon the ends of a concave hinge line so as to open them out but would tend to carry them back- wards and closer together. The aspect of the hinge line and its straighter character in young shells show that it may be more useful in these, and generally the horny hinge is visible from the exterior until shells are several inches long. After this the valves approximate by growth, the edges fitting closely but not anchyiosing. They may be so close late in the life of the shell that the scales and ridges may appear to be continuous from one valve to the other, but examination shows a decided dorsal fissure. The ventral border of the shell divaricates for the accommoda- tion of the byssus, then approximates for a space beyond this posteriorly, but again opens gaping widely along the entire length of the ends of the valves. It is evident, when the shell is closed as tightly as practicable, that only the incurved parts of the ventral borders touch and that the posterior borders or ends are open and that this aperture is unprotected. Aviculopinna.1 The type is the Avicula pinnaef or mis Geinitz, 2 said to be equivalent to Pivna prisca Munst., a shell with a very elongated form but having a slight anterior wing. This is a true Aviculoid both on account of the anterior wing and also because, as stated by Meek,3 his Aviculopinna americana has the prismatic layer which is characteristic of this group. I have observed this layer in A. per acuta sp. Shum., from Kidder, Mo., and La Salle, 111., and also in A. membranacea sp. De Koninck, Kildare, Ireland. The distribution of the nacreous layer could not be studied satisfactorily. It is not present at the posterior part of one specimen of A. peracuta for at least one half of the entire length, as estimated. In a stouter specimen from Ohio mentioned below it was present near the apex. Ko muscular impressions were observed nor are any figured, so far as I have seen, in this genus. A. americana of the Carboniferous has an extended posterior hinge and is more similar to Pteronites aliiforme Hall of the De- 1 Silliman’s Jour. 2 ser. XXXVII, p. 212. 2 Dyas, p. 77, pi. 14, fig. 2. 3 Final Rept. U. S. Survey Terr. Nebraska, Hayden, 1872, p. 197. 339 [Hyatt 1S91.J vonian than other species of the same genus. Pteronites leads into Leptodesma and the latter, as pointed out by Jackson, has affinities with both the normal forms of Pinnidae and Aviculidae. The series seems therefore to be Leptodesma, Pteronites, and Aviculopinna, forming a phylum which ends in Aviculopinna* The two last named genera have the umbones nearly terminal and until the young of Atrina and Pinna are better known, they had perhaps better be considered as included in the family of the Pinnidae. As pointed out by Dr. Jackson1 the affinities of the young of an unknown species of the Pinnidae (I think probably a species of Atrina), as indicated by its extended hinge line and general out- line, show that Palaeopinna was probably the ancestral form or proximate radical. We differ in that I do not consider Aviculo- pinna as descended from Palaeopinna, but as coming directly from the more primitive Pteronites, and, therefore, a phylum distinct from that of the normal Pinnidae. In support of this opinion, it may be stated that the nepionic stage of the young of Aviculopinna must have resembled Pteronites in outline, since the lines of growth indicate this very closely in a specimen in the Museum of Comparative Zoology from the Carboniferous at Millersburg, Holmes Co., Ohio. All of the smooth so-called Pinnidae, of the Carboniferous are members of this genus. Besides those mentioned above, A. con similis sp. Walcott and probably Pinna ivaniskiana De Vern,2 A. spatliula McCoy and De Ivon, and A. d’orbigni De Ivon., can also be referred to this genus. Atrina was proposed by J. E. Gray ,3 the type being A. nigra sp. Chemn, equal to P. nigrina Lam., an unmistakable form, and it has not been clear to me why several conchologists have trans- ferred this generic name to the group of Streptopinna, taking S. saccata as the type. 1 Phylogeny of the Pelecypoda, Mem. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., IY, p. 385. 2 Described in Russia and the Ural Mts. as having carinae, but the figure and the lines of growth, if correctly given, show that the hinge line was mistaken for a lateral carina. 3 Syn. Cont. Brit. Mus., 1840, name of genus was printed, but no type was mentioned, figure referred to, or description given. In List of Moll. Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1847 , p. 199, type P. nigra was cited, and also a work in 1844 referred to by date only, which I have not seen. Hyatt.] 340 [Dec. 2, Leaving out all but essential characteristics it can be readily seen that the nacreous layer is entire in all the shells of this genus, and that the posterior muscular impressions are very broad and accom- panied by single, small auxiliary impressions on the branchial sides. It is obvious that the essential characters of Atrina in the adult stage are probably repeated in the transient nepionic period of the carinated Pinnas before the carinae appear. The word “probably” is used because no one has, as far as I know, yet seen or figured a carinated Pinna in this stage, although there are positive indications in several species that such a primitive acari- nated condition was present at the apex. The genus is represented by A. hinrichsiana , a broad larval form with few ridges, and A. inflata sp. Phil., which may be named A. phillipsi , in the Carboniferous. A. prisca sp. Goldf. occurs in the Trias. A. trigonata Mart., cancellata Morris and Lycett, crumenila sp. Dumort., granulata and ampla sp. Sow., are found in the Jura. A. lakesi sp. White, laticostatus Stoliczka, rostiformis sp. Mart., ligeriensis , sulcifera , morcana and neptuni sp. D’Orb., are in the Cretaceous. A. margaritacea sp. Lam., pectinata sp. Woods, affinis sp. Sow., brocchi sp. D’Orb., arcuata sp. Sow., and transversa D’Arch., are in the Tertiary. Among existing species are the following: — A. nigra sp. Chemn., gouldi sp. Han., vexillum sp. Born., in- Jlata and papyracea sp. Chemn., hanleyi , lurida , and subviridis sp. Reeve, serrata , lanceolata , and alta sp. Sow., seminuda sp. Lam., carolinensis , assimilis , and strangei sp. Han., pectinata sp. Linn., zelanica sp. Gray, rigida sp. Dillwyn, deltodes sp. Menke, tuberculosa Sow. and Reeve. A rigida and alta have heavy ridges covered by scales while varieties of nigra and ingens have smooth exteriors. A. seminuda has finely set small scales. Streptopinna was described by Ed. von Martens1 who violated the ordinary customs of conchologists in so far as he not only mentioned the type, P. saccata Linn, and Reeve, but also gave the characteristics of the genus, mentioning that it had an irregular form and that carinae were absent. The collectors of 1 Meers f. d. Ins. Maurit. u. d. Seychellen, p. 318, 1880. 1891.J 341 [Hyatt. the species describe it as being buried upright in coral masses especially Madrepores and as having no byssus.1 This last of course applies only to adults because the young must have had such an organ when they first settled on the surface of the coral. The most remarkable characteristic of Streptopinna is the distribution of the nacreous layer. This layer is limited by the posterior border of the posterior muscular impression and is only slightly broader than the impression and occupies thence anteriorly a rapidly and sometimes abruptly decreasing area until toward the apices it forms only two narrow, diminishing zones on either side of the hinge. The posterior muscular im- pressions do not change their positions materially after the adoles- cent stage remaining near the apices, an inch to one and a half inches distant, even in long shells, and the auxiliary muscular impressions could not be detected. This genus is evidently the product of the curious tendency formerly acquired by some an- cestral species of Atrina, and inherited now by the young of living forms, to take up their residence upon the surface of growing corals. It can be considered, if one wishes, as an ab- errant form of Atrina modified in accord with its peculiar com- mensal habitat. Sulcatopinna is a new genus proposed for those Carbonifer- ous forms having extremely elongated shells, like Aviculopinna, with a straight hinge line, umbones approximately terminal, valves ridged on the dorsal area. In the typical species the valves are bordered dorsally by longitudinal sulcations and raised convex zones on either side between the sulcations and the hinge line.2 The longitudinal ridges appear in the latest nealogic stage and early in the ephebolic (adult stage) ; they are apt to be de- flected ventrally but the ridges on the convex zone or near the hinge continue straight. The hinge line has the peculiar, prominent, smooth crests, found also in Aviculopinna. The type is S . Jlexicostata sp. Me Coy ; the specimens of this species examined were from Kalonga, near Moscow, Russia, and from - 1 Dufour, Obs. Moll, etc., Ann. Sci. Nat., 2 ser, XIV, 1840, p. 215. 2 A similar convexity is found in both Palaeopinna and Pteronites at the posterior borders of the valves but they have no corresponding convex dorsal areas or sulca- tions. Hyatt.] 342 [Dec. 2. Kildare, Ireland. Coll. Mus. Comp. Zool. Cambridge, Mass. The distribution of the nacreous layer could not be studied satisfactorily. In one specimen the posterior border of the pos- terior muscle was apparent and if this indicated the posterior border of this layer it must have been quite short occupying the apex but not longer than in broader forms like S. hartmanni of the Jura. It is very evident that this layer was neither so thick nor so important as in the shells of later times. Besides this species there are also in the Carboniferous some elongated shells without carinae, such as S. sancti-ludovici sp. Worthen, missouriensis sp. Swall., inexpectans sp. Walcott, ludlovi and maxvilliensis sp. Whitf., and jlabelliformis sp. De Kon.1 (pars). Some of these have the convex zone so faintly marked that it is difficult to see it and in others it seems to be absent, but on the other hand the Carboniferous forms are very distinct from the Triassic and Jurassic species in their elongated, almost cylindrical, heavily ridged shells with smooth hinge cresses, and it seems impracticable to divide them between Suica- topinna and Atrina. I have not been able to find any species in the Trias or Jura which can properly be referred to this genus but if one can trust figures alone, Pinna gallieni and quadrangular is sp. D’Orb. (not Goldfuss) of the Cretaceous may possibly belong to this genus. Pinna. There is a gap between Sulcatopinna and the carinated Pinnas which it is difficult to fill. A cast of the protean form usually named Sulcatopinna mis- souriensis occurs in the Coll, of the Mus. of Comp. Zoology, which has been compressed dorso-ventrally and has on each side a decided but narrow carina made by a line of fibrous matter which is buried in the surface of the cast, and one can see that a long double fold is the external expression of this structure. Double median folds occur in another specimen referred to Sul- catopinna from Chester, Illinois, on one side of the cast and a raised double ridge on the other. Both of these are characters acquired late in the life of the shell near the end of the nacreous layer, the muscular impressions being visible on this cast. The 1 Pinna costata , sp. Phill., inaequicostata , Me Coy, and jlexicostata' also of Me Coy are said by De Koninck to be identical with varieties oi S. jlabelliformis, but this seems to me to be giving almost generic significance to the specific characters of S.flabelli- f or mis. 1891.] 343 [Hyatt. distance of the posterior borders of these from the apex, as esti- mated, was about five inches and the whole length of the shell might have been more than twice that amount. These folds were, however, not accompanied by any ingrowth of the outer fibrous layer as in the specimen of S. missouriensis first referred to above. Similar but more pronounced sulci appear in the figure of the elongated form. Pinna quadrangular is sp. Goldf.1 of the Creta- ceous. Pinna decussata Goldf. has a deep median, single, undi- vided sulcus in the cast of each valve. Goldf uss’s figures are so excellent and give the characteristics of thecarinae so accurately, that we can usually rely upon the details. If this be so, this last named species has characteristics in the adult precisely similar to what one ought to find in passage forms between Sulcatopinna and true Pinna. That is to say, its carina is masked by internal layers of nacre and the cast received in each valve an impression of a prolonged, unbroken, undivided median sulcus. This is simi- lar to the short depression occurring in the casts of Pinna, which is received from the internal nacreous keel in each valve but only occupies a limited space before the nacreous layer becomes di- vided. Pinna tetragona sp. Brocchi as figured by Hornes2 has a deep median sulcation running the whole length of a long apical frag- ment, an undivided carina must have been present for a prolonged period in the growth of this shell. More information is required for the establishment of the fact that a modified form of carina may be present in the Carboniferous and I publish these remarks with the hope of being able to obtain suitable materials for further observations. The type of the genus Pinna established by Linnaeus is the well known form P. rudis Linn. The species has ridged shells with median carinae in the valves. The posterior muscular impressions are very narrow and not accompanied by auxiliary impressions. The nacreous layer is entire only near the apex of the shell, be- yond this posteriorly it is split in both valves under the carinae. The split widens at the posterior end forming a dorsal curvature around the muscular impressions and an opposite symmetrical iPetref. Germ., pi. 127. f. 8. 2Moll. d. Wien. Becken, Abh. geol. Reichsanst., IV. p. 347, pi, 51. Hyatt.] 344 [Dec. 2. curve toward the venter. The nacreous layer reaches to the hinge line dorsally but falls short of the ventral border leavjhg a zone of the fibrous layer visible, Avhich is continuous, with the exposed fibrous layer of the posterior region beyoud the nacrejms layer. The nacreous layer masking the carinae internally nfear the apex, is built across them smoothly in the young or with a slight internal keel, but in full grown specimens with thicker nacre there are often short prominent keels formed internally, which terminate at the coecal end of the median split. The two regions on either side of the carina in each valve have been named the ventral area and dorsal area. I have been unable so far to ascertain positively that species of this genus existed in the Carboniferous. P. miliaria and a species allied to Inartmanni sp. Stoppani, are found in the Trias. P. hartmanni Zieten, maxima Eichwald, occur in the Jura. P. abrupta and subcuneata Eichwald, restitua Hoenig, de- pressa Goldf., complanata and intumescens Stol. arata Forbes? breweri Gabb, are from the Cretaceous. P. affinis Goldf. (not Sowerby) and multisulcatus Mayer- Eymer are from the Tertiary. Among existing species there are two groups. The typical Pinnas have thick shells, coarse longitudinal folds, and often very large, prominent, and usually not very thickly set scales. These are as follows, P. rudis Linn., pernula Chetnn., jlabellum Lam., rug osa Sow., fimbriatula Reeve,1 and electrina and zebu - ensis Reeve. The second group has fine longitudinal ridges with small and often closely crowded scales, and the outlines are somewhat differ- ent as a rule from those of the first subdivision. The apex is not so narrow in proportion to the body of the shell, or in other words the body of the shell does not expand quite so rapidly especially on the ventral border. Pinna murieata is stated to be the type of Pennaria, Browne, 1756, but we have not the means of verifying this reference. The name was used by Morch in 1853. 2 1 The scales, large ribs, and form of fimbriatula are similar to those of rudis but the figure does not enable us to say positively that it has carinae. 2 Op. cit., p. 51, Morch refers murieata pectinata Linn., nobilis, inflata, andsac- cata Chemn., seminuda Lam., rigida Dill wyn, to this genus. i8gi.] 345 [Hyatt. Other species of this group are P. d’orbigni , hanleyi , angustana Lam., nobilis , rotundata , aculeata Chemn., squamosa Gmelin.1 P. seynicostata Reeve has a truncated or triangular outline when seen from the side, a peculiarity observable in other species. If P. saccata Chemn., and aequilatera von Martens, are distinct there are at least three species having this truncated form. Cyrtopinna. — This group was established by Morch,2 in 1853, the type being the well-known Pinna incurvata Chem- nitz. The shells are very long and narrow and sometimes have extremely long carinae, the nacreous layer being in such cases also very long in proportion to the whole shell.3 The nacre- ous layer in some species, incurvata , menJcei , vespertina , mutica , rumphii , extends a considerable distance beyond the muscular impressions on the dorsal area and although this sometimes oc- curs in Atrina and to a less extent in some species of Pinna it is evidently more general in Cyrtopinna than in other genera. There are very faint longitudinal ridges on the dorsal area and none or very few on the ventral area close to the carina in some species. The aspect of the shell in these forms is smooth with the exception of the transverse wrinkles which appear more or less at all stages as in all the Pinnidae and are especially promi- nent in the old age. On the other hand the shells may have longitudinal ridges and even be scaled, but there is a marked absence of scales even in geratologous stages, and in most of the species at earlier periods of growth they are invariably absent. These characteristics are in strong contrast with those of Pinna and it is practicable to separate the species of this group from those of that genus. There are two groups of this genus. The species of the first subdivision have very elongated narrow valves, not broadening suddenly at the posterior part although 1 It is not usual to distinguish so many of these forms but in the collection of the Boston Society of Natural History there are shells exhibiting marked differences which appear to represent the species as given and I have provisionally separated them. The nacreous layer is often distinct in its outline and distribution when the exterior of the shell is almost exactly identical with that of another species. 2 Note I. Cat. Conch, quae rel. D’Alphon. d’Aguirra et Gad. Comes de Yoldi, Pt. II, Aceph. p. 51, 1853. He mentions only C. incurvata Chemn. and C. incurva Gm. 3 These nacreous layers in some species of Pinna and Atrina ipay be of equal length compared with the whole shell. Hyatt.] 346 [Dec. 2. sometimes truncated, and have only faint longitudinal ridges without scales. O. papyracea sp. Stoppani occurs in the Trias. . C. cuneata Quenst. (not Morris & Lycett), similis Chap, et Dewal., j&ssa sp. Goldf., semistriata Terq., are in the Jura. Pinna minuta Gabb, of the Cretaceous, may belong in this group but I have failed in finding any species in the Tertiary. The only species in the existing fauna seem to be C. incurvata sp. Chemn., and rumpliii sp. Hanley. Reeve accepted the latter as a distinct form although it seems to be very closely allied to C. incurvata. The shells of the second subdivision have longitudinal ridges, and scales although not usual are sometimes present.1 The ven- tral area often grows equal in length to the dorsal and the valves are broad at the posterior end giving a truncated aspect. In many species, however, the posterior ends of the valves have the same outline as in the first subdivision. C. lanceolata sp. Sow. and Goldf. is found in the Jura.2 C. sublanceolata Eichwald, robinaldina and renauxiana sp. D’Orb., petrina sp. White, and laqueata sp. Conrad occur in the Cretaceous. The existing species are numerous, C. madida , mutica , vesper- tina, attenuata , sanguinolenta, and stutchburi sp. Reeve, menkei , bullata , euglypta , regia , and fumata sp. Hanley, atropurpurea Sowerby, bicolor Chemnitz, and virgata Menke, are all referable to this subdivision of Cjwtopinna. Dr. Charles S. Minot read a paper presenting the results of recent investigations on the nervous system, and their bearing upon the morphology of the brain. He described : first, the development of the ganglia, the origin of the sensory nerve fibres from them, and their relations to the sense organs of the lateral and epibranchial lines ; second, the differentiation of the neuroblasts in the spinal cord and brain and the outgrowth of the efferent fibres; third, the relations of the neuromeres, or segments of the nervous system, to the nerves, especially in the head. 1 The marks of a few faint scales were observed in a specimen of P. menkei from Singapore. Puma radiata and tenuistriata Munst., of the Jura are figured with great ac- curacy by Goldf. but being apparently young shells it is difficult to place them. *89i-3 347 [White. December 16, 1891. President G. L. Goodale in the chair. Seventy persons present. REMARKS OF PRESIDENT GOODALE. Fellow-members of the Society: We have met to commem- orate three officers who have just passed from our sight. These three office-bearers represent three different periods in our his- tory. The first, David Humphreys Storer, was an original mem- ber, and, as one of our founders, had much to do with shaping the development of the organization. The second, Edward Burgess, is identified with the occupancy of this commodious structure in which we have assembled. The third, Samuel Dex- ter, belongs to the most recent period, and was engaged in the new enterprises by which the Society hopes to extend its sphere of usefulness ; but of all of these three, from him who for more than a quarter of a century served the Society in various capaci- ties, and for more than sixty years was one of its members, down to him who was permitted to serve it for only a single meeting, of all these it may be said, that so far as zeal and faithfulness were concerned, nothing was wanting on their part. In com- memorating them we gain new inspiration for our own tasks. The duty which devolves upon the presiding officer this even- ing is simply to present to you those who, by their intimate asso- ciation with our friends who have gone before, seem particularly fitted to give expression to our sense of loss. Following the order of announcement, I first call upon Dr. James C. White, who was so long associated with Dr. Storer both in the Society and in the Harvard Medical School. COMMEMORATIVE SKETCH OF DR. STORER. BY JAMES C. WHITE. I have been asked by our President to prepare a brief account of the life of the late Vice-President of the Society, David Hum- phreys Storer, and to express for you in a few words the feelings which fill the hearts of all present who knew him, What a vaii} attempt ! White.] 348 [Dec. i6, Dr. Storer was born March 26, 1804. He died September 10, 1891. In this long period of eighty-seven years how much may not mind and hand do, which should not be forgotten on such an occasion, even if what was accomplished were limited to one sphere of activity alone. But if the man were eminent in many, as physician, as teacher, as naturalist, how can one do the faintest justice to his memory in such a sketch as this must be? And then there remains the man himself to be spoken of, for these professional relations, as full as their duties filled his life, were not the all of our departed associate. No one among us had more or warmer friends, created and kept by the genial and fer- vent qualities of his striking personality, and this individual es- sence pervaded every action of his life. I will try to tell you something of all these parts of his exist- ence, but my picture must necessarily be but an outline sketch. He was born in Portland, Maine, of excellent ancestry. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1822. He studied medicine with Dr. John C. Warren, and received the degree of M.D. from the medical department of Harvard University in 1825. This was his schooling. PHYSICIAN. He began at once the practice of medicine, and became in time one of the most successful and distinguished physicians of Boston. But few of my hearers can know what this life is, what constant sacrifice of personal ease and pleasure, what stern devotion to the straight and hard path of duty, what bearing of others’ burdens of anxiety and misery. In the special department, in which he became an eminent authority, his work was literally unceasing, for the night which followed the long day was no certain time of rest for him. And yet he was visiting physician to the Massa- chusetts General Hospital for nine of his busiest years, during which he gave two of the freshest hours of his mornings to re- lieve and cheer its inmates. I was his house pupil during one of these years, and I well remember the brighter look that came into the face of every poor sufferer the moment he entered the ward, and what comfort that daily visit left with all. The same personal affection was established to an exceptional degree with his private patients as well. He was to them indeed the beloyed^ physician. i89i.] 349 [White. He took an active interest in medical societies, being a con- stant attendant at the meetings of the Medical Improvement So- ciety, and a frequent contributor of valuable communications. He was always a warm supporter of our National Medical Asso- ciation, and became its President. Through it he formed inti- mate ties of friendship with the leading physicians and natural- ists of America at its meetings held in the widely separated cities of the Union. He continued his labors as a practitioner until his age obliged him to recognize that every one must rest at last. TEACHER. But there is another function of the medical profession besides that of healing the sick, viz., the teaching their successors to do this in turn, for this art cannot be taught by a body of teachers exclusively devoted to such work, as in other professional schools, except in the preliminary subjects of anatomy, physiology, and chemistry. Instruction in all the advanced and practical branches must be given wholly by those who possess the requisite knowl- edge which is to be acquired only by prolonged experience in practice. Thus it is that the most eminent clinical professors are also the most distinguished and busiest practitioners. Dr. Storer was no exception to this rule. He gave his attention to teaching very early. In 1838 he founded, with the co-operation of Drs. Edward Reynolds, Jacob Bigelow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, the so-called Tremont Medical School. At that period Harvard University gave only a four months’ annual course of teaching, the student studying for the rest of the year with some physician. This school gave systematic instruction of superior character throughout the year, and so continued to do until the medical department of the University made its own course con- tinuous. In this school Dr. Storer was an unwearied teacher, and a generation of our best known physicians will recall the personal enthusiasm he inspired in his pupils and the admirable quality of his instruction. In 1854 he was made Professor of Obstetrics and Medical Jurisprudence in Harvard University. He was an excellent lecturer, — clear, positive, practical, and al- ways interesting. He threw his whole fervent individuality into every subject he touched upon, and put it before the class in such a way that it became a live personal matter to each hearer. White.] 350 [Dec. 16, He was kindness itself to every student, always ready to give the desired advice, and to push their interests in every way in his power. As he was Dean of the Faculty for nine years, they had ample opportunity of witnessing the constant outflow of his sym- pathetic nature. To many of us it was permitted to enjoy the warm hospitality of his bright and cheering home. NATURALIST. But it is in the capacity of naturalist that you will be chiefly interested in Dr. Storer’s career. It was this Society that led him to become one, and he was in turn one of her earliest, strongest, and most devoted builders. There can be but few of those present this evening who can have a personal knowledge of what this Society was in what I cherish as its golden age. Let me recall for a moment that room in Mason Street, not so large as to lose its appearance of home- like comfort, the long table in the center covered with its many objects of novel interest, the seats which closely surrounded it on three sides, upon which were usually seated the brothers Rogers, Storer, Gould, Cabot, Jackson, Agassiz, Pickering, Gray, Brewer, Bryant, our departed and revered masters and friends, and among these elders, still with us, Bouve and Sprague. At the head of the table sat the man whom all looked up to and all loved, our President, Jeffries Wyman. Think what must have been the valuable character of the communications carefully prepared by such men, of the intense interest of the discussions carried on by them when incited by debate, for this was the period when the whole fabric of biology was in a state of upheaval, — the Dar- winian epoch. The Society was then what might be called a delightful natural history club. Every object added to its collec- tions had a personal interest to some member; and it was re- ported upon by another. All the work upon the cabinets was done by members without pay. There may have been some neglect, but there was a vast amount of good work done in those days. Among those who were most active in developing the So- ciety from its small beginnings to this successful era was a body of physicians, who were largely the pioneers in the cultiva- tion of natural science in this community. Among them were Drs. Green, Binney, Harris, Ware, Warren, Channing, and 1891.3 351 [White. Shurtleff, besides those whose names are above given. At the first annual meeting, 1831, of the seven officers chosen six were physicians, and of the eight curators four were physicians ; and as late as 1855 of the seven officers chosen six were doctors of medicine, while of the eleven curators seven were of the same profession. Those were the days before schools of natural his- tory existed in this country. Now we have an abundance of professionals in natural science, and doctors find quite enough to study in their own fields of research. In this list of naturalist-physicians the name of Dr. Storer is especially conspicuous. In the first year of its existence he was made Recording Secretary, a position he held for six years, and he was one of the seven members appointed to give lectures. In 1831 he was chosen to make a report on Mollusca for the Geological Survey of the State, and appointed to give two lec- tures on shells to the society. In 1836 he was elected Curator, and the thanks of the Society were presented to him “ for the great zeal, accuracy, and fidelity which he had manifested in its behalf since its establishment.” It was in 1837 that he was appointed to prepare his well-known report to the Legislature upon the Fishes and Reptiles of Massa- chusetts. The following year curators for special departments were elected for the first time, and he was chosen Curator of Reptiles and Fishes. In 1843 Dr. Storer was elected Vice- President, and continued to serve the Society in this capacity for seventeen years, frequently presiding over the meetings in his own genial way. In 1845 he was put on a committee with Drs. Binney, Gould, and C. T. Jackson, to solicit subscriptions for the purpose of erecting a building for the Society. In 1848, under the presi- dency of Dr. John C. Warren, the Society moved into the old medical college in Mason Street, which it had purchased, and “ a vote was passed, thanking Dr. Storer, Dr. Cabot, and their associates, for the earnestness and perseverance shown by them in raising the funds for adapting the new building to the use of the Society.” This same year the annual address was delivered by Dr. Storer, in which, the record states, he urged with great earnestness upon members the duty of making redoubled efforts in the cause of science. The thanks of the Society were voted for u his eloquent and interesting address.” White.] 352 [Dec. 1 6, In 1860 he resigned the office of Vice-President, having then served the Society in various capacities for thirty years. During this long period he had been a constant attendant at its meetings. If you open the first volume of the Proceedings, published in 1841, you will find that his name is the first word on the first page, and so through many succeeding volumes the pages will be found thickly occupied by his interesting and valuable com- munications. Of the scientific character of these contributions, and of his more extensive and elaborate publications I shall have nothing to say, as you are now to hear an opinion of their merits expressed by so competent an authority in the department to which they chiefly relate. He was a generous donor also to the collections of the Society, and to its needs in other ways. In that most interesting history of our Society prepared by our ex-President, Mr. Bouv6, we find this statement: “Dr. D. Humphreys Storer was continually bringing forward specimens for the cabinet. At one time he presented seventy specimens, all carefully put up by him in glass bottles and labelled. To his generosity mainly was due the fact, that out of one hundred and twenty species of Massachusetts fishes then known, ninety were in the collection, and every de- scribed reptile of the State, with one exception.” Later in this volume will be found a most appreciative and extended tribute to the conspicuous services of Dr. Storer, such in fact as only one could write who had also labored without ceasing for the in- terests of the Society for a lifetime. It is to such noble men and zealous workers as these that our Society owes its high position among the scientific bodies of the world. The degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by Bowdoin College in 1876. But how shall I in the few remaining words allowed me, repre- sent to you the salient characteristics of the man himself? He was an enthusiast in every part of his being and in every act of his life. It is not strange, therefore, that he was successful in all his many-sided phases of activity. He was fearless, impul- sive, impatient of every selfish or deceitful purpose or act in others, and outspoken. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that he was not without adversaries. He was genial, generous, and kind to his fellow-men of every degree. I need not repeat, therefore, that all returned his affection in exceptional measure, patients, co-workers in science, pupils, and friends. 1^91-] 353 [Holmes The latter period of his life was passed in retirement and great suffering from a distressing affection. It was my pleasant for^ tune to have passed the summer months of those recent years under the same roof with him. To the last he bore his physical ills most bravely and patiently, to the last his intellect remained strong and clear, and at last surrounded by the children who had devoted their lives to his happiness and most tenderly cared for him he went to his eternal rest. Dr. White then read the following letter from Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes : — I regret that I cannot be present at the meeting in which the life-work of Dr. Storer is to be recalled and his memory to be honored. For many years I was associated with him as Instruc- tor and as Professor, and had ample opportunities of becoming acquainted with his excellences of mind and character. Of a sensitive organization he had much to struggle with in the discharge of his professional duties. I have heard him describe the trials he endured from frequent excruciating headaches while engaged in the most arduous and responsible duties of the pro- fession. Nothing could hold him back from the service of his patients. His industry and capacity gained him a large practice in the branch to Avhich he especially devoted himself, and he became one of the most eminent obstetricians of our city, as well as successful and distinguished in family practice. His reputation in his more special department marked him as the successor of Dr. Walter Channing in the Professorship of Obstetrics and Medical Jurisprudence in the Medical School of Harvard University. This office he held from 1854 to 1868, during which time we were always in the most friendly relations, as we continued to be to the end of his life. Asa Professor he was remarkable beyond any of his colleagues for the personal interest he took in the students. He kept Up a familiar, friendly, paternal, or rather fraternal companionship with many among them, and did more probably than any one of ns to make them love their medical Alma Mater. His mental activity was not exhausted by his professional la- bors. What he did in Natural History, the services he ren- PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. 23 MAY, 1892. Garman*] 354 [Dec. 1 6, dered to this Society, will be done justice to by others far more competent than myself. I am content to speak of him as my faithful and able fellow- worker, my warm-hearted, impulsive friend, with whom it was a privilege to be associated and whom it is a pleasure to remember. The President. Dr. Storcr’s contributions to the Ichthyol- ogy of Massachusetts will now be described to us by Mr. Samuel Garman, Assistant in charge of fishes and reptiles at the Agassiz Museum, the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge. DR. D. H. STORER’S WORK OK THE FISHES. BY SAMUEL GARMAN. Such of Dr. Storer’s papers as have come to my notice, some of the minor articles possibly being overlooked, indicate that his activity as an Ichthyologist extended over a period of about thirty years, beginning about 1836. His list of publications on the fishes is not a long one, and his standing among the workers of his own period, or of later periods in this department of sci- ence, may be determined entirely from the latest, his greatest work, the history of the fishes of Massachusetts. 1 . The earliest paper noted is entitled ‘ 4 An examination of the 4 Catalogue of the marine and fresh- water fishes of Massachu- setts,’ by J. V. C. Smith, M. D.,” in Professor Hitchcock’s 44 Re- port on the geology, mineralogy, etc., of Massachusetts.” This appeared in volume I of the Boston Journal of Natural History, pp. 347-365, pi. VIII, occupying some eighteen pages and bear- ing date of May, 1836. 2. In July, 1839, he published his “Remarks on the natural history of the fishes of Massachusetts, by J. V. C. Smith, M. D.,” in volume XXXVI of Silliman’s American Journal of Science and Arts, pp. 337-349, previously read before this Society at its meeting on March twentieth of the same year. 3. His reports on the Ichthyology and Herpetology of Massa- chusetts make an octavo of 253 pages and three plates. This was issued in connection with the report on the birds, by Mr. Peabody. The Report on the fishes was also published in the I89I.J 355 [Garman. Dootuii Journal of Natural History, Yol. II., pp. 289-558, where it differs very little from the separate. This report well repre- sents the best American work done in Ichthyology up to 1840. 4. In 1841 he published a short “ Supplement to the Ichthy- ological report,” in the Boston Journal of Natural History, Yol. Ill, and in 1844, in the fourth volume of the same journal, his “Additional descriptions of, and observations on, the fishes of Massachusetts.” 5. The year 1846 saw the appearance of “ A synopsis of the fishes of North America,” an extensive work, mainly compilation, published in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and reprinted separately, with different title page, pag- ing, and index, making a quarto volume of about 300 pages. In this work there are evidences that compiling was not so much to the author’s liking as original work, in which he certainly ob- tained a greater degree of success. 6. “The catalogue of the fishes of South Carolina,” in Tuo- mey’s Report on the geology of South Carolina, of 1848, is a list of nominal species occupying several pages, for which dependence was placed on literature rather than on specimens. 7. In the fifth volume of the Memoirs of the American Acad- emy of Arts and Sciences, 1853-55, Dr. Storer put forth the first, second, and third instalments of “ A history of the fishes of Massachusetts.” The fourth part appeared in Yol. YI, 1858, the fifth in Yol. YIII, 1863, and the last in Yol. IX, 1867. The whole was published separately as a handsome quarto of 287 pages and 37 plates. This work contains descriptions and draw ings taken from specimens of more than 130 species, together with a great mass of detail concerning habits, capture, economic value, and the like. To show how the author regarded his own work we may quote the following, the opening paragraphs of the History : — “As one of the Commissioners on the zoology of Massachusetts in the year 1839, I prepared a report on the Ichthyology of the state. From the brief time occupied in its preparation, it was necessarily imperfect, and, not being accompanied by figures, was comparatively useless, except to scientific men. Since the appearance of that communication, much information has been obtained respecting several of the most common and valuable fishes, and quite a number of new species have been ascertained to exist in our waters. Garman'J 356 Dec- 16, “Having carefully redescribed all the species, I trust the fol- lowing paper will present an accurate history of the fishes of our state. Considering this as the completion of my former report, I have kept in view the primary object of the commission, — to ascertain the value of our fauna in an economical point of view, rather than to prepare labored scientific descriptions. ” The estimate placed by the author on his work in the report of 1839 may leave an imperfect idea of its real value. As he was engaged in revising and enlarging it, it was but natural for him to consider it not what it should be. Yet for many years it was the standard work on our fishes, and was only supplanted in New England esteem by the revised, extended, and fully illustrated work completed in 1867. It is through this last our author should be judged, all of the others being preparatory. Comparing the records included in ts pages with the other records of the period, we shall have to rank it with the best. At present details are valued more highly, but to a considerable extent the details are supplied in the excellent drawings from nature, by the pencil of the artist Sonrel, so long and so happily employed by Professor Agassiz. If we place this work on our own fishes by the side of those de- voted to the fishes of other states, Mitchell’s New York, 1818, Rafinesque’s Ohio, 1819-20, DeKay’s New York, 1842, Thomp- son’s Vermont, 1842, Kirtland’s Ohio, 1839-44, Baird’s New Jersey, 1855, Holbrook’s South Carolina, i860, or Holmes’, Maine, 1862, we find but one or two that approach it and none that surpass. The excellence of the descriptions and illustra- tions is generally^admitted. Taking up economic considerations, the work is readily seen to be in advance of any of the others. Being a forerunner of the fishery commissions of either the general government or of the different states, Dr. Storer had to gather his statistical or other information directly from the markets or from the fishermen. One who has not engaged in similar work can hardly realize the magnitude of such an undertaking. In the evidence that accumulates there is apt to be so much that is more positive than accurate that at times it seems an almost hopeless endeavor to discover the truth. The doctor, however, has acquitted himself admirably. He seems to have been espec- ially fortunate in selecting the men on whom he depended most for assistance. Such names as those of Capt. N. E. Atwood i89i.] 357 [Garman of Provincetown and Captain Nathaniel Blanchard of Lynn are often cited as authorities for statement of facts, and I have never yet been able to learn of a single instance in which their testimony has proved other than absolutely trust- worthy. The history of the fishes of Massachusetts is a classic in North American Ichthyology that must serve as a basis for the future histories of the New England fishes. In the quarter of a century that has passed since its publication we have changed our ideals of names, and discoveries of new genera or species, or in the anatomy, have compelled changes in our systems. The nomen- clature of the book has become somewhat antiquated, and the systematic arrangement is not entirely suited to the present time, yet we must sav the same of all the contemporaneous ichthyological literature, and it will not be long before a similar characterization will be equally applicable to the works of to-day. But it matters comparatively little to this book how much the names are changed, how radically the classification is modified, the fishes are described here, the illustrations are here, the facts are here, and these give the work a permanent value. It would be diffi- cult to point out a work of greater accuracy in detail, or one that left less doubt in regard to the identity of the different forms to which attention is directed. Dr. Storer was not led astray by desire for novelty ; he used little of his energy in searching for generalizations ; he appears rather to have given himself up to the careful preparation of a good record of what he could gather during years of collection and study. Most will admit that in this his judgment was good. For, though it sometimes happens that science is benefited and fame is brought to an author by a revolutionary change in classi- fication, or through a brilliant generalization or theory, the result most often is only an evanescent notoriet}T that soon dies away. It is through the patient elaboration of facts and success in recording them that one is most certain of contributing to the advancement of science. In this way Dr. Storer has made a con- tribution to ichthyology of lasting importance. In the amount of information given, with its accuracy and style of presentation, he has established. his claim to present and future gratitude and has proved his right to rank amongst the foremost of American ichthyologists. Scudder.J 358 [Dec. 16, The President. No naturalist was more closely associated with the late Edward Burgess than Dr. Samuel H. Scudder, and to him we very naturally turn for a fitting tribute to his fellow student. THE SERVICES OF EDWARD BURGESS TO NATURAL SCIENCE. BY SAMUEL H. SCUDDER. Our President has asked me to say a few words to-night re- garding the scientific work of the late Mr. Edward Burgess, who served the Society so long as Secretary and Librarian. It may not be known to many of you that his term of service as Secre- tary was double that of any previous incumbent of the office, and if it were only for the importance of his connection with our activities, it would be fitting that we should pause in our scien- tific proceedings to recall his worth. But we have other reason also, since he was endeared to each one of us by his fine qualities of mind and heart, and his own contributions to science were neither very few nor unimportant. It has been, indeed, the good fortune of the Society, from its start until now, nearly always to secure as Secretary, men who have honored the office by what they have themselves contributed to advance science, and in our late friend Edward Burgess we find an excellent illustration of this fact. Before his official connection with the Society he had done little in scientific work that was known. His interest from the start was in the anatomy of insects, and his natural skill in the preparation and delineation of objects was exceptionally good. His first paper was prepared in collaboration with myself, and was induced by the work he was doing for me as a pure labor of love — such labor as he was doing all his life — in the prepara- tion of the abdominal appendages of New England butterflies for a work I had in hand. Not only were all the drawings of these parts (some 173 in number) which are credited to him in my work since published generously made by him, but the dissec- tions and preparations were also his own from specimens furnished by me. While engaged on this work we discovered the curious asymmetry of these organs in the genus Thanaos (Nisoniades) , and we together prepared the paper, illustrated by his drawings, 1891.1 359 [Scudder. in which we described these parts in detail to the Society in 1870. The classification and detailed description of the organs in the different species fell to my share of the work ; the more impor- tant general portion and the illustrations were his. I think it was this generous work of his for me which continued over many years that explains why it was not until eight years later that he published any further anatomical papers, for then begins a series which continued over another eight years. It starts witli a study of the structure of the head and mouth parts of the Psocidae and especially of the book-lice, those minute pallid objects which one can see only when they move and which are fond of the dusty tops of old books in libraries ; they are among the most difficult subjects of anatomical study from their minute size. He paid special attention to the maxilla on account of its strange structure which previous writers had misunder- stood ; there occurs between its basal lobe and the tongue a hol- low forked chitinous rod, about a third of which projects through the lining membrane of the mouth, — a membrane which is elas- tic enough to allow it to move backward and forward, and prob- ably serves as a sort of pick ; this, which Westwood regarded as a process attached to the maxilla, Burgess is more inclined to look on as an independent organ. He also discovered glands confined within the head region and previously overlooked, which lie regards as salivary reservoirs of a very peculiar form. His next essay in this direction was an address to the Cam- bridge Entomological Club as its President, in which he gave a very careful summary of the work that had been done in insect anatomy during the preceding two years (1878 and 1879). Extending, when printed, over seventeen quarto pages and treating of more than sixty different papers, it forms one of the very best succinct accounts of this sort ever published, the pith of each article being given in a very few words, but enough to let the student gain a fair notion of its contents. But the most important and valuable of his papers was that published in our Anniversary Memoirs in 1880, giving a detailed account of the anatomy of one of our commonest insects, the milkweed butterfly, and the abstract of a part of it published a little earlier in the American Naturalist, in which the structure and action of a butterfly’s trunk were carefully explained. The general structure of this organ had long been known, but not in Scudder.J 360 [Dec. 16, the detail which his dissections brought to view, while the ancil- lary organs within the head by which only the precise action of the uncoiled tongue could be explained were first made known by him ; though had his first paper been delayed but a few months, the credit would have to be given to a German investi- gator, whose work was neither so thorough nor so nice. Burgess showed in these papers, and delineated with great skill, a pharyngeal sack at the base of the tongue amply provided with muscular fibers running in such a variety of directions that their united action would greatly diminish the space in the interior ; and furnished likewise with diverging bands of muscles which when brought into play would as greatly and as certainly enlarge the sack. By the alternate action of these sets of muscles and the intermittent opening and closing of the sack a pumping ac- tion would ensue, were there any valve present permitting the flow of the fluids entering through the tongue canal and prevent- ing their return. This he discovered in a triangular muscular- flap or epipharynx at the upper base of the tongue or the anterior extremity of the pharyngeal sack, and the structure of the parts proves so simple that its action is unquestionable. In his own words it is as follows : “The trunk is unrolled and inserted in the nectary of a flower ; at this moment the muscles which sus- pend the oral sack contract, and the mouth cavity is thus ex- tended, creating a vacuum which must be supplied by a flow of honey through the trunk into the mouth. When the mouth is full, the muscular sack contracts, the oral valve closes the aper- ture to the trunk, and the honey is forced backward into the oesophagus. The mouth cavity is then again opened and the same process repeated. In the muscular mouth sack we have thus a pumping organ, of action too simple to be misunder- stood.” In the text and plates accompanying the larger memoir, he gave a more precise and detailed account of both the external and internal anatomy of the insect discussed than had ever been given before of the anatomy of any perfect butterfly, and brought to light a number of interesting points that had been nearly or quite overlooked before, such as the nature of the striae on the scales, the musculature of the tongue and its intimate structure, the cuticular processes of the food reservoir, the backward course and chaigbered enlargement of the aorta within the 1891.] 361 [Scudder. thorax, and the false claspers of the male abdomen, a remarkable series of new observations to have been made upon a single insect. His discovery of the strange course of the aorta in this butterfly led him to pursue the subject further by the dissection of a vari- ety of lepidopterous insects, and to embody his results in a brief illustrated paper in our Proceedings the following year, by which he showed that if we except the peculiar course of the anterior branch [of the aorta] in the hawk-moth, we have [in the Lepi- doptera] a gradual series from the butterflies downward. In the former a distinct horizontal aortal chamber is present; in the higher moths a vertical node replaces the chamber, and this vanishes in the lower moths.” In another paper in our Proceedings for the same year, he described and figured the mouth parts of the water-tiger or larva of Dytiscus, whose means of taking food had before that been so much of a puzzle that the insect had been described as entirely lacking a mouth ; and, indeed, the ordinary aperture does appear to end in a perfectly closed seam, but by transverse sections Burgess was able to show that the upper and lower chitinous plates at this point are closely interlocked so as merely to allow the passage of a thin stream of fluid when its grip is loosened by muscular action of the parts around it, while behind it a muscu- lar pharyngeal sack pumps the fluids into the oesophagus much as in the butterflies ; only here the mandibles serve as the canals to bring the fluid to the mouth cavity, each being pierced by a canal the proximal ends of which lie opposite the mouth cavity when the mandible tips are brought together, as they would be when plunged into the body of a victim. The water-tiger, therefore, “ far from being mouthless as ordinarily assumed, has in fact a very wide mouth, though its lips are closely locked together by a dove-tailed grooved joint, developed for this purpose.” Two other anatomical papers were prepared at the request of the U. S. Entomological Commission upon the grasshopper Ana- brus and the moth Aletia, the latter in conjunction with Dr. Minot. Though full of important details, they furnish nothing so novel and interesting either technically or generally as to make it desirable to dwell upon them here ; it may only be mentioned that they show the care, patience, and skill with which all his anatomical work was done. Scudder.] 362 [Dec. i6, His skill with the microscope in anatomical work was the occasion of his being called into the service of the Cochituate Water Board in 1876 to aid in discovering the origin of the disa- greeable odor in the Boston water supply, which in a brief report he showed could not be, as was suspected, of animal origin. There was, however, another side to his scientific work in which, though he published very little, he is better known to many entomologists. He early took a special interest in the study of Diptera or flies, and began the collection and determi- nation of our native species from all over the country ; and such was the zeal with which he pursued the study that not one of our native entomologists had so good a knowledge of our Dipterous fauna. His aid was asked and, needless to say, freely given in the determination of genera and species, and when he gave up the study with his change of work and his collection went to the National Museum, it was found to contain nearly fourteen thou- sand specimens. He published, however, but a single paper or two, describing a couple of exceptionally interesting form, and calling attention to the discovery of a large European species in America. Descriptions by him of two other species will be found embodied in the report of the then II. S. entomologist, Professor Comstock. Although his naturalist friends now all concede his wisdom in turning his attention to naval architecture, in which he achieved such signal success, it was not without sorrow that they saw him quit the fields in which he had rendered such important service to natural science and gave such promise of continuing the same. Far be it from me to indulge in any laudation of one whose modesty outshone his conspicuous talents and whose shrinking figure would forbid the praise. But I cannot close this too im- perfect sketch of his services to natural science without express- ing in a single word the lasting obligation he has placed on each one of us who knew him here by the example he gave us of a pure, gentle, simple, and upright life, which endeared him to every one and made his death a personal grief to each. List of the Natural History Writings of Edward Burgess. On the habits of Anisomorplia buprestoides. Proc. Bost. soc. nat. hist., Yol. 12, pp. 355-356. 1869. >89* -J 363 [Scudder . On asymmetry in the appendages of hexapod insects especially as illus- trated in the lepidopterous genus Nisoniades [with S. H. Scudder]. Proc. Bost. soc. nat. hist., Yol. 13, pp. 282-306, pi. 1870. Secretary’s Reports to the Boston Society of Natural History. Proc. Bost. soc. nat. hist., Vol. 18, pp. 7-9, 345-347; Yol. 19, pp. 192- 194; Yol. 20, pp. 9-11, 257-260; Yol. 21, pp. 10-12, 186-191; Vol. 22, pp. 14-16, 354-355; Yol. 23, pp. 190-192, 235-237, 372-374; Yol. 24, pp. 11-13. 1875-1888. (The reports for 1872 and 1874 were officially by the Custodian from the statements of the Secretary and will be found in Yol. 15, pp. 172-173; Yol. 17, pp. 9-11. In 1873 the report of the Custodian as well as of the Secretary was given by Mr. Burgess, in Yol. 16, pp. 1-10.) The spiders of the United States. A collection of the arachnological writings of Nicholas Marcellus Hentz, M. D. Edited by Edward Burgess, with notes and descriptions by James H. Emerton 8°. Boston, 1872. (Occas. papers Bost. soc. nat. hist., ii.) pp 14; 172, pi. 21. Review of Sir John Lubbock On the origin and metamorphoses of insects. Bost. med. surg. journ., Yol. 90, pp. 90-91. 1874. Report on a peculiar condition of the water supplied to the City of Bos- ton, 1875-76, by Prof Nichols, Dr. Farlow, and Mr. Burgess. 8°. Boston, 1876. pp. 14. (Rep. Cochit. Water Board, Boston. 1876.) Mr. Burgess’s Report occupies pp. 12-14. On the structure of the head of Atropos. Psyche, Yol. 2, pp. 87-89, 1877. The anatomy of the head and the structure of the maxilla in the Psoci- dae. Proc. Bost. soc. nat. hist., Yol. 19, pp. 291-296, pi. 8. 1878. Two interesting American Diptera. Proc. Bost. soc. nat. hist., Yol. 19, pp. 320-324, pi. 9. 1878. Eristalis tenax Linn, in America. Psyche, Vol. 2, p. 188. (1878.) Descriptions of Oscinis trifolii and O. malvae. Rep. Entom. U. S. Dep’t. agric. for 1879, pp. 201, 202. 1880. Recent studies in insect anatomy. Psyche, Yol. 3, pp. 27-43. 1880. The structure and action of a butterfly’s trunk. Amer. nat., Yol. 14, pp. 313-319, figs. 1880. Contributions to the anatomy of the milk weed butterfly, Danais archip- pus. Anniv. mem. Bost. soc. nat hist., (8th memoir). 4°. pp. 1-16, 2 pi. 1880. On the internal anatomy of Anabrus. 2d Rep. U. S. ent. comm., pp. 175-178, fig. 1880. Note on the aorta in lepidopterous insects Proc. Bost. soc. nat. hist., Yol. 21, pp. 153-156, figs. 1881. The structure of the mouth in the larva of Dytiscus. Proc. Bost. soc. nat. hist., Yol. 21, pp. 223-228, figs. 1881. Luminosity of fire-flies. Science, Yol. 1, p. 150. 1883. Sexual dimorphism in Psocidae and their salivary glands. Science, Yol. 1, p. 231. 1883, Goodale.] 364 fDec. 16, Innervation of the respiratory mechanism in insects. Science, Yol. 1, pp. 316-317. 1883. Natural history of the fig-insects. Science, Yol. 1, pp. 433-434. 1883. Thorax of Diptera and Hymenoptera. Science, Vol. 1, p. 467. 1883. Sucking apparatus in butterflies. Science, Yol. 2, p. 833. 1883. On the anatomy of Aletia [with C. S. Minot]. 4th Rep. U. S. ent. comm., pp. 45-58, pi. 6-11. 1885. Dr. W. F. Whitney said, Mr. President, I desire to voice the feeling which I know we all have in a resolution which I propose for adoption by the Society. Resolved: — That in the death of Edward Burgess, the mem- bers of the Boston Society of Natural History mourn the loss of an associate whose quiet enthusiasm and rare ability won him recognition as a master among men, while his modesty and genial simplicity of character endeared him to all. The records of the Society bear tribute to his years of faithful service ; and in its Contributions are the proofs of his high scientific attainments. Resolved: — That the above be entered in the minutes of this meeting and a copy transmitted to the family in token of the respect and sympathy of the Society. The President. Following a custom which approves itself to all who know the awkwardness of calling for both sides on a vote which has only one side, I shall with your permission declare these resolutions carried. To those who knew Edward Burgess best, it was clear that his study in natural history prepared him for his high achievements in another field of activity. One of our members, Dr. B. Joy Jeffries, has devoted a good deal of thought to these relations and has prepared for our consideration this evening a communi- cation upon them, but inasmuch as this will require for its proper illustration the use of a darkened hall, we shall accede to the author’s request, and defer this paper until a later period in the evening. Dr. Humphreys Storer was one of my teachers, Edward Burgess was at one time a colleague in another department of the univer- sity, and Samuel Dexter, the third of the officers whom we com- memorate this evening, was for a time one of my pupils. You will permit me to say a word at this point in regard to one or two characteristics of the latter which impressed themselves upon 1891.] 365 [Shaler. me while he was my student, and which have served to deepen my sense of the loss which the Society has sustained. Whatever interested young Dexter absorbed all his attention. If a subject succeeded in engaging his attention, he concentrated all his energies in that direction, and he was proof against fatigue. Now, amid the perplexities and in the hard work of the office of the Secretary of our Society this is one of the features of charac- ter imperatively needed. In the elective which Dexter pursued with me, each student is required to present to his fellow-students some account of the work which he is doing, for we hold that no one can know a thing very thoroughly until he has told it in some way or at some time to some one else. Now, it was noticed by all of Dexter’s fellow-students that whenever he presented a matter in reporting upon his own work, he always presented it clearly, but more than this, he always interested his fellow-pupils in what interested him. At this critical period in the history of our Society, when we are endeavoring to enlarge the usefulness of our organization, it seems to me that Dexter possessed just those qualities which we most need in our officers. His contagious enthusiasm would have done much towards enlisting in the cause of the Society the aid which it seeks. I shall now present to you two of his teachers, one who gave him instruction in his college course, and the other under whose instruction lie was to pursue his graduate work. I have the pleasure of presenting to you Professor Shaler. REMARKS OF PROFESSOR N. S. SHALER. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen ; It gives me a very great pleasure to bear my share of tribute to Mr. Dexter. I knew him as a student in college, and I loved him dearly. We were intimately associated during a good part of his college course. I came to know much of his beautiful qualities. He had, in the first place, it seemed to me, in a very conspicuous degree those characteristics which come from a good ancestry. He had a clear, intelligent sense of human relations. The teacher who has taught long and who is sensitive in such matters very quickly feels whether a person brings a sense of what these relations should be, and I always felt with Mr. Dexter a sense of safety and assurance in all that regarded his Minot.] 366 [Dec. 16, conduct. When after a time I came to see more clearly his qualities of mind, I became convinced that he had an element of understanding and faithfulness which would enable him to do difficult deeds, and do them thoroughly well. So convinced was I of this that I deliberately selected him out of a great many to discuss with me a certain work which I had endeavored to ad- vance, but which had advanced so slowly that it was clear the end of my days would come before its accomplishment. It may not have been an important task, but it seemed to me to be so, and in my discussion with him as to the way in which it should be done, I was struck with his capacity for inquiry in a difficult field, his power of going on with a task : the last talk I had with him was to the point that, after he had affirmed his place here and had made his voice heard, he should undertake this work with me. When he passed from us I felt a sense of personal loss, as I had felt it in few cases before, though it has been my fortune in the years of my teaching to lose many of my young friends just at the time when their promise seemed to be at the verge of fulfilment. I gladly, Mr. President, put his record with those of the other men whom we commemorate this evening. I like to see his young life with all its promise set against that of the men who have done much. We were indeed rich a year ago that we could lose three such men, one a man rich in honors and in years; another in the fulness of his strength who was capable of break- ing paths in more than one way, and who broke them well ; and this youth who filled us with happy expectations. It seems to me, Mr. President, that we are still rich. We have the memo- ries of these men to treasure, and among them I shall myself keep as first of the three that of Mr. Dexter because he was nearer to me than the others. The President. I now present to you Professor C. S. Minot of the Harvard Medical School. REMARKS OF PROFESSOR C. S. MINOT.- Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen ; Mr. Samuel Dexter graduated a little more than a year ago from Harvard College, and came to me as a student intending to devote his entire life to .S9..] 367 [Minot. the advancement of pure science, that is, to enter upon a career which involves for its success the attainment of the greatest per. fection of the mind possible. The seriousness of the man showed itself in the fact that he understood the nature of the undertaking upon which he was entering. In his college career he had never been quite satisfied with the opportunities for his de- velopment which he found there ; the interests were too many and too near ; neither did he happen to get upon that exact form of study, that precise department of science, for which he was pe- culiarly adapted. Such a department he found in his studies with me, and the opportunities which he had, he seized eagerly. It led to a great advance in the character and in the mind of the man. His first attempts with me were far from successful, and he was inclined to be discouraged, but he recognized presently that his difficulties were accidental mishaps, not due to any inher- ent deficiency of his, but to those miscarriages which come from a lack of experience. Soon after he began his work, he had a serious talk with me on the subject of his discouragement ; he recognized the full value of perseverance and resolution in a plan of study once definitely laid out and accepted, and I saw then the first marked evidence of the steadfast character of the man. The study of embryology, which he pursued with me, is a most difficult one, since it covers an immense range, taking in not merely the anatomy of the adult, — the whole structure as we see it in gross and the minutest details as we see them under the microscope, — but also a succession of changes so rapid that at no moment are we in the presence of any constant picture, but ever before a shifting development. The embryologist must not only understand the structure of the adult, but also bear in mind the rapid and ever changing succession of alterations, and this not for one species of animals but for many. It was the magnitude and the variety of mental efforts, which had to be made in the study of embryology, which awoke his whole enthusiasm and satisfied him, I think I may say from what he has told me, completely. He was a striking illustration to my mind of the value of offering individuals those opportunities for education, which are suited to their special temperament. I think that is not always done by any means so completely as we teachers might do it, but in his case I think it was at last done fully. He was a perfectly satis, tied student as to his subject. Minot. J 368 [t>ec. t6, There is something more than this constant development and progress. There is one small record of achievement lastingly made. He observed in some of his specimens a most interesting point, as to the relations of the development of muscle to the primitive cavity of the body, a point which in embryology leads us back into speculations of the most interesting and profound character as to the muscles and also as to the affinities of verte- brate with invertebrate animals. He saw the value of this ob- servation, and with great patience and in the face of important difficulties he ascertained the exact nature of the connection which he had observed, and published a short paper in which this valuable observation is recorded. It was characteristic of him, that in the first form in which he presented his paper to me he had not quite dared to commit himself ; he had become so conscious of the difficulties and immensity of the task which he had undertaken in mastering the field of embryology that he hesitated to bind himself to a positive statement in a field where cer- tainty is extremely difficult. I remember telling him, that either he must say a thing is so, after having ascertained the fact, or he must not say anything at all. Two days later he came to me with the paper in the form in which it now stands, an excellent piece of scientific writing in every respect. I mention this because it illustrates another characteristic trait of young Dexter, namely, his readiness to appreciate the value of any advice which was given him, and to understand it and apply it practically. This he showed so constantly with me, that I think I never have had any student who developed more rapidly than he did. There was but one year for him to develop in, but in that time he became to me more than a pupil, and recognizing in the same way in which Professor Shaler and Professor Goodale did, the character of the man, with all it attractive qualities, its rich endowment, I felt that he had be- come more than a mere pupil, that he was a friend of mine. I believe, partly from ray experience with him, that we teachers often get more from our pupils than we realize, and that there is an elevating influence which comes from them to us, through young men of superior character and ability ; and I certainly, Mr. President and ladies and gentlemen, shall treasure it in my heart all my life as a privilege to have been for a year the teacher of Mr. Dexter. I shall value always the recollection 369 [General Meeting1. 1891.] of it and carry with me a regret that qualities and abilities so unusual should not have been spared to us, because they would have helped us, and would have promoted science in ways that we all should have been glad of. I wish, Mr. President, with your permission, to offer the follow- ing simple resolution, simple, because after a life so brief nothing but a simple resolution would be fitting. Whereas, the death of Mr. Samuel Dexter has deprived the Society of a Secretary whose services were of great and increas- ing value, Resolved , That the President and acting Secretary of the Society be requested to express to Mr. Samuel Dexter’s family our profound sympathy with their loss, and our high apprecia- tion of Mr. Dexter ’s rare character and unusual abilities. The President. With your permission this resolution will be entered upon our records as your expression. Before Dr. Jeffries begins his communication, permit me to say that no formal vote for adjournment will be offered this evening, but at the close of the paper, our meeting will stand adjourned. We are now to listen to a communication by Dr. B. Joy Jeffries entitled, “Mr. Burgess’s application of science in naval architect- ure, illustrated by stereopticon views of yachts and the interna- tional races.” Dr. B. Joy Jeffries then described Mr. Burgess’s application of science to naval architecture. He showed stereopticon views of the yachts designed to defend the America’s cup and the results of the International Races. He also showed former celebrated American yachts and proved that through Mr. Burgess’s skill a type of yacht was evolved that was superior to the representa- tives of the English. January 6, 1892. Vice-President W. H. Niles in the chair. Forty-three per- sons present. The Vice-President announced the death of the Treasurer of the Society, Mr. Charles W. Scudder, and spoke of his interest PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. 24 MAY, 1892. Scudder.] 370 [Jan. 20, in the work of the Society. On motion of Professor Hyatt it was voted that the Society express to Mr. Scudder’s family its sincere sympathy for their loss. It was announced that the Council had chosen Mr. E. T. Bouv6 Treasurer pro tempore ; also that Lewis R. Harley, Mrs. Louisa F. Lowery, Elbridge K. Newhall, Miss Marcella I. O’Grady, James F. Porter, and Robert Wain wright had been elected Corporate Members, and William Brewster, Mrs. E. D. Cheney, Charles B. Cory, Arthur F. Estabrook, and James C. Melvin, Garden Members. Mr. Percival Lowell read a paper on Shinto occultism from a scientific standpoint. Professor E. S. Morse described and sketched the form of the ancient bow in various parts of the world. January 20, 1892. Vice-President Samuel Wells in the chair. Thirty-four per- sons present. Professor Charles V. Riley spoke of the life-history and habits of the digger-wasp, Sphecius speciosus , and gave a detailed de- scription of the larva ; be drew attention to a very remarkable and anomalous series of pores which occurs about the center of the cocoon extending nearly around it. Professor Riley also offered a few notes upon caprification and gave a brief sketch of the introduction of the Blastophaga into California and the discovery of a native species in Florida. The following paper was read : THE TERTIARY RHYNCHOPHORA OF NORTH AMERICA. BY SAMUEL H. SCUDDER. [ Published by permission of the Director of the U. S. Geological Survey.] The assortment of the mass of Tertiary insects from our west- ern deposits, upon which I have been engaged for many years, has brought to light an unexpectedly large number of Rhyncho- 371 [Scudder. 1892. J phora, about eight hundred and fifty specimens having passed through my hands ; of these, however, fully a hundred have proved too imperfect for present use or until other specimens in better condition may show what they are. Seven hundred and fiftv-tbree specimens have served as the basis of a Monograph now printing and of the general remarks which here follow. More than half (431) of these specimens come from the single lo- cality of Florissant, Colo., and excepting a single specimen from Fossil, Wyo., and another from Scarboro, Ontario, the others are divided between three localities not widely removed : the crest of the Roan Mountains in western Colorado, the buttes on either side of the lower White River near the Colorado-Utah boundary, and the immediate vicinity of Green River City, Wyoming. One hundred and ninety-three species are determined, divided among ninety-five genera, thirty-six tribes or subfamilies, and six families, by which it will be seen at once that the fauna is a very varied one. It is richer than that of Europe, where there have been described (or merely indicated) only one hundred and fifty species of which nine come from the Pleistocene. Our older Ter- tiary rocks, therefore, are found to have already yielded nearly twenty-eight per cent more forms than the corresponding Euro- pean rocks. Although it is evident to any student of fossil insects that even in Tertiary deposits we possess but a mere fragment of the vast host which must have been entombed in the rocks, it is neverthe- less true that we have already discovered such a variety and abundance of forms as to make it clear that there has been but little important change in the insect fauna of the world since the beginning of the Tertiary epoch. In the earlier Tertiaries we not only possess in profusion representatives of every one of the orders of insects, but every dominating family type which exists today has been recognized in the rocks ; even many of the fami- lies which have but a meager representation today have also been discovered, and though many extinct genera have been recog- nized, no higher groups, with a single exception or two, have been founded upon extinct forms. This is one of the most strik- ing and prominent facts which confronts the student of fossil in- sects. It is the more striking from the delicacy, the tenuity, and minuteness of many of the forms which are here concerned ; and Scudder.J 372 [Jan. 20, the statement can be enforced by the further fact that the para- sitic groups, — those which are entomophagous, — are repre- sented, as well as many of those which in the present time show peculiar modes of life ; thus we have representatives of such mi- croscopic parasitic insects as Myrmar, strepsipterous insects have been discovered, the viviparity of the ancient Aphides has been shown probable, the special sexual forms of ants and white ants were as clearly marked as today, and the triungulin larva of Meloe has been found enclosed in amber, showing that the phe- nomenon of hypermetamorphism had already been developed. The insects of the Tertiary period, therefore, afford no such in- teresting series as may be found in the study of Tertiary Mam- malia, nor as can be found in the study of the insects themselves in paleozoic rocks. Nevertheless there have been pointed out a few interesting features which seem to stand in some measure as exceptions to what has been stated. Thus, in my recent work on our Tertiary insects* I called attention to some remarkable features in the fossil plant-lice of our Tertiaries, especially the great length and slenderness of the stigmatic cell, — a feature which affects the whole topography of the wing, and is found also in the only mesozoic plant-louse known ; but which neverthe- less cannot be regarded as of significant taxonomic importance, since it occurs equally in both the Aphidinae and Schizoneurinae, the two principal subfamilies of that group both today and for- merly. So, too, in treating in the same place of the Pentatomi- dae, I pointed, out that the scutellum was universally shorter in all our Tertiary forms, whether belonging to the subfamily of Cydninae or Pentatominae ; and I may further add the unpub- lished fact that it is a peculiarity of the Tertiary Stapliylinidae of this country that the antennae and legs are measurably shorter than in modern types ; this is most marked in cases where the species, living and extinct, of the same genera are compared. But in neither of these cases, any more than in the Aphidae, can we regard these peculiarities as any ground for separating the fossil from the recent forms as distinct groups. No doubt we shall some day be able to correlate these differences and point out their precise significance, which at present is not clear, but it is ^Tertiary Insects of North America. Reports U. S. Geol. Surv. Terr., Vol. XIII f °. 1890. Fossil Insects of North America, Yol. II. 373 [Scudder. 1S92.J certain that they do not afford ground for maintaining that we are here dealing with extinct groups any higher than genera or at most than tribes. Yet there are one or two instances in which extinct groups of a higher grade may be found. Thus, in the work already alluded to and previously, 1 have drawn attention to a strange type of fossil Thysanura, Planocephalus, for which it seemed necessary to frame a new suborder, and, though its possible reference else- where has been suggested, this suggestion will hardly stand the test of investigation, and the matter remains where I left it ; and at the present time attention is directed to another group, the Coleopterous family Rhynchitidae, in which it has been found necessary to establish a new subfamily group for an abundant and varied series of insects from our Tertiaries. In studying the Rhynchophorous Coleoptera, I have for the first time made use of all the material which has been collected within the most recent as well as within former years ; and have been able therefore to do justice to the other localities of fossil insects, as well as the now famous locality of Florissant, Colo., and I find that there is no family of American Rhynchophora paleontologically more interesting than the Rhynchitidae. In point of numbers alone the species of this group form more than ten per cent of the fossil Rhynchophora of North America, while in the existing fauna the Rhynchitidae comprise less than two and a half per cent of all the Rhynchophora. Our recent Rhyn- chitidae are separated by LeConte and Horn into two subfamilies, one of which comprises the bulk of the family, while a single spe- cies is separated to form the other, the Pterocolinae. This differs from the Rhynchitinae among other things by the antennae being inserted much nearer the eyes, by the wide separation of the fore and middle coxae, and by the broad side pieces of the meta- sternum. The Pterocolinae are not represented among the fossils, but all the genera of Rhynchitinae now existing in our fauna are recognized, as well as a new generic type. These, however, are but a mere fraction of the fossil Rhynchitidae, the bulk of them being separated as a new subfamily, the Isotheinae, a subfamily characterized by the moderate separation of the fore and middle coxae and by the insertion of the antennae which is before the middle of the basal half of the straight and porrect beak. These characters show an approach to the Pterocolinae rather than the Scudder.] 374 [ Jan. 20, Rhynchitinae, but they have narrow metasternal side pieces. This subfamily, thus clearly distinguished, is for Rhynchitidae exceptionally rich in forms, since it contains no less than seven genera and thirteen species about equally divided between two distinct tribes, all extinct. This brings the total number of fossil American Rhynchitidae up to four fifths that of the existing forms, — a proportion which altogether surpasses that yet found in any other family of insects. The abundance and variety of the Rhynchitidae may therefore be looked upon as the most striking feature in the Tertiary Rhynchophorous fauna of North America. Of the twenty species found in our Tertiaries, three fourths are found exclusively at Florissant, the others occurring either at Green River, Wyo., or on the Roan Mountains, west- ern Colorado. The relative representation of the different families of Rhyn- chophora in the American and European Tertiaries as well as their representation in America today (according to Henshaw’s Catalogue of 1885) is set forth succinctly in the following table. Comparative View of Recent and Fossil Rhynchophora. In Numbers. In Percentages. Families. Recent North American Tertiary North American Tertiary European Recent North American Tertiary North American Tertiary European Rhinomaceridae 5 0 0 0.5 0.0 0.0 Rhynchitidae 25 20 5 2.3 10.3 3.3 Attelabidae 5 0 1 0.5 0.0 0.7 Byrsopidae 1 0 7 0.1 0.0 4.7 Otiorhynchidae 115 47 17 10.7 24.3 11.3 Curculionidae 640 100 100 59.4 51.8 66.7 Brenthidae 5 0 0 0.5 0.0 0.0 Calandridae 82 10 7 7.6 5.2 4.7 Scolytidae 163 5 7 15.1 2.6 4.7 Anthribidae 37 11 6 3.4 5.7 4.0 Totals 1078 193 150 100.1 99.9 100.1 This table shows better than any words can describe some striking features in the American Tertiary fauna when compared with that now existing in North America, and indeed to a certain extent (and in the same direction) when compared with the 375 [Scudder. 1892. J European Tertiary fauna. These peculiarities consist in the ex- traordinary development of the Rhynchitidae, already alluded to ; the great preponderance of the Otiorhynchidae due to its remarkable development in the localities other than Florissant ; and the meager showing of the Scolytidae, this last also seen in the European Tertiaries and undoubtedly resulting from the habits of life of these insects as subcortical feeders on trees, which would prevent their deposition in places where their fossil remains could be preserved. The reduction in this direction is indeed so great as to effect a very slight lessening of the relative numbers of the Curculionidae which here as in the living fauna easily hold the first place. The other relative differences between the Tertiary and existing fauna in America are but slight, the Calandridae of the Tertiaries losing about as much in relative numbers as the An thribidae gain when compared with the exist- ing fauna. As compared with the European Tertiary fauna, the American shows the same excess in the relative numbers of Rhynchitidae and Otiorhynchidae as it does when compared with the recent American fauna ; but both the Curculionidae and the Scolytidae gain in relative importance in the European Tertiaries, whose chief peculiarity, however, consists in the considerable development of the small family Byrsopidae. The Rhinomacer- idae and Brenthidae alone, small groups, do not occur in either Tertiary fauna, and the Attelabidae and Byrsopidae are also ab- sent from the American. To bring the differences to view in another way and consider only the families represented in the American Tertiary fauna we may mark their relative position in the scale of numbers as in the following table. Relative Importance of the Families of Rhynchophora. Families. Place as to Numbers. Recent American Fossil American Fossil European Rhynchitidae 6 3 6 Otiorhynchidae 3 2 2 Curculionidae 1 1 1 Calandridae 4 5 13-4 ) Scolytidae 2 6 Anthribidae 5 4 5 Scudder.] 3T6 [Jan. 20, This brings out in another way the better agreement of the European Tertiary fauna with the recent American fauna than in shown by the American Tertiary fauna. Of the sixty-six old genera to which the fossil species of Rhyn- chophora are here referred including one hundred and thirty-six of the one hundred and ninety-three species, six may be regarded as cosmopolitan or nearly so, fifteen gerontogeic and especially European, though often having a few American species among them, sixteen as characteristic of the northern hemisphere in general, while the remainder are about equally divided between those which are predominantly North American and those which are tropical American but often extend to our southern borders. Of the thirty-one new genera (with fifty-seven species) little can be said in this particular, but nearly half of them maybe regarden as most closely allied to American and especially tropical Ameri- can forms ; so that on the whole the American and especially the tropical American type predominates. It should be remarked, however, that the resemblance of the fauna to that of temperate North America is undoubtedly greater in appearance than in reality, and will most probably be changed to some extent when the various species here recorded are better known ; for in default of characters which if preserved might materially change the alleged affinities of the various forms, it has seemed advisable to refer most of them to existing genera, and my opportunities for examining tropical and subtropical types have been very limited. Where characters of real importance exist, the insects generally show the prevalence of structural differences, often considerable, from modern forms. The localities at which the species of Rhynchophora have been obtained are but four, if we except a couple of beetles, Otio - rhynchites fossilis found at Fossil, Wyoming, and Hylastes squali- dens from the Pleistocene beds of Scarboro, Ontario. These four localities are Florissant, central Colorado, the crest of the Roan Mountains near the head of East Salt Creek in western Colorado, the buttes bordering the White River near the Colorado-Utah boundary, and Green River City, Wyoming. All of these local- ities, except the Roan Mountains, were described in more or less detail in my Tertiary Insects of North America. The Roan Mountains beds are apparently merely an extension of those found on the White River, fifty miles distant, but here confined to the very crest of the range. Insects are found at several 1892.] 377 [Scudder. different points, but only in one spot have they been obtained in any remarkable number, here however in extreme abun- dance ; as this spot was five miles distant from our camp and our time and supplies were limited, no great number of specimens were brought away, but enough was seen to warrant the belief that a prodigious number of specimens might be obtained there. The detailed study of the fossil Rhynchophora has made very clear and specific one point which impressed me in general while working in the field, and that is the wide difference between the character of the fossils obtained at Florissant and those obtained at any of the other localities (perhaps excepting Elko, Nevada, of which little is known) in the Rocky Mountain region. The Hymenoptera which abound at Florissant almost disappear in the other localities, while the Coleoptera, which hold a third place at Florissant, form the larger proportion of the mass in the other deposits. To test the opinion formed by the cursory examina- tion of specimens in the field, I have counted the specimens ob- tained in each of the different localities visited during a single summer, and find the opinion amply confirmed. Relative Abundance of some of the Orders of Insects in Different Western Deposits. Number of Specimens. Percentages. Orders. All Localities Floris- sant. Other Localities All Localities Floris- sant. Other Localities Hymenoptera 277 243 34 15.2 34.5 3.0 Diptera 432 184 248 23.7 26.1 22.2 Coleoptera 806 104 702 44.3 14.8 63.0 Hemiptera 185 86 99 10.0 12.2 8.9 Orthoptera 19 2 17 1.0 0.3 1.5 Neuroptera 90 75 15 5.0 10.6 1.3 Arachnida 11 11 0 | 0.6 1.5 0.0 Totals 1820 705 1115 99.8 100.0 99.9 The first set of columns in the above table shows the total number of specimens (regardless of species) obtained during this season’s work, separated by orders, (1) in all localities ; (2) at Florissant alone ; and (3) in the other localities, excluding Florissant ; and the second set of columns the same figures re- duced to percentages. Nothing could well be more striking than the contrasts in the Hymenoptera and Coleoptera. Scudder.J 378 [Jan. 20t Now when we come to examine the species of Rhynchophora, we shall find that while the three localities in western Colorado and Wyoming share a number of forms in common, not a single species found at Florissant occurs in either of the others. To give the precise figures : from Florissant one hundred and sixteen species have been obtained ; from the Roan Mountains, forty, of which it shares six with Green River, and seven with White River besides six others common to all three localities, together nearly half its fauna (19 sp.) ; from the White River twenty-three species, of which it shares two with Green River and seven with Roan Mountains besides the six common to all, or nearly two thirds its fauna (15 sp.) ; and from Green River thirty-nine spe- cies, of which it shares two with White River and six with the Roan Mountains besides the six common to all, or more than one third its fauna (14 sp.). These facts with the field evidence ap- pear to show that the three principal localities in western Colorado and Wyoming are deposits in a single body of water, the ancient Gosiute Lake, as it was called by King. The absolute separation in specific forms between the fauna of these deposits and that of Florissant must be indicative of a distinction greater than that of mere geographical position, for the Roan Mountains are about equally distant from Green River and Florissant. It is clearly an indication of a difference in age, though they have usually been regarded as occupying similar horizons. In the Monograph de- scribing these forms I have referred to the species regarded as belonging to the Gosiute Lake as the Gosiute fauna whenever it has been desirable to speak of them in common ; and in contrast I have called the fauna of Florissant, the Florissant or Lacustrine fauna. Which of them is the older cannot be determined until their faunas have been more completely studied ; and even then for lack of sufficient comparisons elsewhere on the continent, it may be impossible from the insect-remains alone to reach any pos- itive conclusions. When the structure of the Green River beds has been more completely studied, their age can doubtless be de- termined with much accuracy ; and a similar result may be reached when the age of the orographic movement shall have been determined which brought about the emptying and desicca- tion of the ancient Florissant Lake. With these time elements given, the extent of the insect-remains in the Gosiute and Lacus- trine faunas is such that the relations of deposits hereafter dis- covered may be quickly made clear. 1892.] 379 [Scudder. The difference between the Gosiute and Lacustrine faunas is shown to be much more remarkable when we examine the larger groups. Thus, of the sixty-six genera found at Florissant, only eighteen occur also in the Gosiute fauna, which contains, besides, thirty-one genera not found at Florissant ; and there are even a number of tribes which, as far as we yet know, are entirely con- fined to one or the other fauna. Besides the beetles here mentioned no fossil Rhynchophora have been described from any formation, Tertiary or Pretertiary, on the American continent, with the single exception of a species of Curculionidae which I have called Hylobiites cretaceus and which was discovered in the Pierre shales of the Assiniboine River, northwestern Manitoba, by Mr. J. B. Tyrrell of the Canadian Geological Survey, in 1888. In conclusion, the following statements may be made regarding the Rhynchophorous fauna of the American Tertiaries in general. 1. The general facies of the fauna is American, and somewhat more southern than its geographical position would indicate. 2. All the species are extinct, and though the Gosiute Lake and the ancient lacustrine basin of Florissant were but little re- moved from each other, and the deposits of both are presumably of Oligocene age, not a single instance is known of the occurrence of the same species in the two basins. 3. No species are identical with any European Tertiary forms. 4. A very considerable number of genera are extinct, often including a number of species. 5. Existing genera which are represented in the American Tertiaries are mostly American, not infrequently subtropical or tropical American, and where found also in the Old World are mostly those which are common to the North Temperate zone. A warmer climate than at present is indicated. 6. There are no extinct families, but in one instance an ex- tinct subfamily with numerous representatives. 7. The Tertiary European fauna is nearer than our own Terti- ary fauna to the existing American fauna in the relative prepon- derance of its families, subfamilies, and tribes. These conclusions are almost identical, word for word,* with those reached from a study of the Tertiary Hemiptera of the * Proc. Bost. soc. nat. hist., xxiv : 564-565. Scudder. J 380 [Jan. 20, United States, although in that study a far more meager repre- sentation of the Gosiute fauna was at hand. We may pass to the consideration of some of the different families of Rhynchophora. The Rhynchitidae have already been referred to as the most in- teresting of all. The Otiorhynchidae are well represented in the American Tertiaries, the numerical preponderance of the species having then been much more than double what it is now. But the most striking fact is its importance for the Gosiute fauna, where fifteen genera and thirty-two species occur against ten genera and four- teen species at Florissant. Excepting in the Scolytidae which have but four species in the western Tertiaries and are thus rela- tively insignificant, no other family shows a preponderance of forms in the Gosiute fauna, and as it is here very marked, vve may fairly regard the Otiorhynchidae as thoroughly characteristic of this fauna. It is a further curious fact that the Florissant Otio- rhynchidae are mostly made up of members of different tribes from the others, the Evotini and Promecopini belonging exclu- sively or almost exclusively to the Lacustrine fauna, while the Tanymecini, Cyphini, and Phyllobiini are exclusively, the more numerous Ophryastini and Otiorhynchini almost exclusively, Gosiute ; the Brachyderini alone are divided equally between both. No other family of Rhynchophora shows in so strik- ing a manner a division of tribes between the two principal horizons of the western Tertiary insect-beds, and it is therefore probable that the fossils of this family may in the future furnish the best indications (as far as Rhynchophora are concerned) of the horizon of future insect localities in the West. In Europe, the number of genera and species is far less than in America, and the tribes Ophryastini, Evotini, and Promecopini, having in America fully two fifths the genera and nearly half the species, do not appear to occur at all, nor do any tribes occur in Europe which are not found in America, excepting the extinct tribe Pristorhynchini which is represented by a single species ; Even in the tribes that are the same, the genera are mostly differ- ent ; thus the Brachyderini are represented by Liparus, Aniso- rhynchus, and Brachyderes, five species in all; the Otiorhynchini by Qtiorhynchus and Laparocerus, a half dozen species, all Pleistocene ; the Tanymecini by Thylacites, a single species ; the 1892.] 381 [Scudder. Cypliini by Naupactus and Strophosomus, a couple of species ; and the Phyllobiini by Phyllobius and Polydrosus, in amber. We find therefore only eleven genera and seventeen species in Europe against twenty-three genera and forty-seven species in America. The importance of the Otiorhynchidae in the Ameri- can Tertiaries and particularly in the Gosiute fauna is therefore apparent. The following table gives in detail the peculiarities of this distribution, by which it appears that the relative development of the different tribes in the recent American fauna is in this in- stance more nearly approached by the American than by the European Tertiary fauna. Tribal Distribution of Recent and Fossil Otiorhynchidae. Tribes. Recent N. America. Henshaw’s Catal. Tertiary North American. Tertiary European. Number of Species Per- centage Number of Species Per- centage Number of Species Per- centage Brachyderini 13 11.3 6 12.8 5 29.4 Ophryastini 40 34.8 13 27.7 0 0.0 Otiorhynchini 27 23.5 9 19.1 6 35.3 Dirotognathini Tanymecini Cypliini 1 0.9 0 0.0 0 0.0 7 6.1 1 2.1 1 5.9 13 11.3 3 6.4 2 11.8 Evotini 3 2.6 5 10.6 0 0.0 Phyllobiini 5 4.3 6 12.8 2 11.8 Promecopini 6 5.2 4 8.5 0 0.0 Pristorhynchini 0 0.0 0 0.0 1 5.9 Totals 115 100.0 47 100.0 17 100.1 One hundred species, or slightly more than one half of the Ter- tiary Rhynchophora of North America, belong to the Curculioni- dae, but this preponderance is a little less than in the recent Ameri- can fauna where the family holds a still more important place and is the more conspicuous from the fact that its numbers are more than four times greater than those of any other family, while in the Tertiary deposits of the West the Otiorhynchidae have nearly half as many species as the Curculionidae. In general, therela- Scudder.] 382 [Jan. io, tive numerical proportion of the subfamilies is similar to what ob- tains in North America at the present day, or at least the vast pro- portion of the species belong to the Curculioninae ; but the Alo- phinae held then a vastly greater percentage (eight times greater) than now, while the Balaninae were also relatively much more numerous, the percentage of species to the whole number of the family being then nearly five times greater ; the loss fell on the Curculioninae and to a small extent on the Apioninae, while the Itliycerinae, now represented by a. single species, are not known to have existed. In Europe, if we regard the species of Hipporhinus as Alophi- nae, the relative preponderance of the subfamilies of fossil Cur- culionidae approaches nearer and indeed very closely to the con- dition of things in America to-day, for more than four fifths of the species are to be referred to the Curculioninae, though the Alophinae are still nearly three times in excess of their present American proportion, and the Sitoninae have an even slightly greater relative preponderance. As in America, all the subfami- lies are present excepting the Ithycerinae. The total number of species, strangely enough, is exactly the same as in America. The details of this comparison may be seen in the following table. Table of Recent and Fossil Curculionidae arranged by Subfamilies. Subfamilies. In Numbers. In Percentages. Recent N. A. Tertiary N. A. Tertiary European Recent N. A. Tertiary N. A. Tertiary European Sitoninae 8 3 4 1.3 3.0 4.0 Alophinae 11 14 5 1.7 14.0 5.0 Ithycerinae 1 0 0 0.1 0.0 0.0 Apioninae 69 7 6 10.8 7.0 6.0 Curculioninae 543 70 83 84.8 70.0 83.0 Balaninae 8 6 2 1.3 6.0 2.0 Totals 640 100 100 100.0 100 0 100.0 In the United States, the vast proportion of the Tertiary spe- cies come from Florissant in all the subfamilies, except the Sito- 383 [Scudder. 1892.] ninae, where two out of the three species come from the Gosiute fauiia ; but it is curious to note one exception in that all the species of the first tribe of Curculioninae, the Phytonomini, and nearly all those of the second, the Hylobiini, also come from the Gosi- ute fauna. The other species of the Gosiute fauna are scattered here and there, but, all told, they form only one fourth of the whole number of species and represent only one sixth of the gen- era. A few additional remarks may be made of two of the subfam- ilies of Curculionidae, — the Alophinae and Curculioninae. The Alophinae have a remarkable development among the fossils of the American Tertiaries, and nearly all the forms belong to extinct types. Four genera with fourteen species are recog- nized and the latter, with but three exceptions (of two genera), are confined to Florissant ; indeed, the prevalence of the subfam- ily may be considered as one of the characteristic features of the Lacustrine fauna, for not only are the species relatively numer- ous but they are exceptionally abundant in individuals ; of the Curculionidae which have fallen under review, about two fifths of the specimens belong here. The relative predominance of the sub. family may be made more conspicuously apparent by a statement of percentages. The proportion of Alophinae to other Curculion- idae in the existing North American fauna is in genera about 4.5 per cent, in species less than 2 per cent ; while in the American Ter- tiary fauna, the relative proportion of genera is 10 percent and of species no less than 14 per cent. Whether any similar preva- lence of the subfamily in European rocks can be discovered is un- certain, but I am inclined to look upon the numerous species of Rhynchophora which have been referred to Hipphorinus as be- longing here, in which case this could probably be asserted, at least to a certain extent. The bulk of fossil Curculionidae naturally fall into the subfamily Curculioninae, by far the most important in the existing fauna. All the larger tribes of the subfamily found to-day in America occur in the Tertiary rocks of our West, and besides them two of those which are but feebly developed. The European fossils fall into the same tribes as the American with the exception that two of the American tribes, the Anthonomini and Prionomerini, are ab- sent ; but though, singularly enough, the total number of species is exactly the same in the two countries, the distribution among Scudder.] 384 [Jan. id, the tribes is very different in the proportional importance of each. The following table, showing the number of species in each tribe and the proportional representation of each in the living American fauna (taken from Henshaw’s Catalogue of 1885 without attention to the supplements), in the American Tertiary deposits, and in the European Tertiary deposits, will set this forth with greater clearness than any descriptive statement. Table of Tribal Distribution of Recent and Fossil CuRCULIONINAE. Tribes. Recent N. America Henshaw’s Catal. Tertiary N. American. Tertiary European. Number of Species Per- centage Number of Species Per- centage Number of Species Per centage Phytonomini 43 8.0 2 2.9 3 4.3 Emphyastini 1 0.2 0 0.0 0 0.0 Hylobiini 13 2.5 7 10.0 10 14.3 Cleonini 45 8.5 5 7.1 22 31.4 Erirhinini 70 13.1 9 12.9 13 18.6 Trachodini 3 0.5 0 0.0 0 0.0 Otidocephalini 9 1.7 0 0.0 0 0.0 Magdalini 17 3.2 1 1.4 2 2.9 Anthonomini 56 10.5 16 22.9 0 0.0 Prionomerini 3 0.5 1 1.4 0 0.0 Tychiini 16 3.0 3 4.3 3 4.3 Cion ini 4 0.8 2 2.9 4 5.7 Trypetini 1 0.2 0 0.0 0 0.0 Derelomini 3 0.5 0 0.0 0 0.0 Laemosaccini 1 0.2 0 0.0 0 0.0 Cryptorhynchini 95 17.9 7 10.0 5 7.1 Cygopinini 14 2.6 0 0.0 0 0.0 Tachygonini 4 0.8 0 0.0 0 0.0 Ceuthorhvnchini 41 7.7 6 8.6 6 8.6 Bar ini 92 17.3 11 15.7 2 2.9 Hormopini 1 0.2 0 0.0 0 0.0 Totals 532 99.9 70 100.1 70* 100.1 Here it will readily be seen that the greatest and the only con- spicuous differences between the American and European Tertia- ries lie, on the one side, in the Cleonini which contain nearly one third of the Curculioninae of the European deposits and hardly *In this column the European species referred to Curculionites (fifteen in number) are not taken into account , since the tribes into which they may fall cannot be determined. IS92.J 385 [Scudder. more than seven per cent of those of the American ; and on the other side, in the Anthonornini which do not exist at all in the European Tertiaries but form nearly one fourth of the American Tertiary Curculioninae, and in the Barini which comprise nearly sixteen per cent of the American Curculioninae and hardly three per cent of the European. No such striking differences appear in comparing the numerical preponderance of the tribes in the re- cent and fossil Curculioninae of North America, the greatest dis- parity appearing in the reverse proportions of the Anthonornini and the Cryptorhynchini, the former being relatively more than twice as important in the Tertiaries as now, the latter more than twice as important now as in the Tertiaries, and in the Hylobiini, where the fossils, though not numerous, formed ten per cent of the total fauna in Tertiary times, while they hold only one fourth of that percentage in the existing fauna, a relation again nearly re- versed in a group of greater importance in recent times, the Phy- tonomini, where the percentage to the whole fauna is now nearly three times greater than it was in Tertiary times. In all other cases the difference between recent and Tertiary times, where the tribe was represented at all, is insignificant. In all these cases of distinction between the recent and Tertiary representation, excepting only in the Phytonomini, the disparity would have ap- peared still greater if the Tertiary Curculioninae of Europe had been compared with the recent fauna of North America ; from which we may conclude that as far as the Curculioninae are con- cerned, the Tertiary fauna of America shows closer relationship to the existing American fauna than does the European Tertiary fauna. To return to the remaining families : — The Calandridae were not very well represented in America in Tertiary times, their proportion of species to the whole body of Rhynchophora standing somewhat below the present proportion. One of the existing subfamilies, the Rhininae, represented In America to-day by only a single species, is unknown in both the European and American Tertiaries, but the other two subfamilies occur in each country, and in proportions not greatly differing from those now existing, though in both countries the Cossoninae appear to stand a littleabove, the Calnndrinae a little below, their present numerical importance. The total number of fossil species known is sixteen of which the larger portion come from America. PROCEEDINGS, B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. 25 July, 1892. Scudder.] 386 [Feb. 3, No family of Rhynchophora is so much more poorly represented in Tertiary deposits than in the living fauna as the Scolytidae ; this must doubtless be accounted for in a large measure by the habits of these insects, living as they do benentli the bark of trees, and therefore, as before remarked, less exposed than the members of the other families to such accidents as would precip- itate them to the bottom of lakes and ponds. In our own coun- try they form less than three per cent of the Tertiary Rhyncho- phorous fauna, while in the existing fauna they compose more than fifteen per cent of the whole. The Platypodinae are represented n the European Tertiaries by a couple of amber species of Platy- pus, but are not found in our rocks, while the Scolytinae have the meager and equal number of five species in the Tertiary deposits of either continent. In the American Tertiaries the Anthribidae are unusually well developed, the proportional representation being considerably above what exists to-day. The relative numbers of the different tribes are similar to what we now find, and all the tribes are pres- ent except the Xenorchestini which is the smallest today. The numbers of the Tropiderini, however, are above their present pro- portion, and those of the Araeocerini below it. In the European Tertiaries, neither the Tropiderini nor the Xenorchestini occur, while the actual numbers in the other groups are precisely as in the American rocks. The total number of European fossil spe- cies is scarcely more than half that of the American. This family contains one very striking extinct genus which I have called Saperdirhynchus, with excessively long antennae, re- minding one of the existing oceanic genus Cerambyrhyncnus. February 3, 1892. Vice-President B. Joy Jeffries in the chair. Eighty-eight persons present. Dr. J. Eliot Wolff read a paper on the geology of the Crazy Mountains, Montana. Mr. Walter G. Chase spoke of the scenery, glaciers, indus- tries, and inhabitants of Alaska. February 17, 1892. President George L. Goobale in the chair. Eighty-seven per- sons present. Farlow.J 387 [1S93. The President announced the deatli 011 February 12 of Thomas Sterry Hunt, a member of the Society since October 1, 1873. It was announced that the Council had elected Alan Gregory Mason, Mrs. Elizabeth S. Watson, and Thomas A. Watson, Cor- porate Members, and Alexander E. R. Agassiz, James Hall, Felix J. H. Lacaze-Duthiers, and Rudolph Leuckart, Honorary Members. President Goodale read a paper on the vegetation of Ceylon. March 2, 1892. President George L. Goodale in the chair. Fifty persons present. The following paper was read : — NOTES ON COLLECTIONS OF CRYPTOGAMS FROM THE HIGHER MOUNTAINS OF NEW ENGLAND. BY WILLIAM G. FARLOW. Every botanist of this region, as soon as he has obtained a good knowledge of the local flora, naturally has a strong desire to ex- plore the alpine and subalpine flora of the higher mountains of New England. Such an exploration unfortunately requires not only considerable time but also considerable money. The strictly alpine flora is confined to the summits of the peaks of the Presi- dential range and Lafayette, and unfortunately the places where a botanist can stop within easy walking distance of the best col- lecting grounds are few in number and very expensive. One who is not acquainted with the mountain flora, especially if he is in search of cryptogams, finds himself on his first visit so surrounded by interesting forms that it takes a considerable time for him to distinguish and collect the different species, and he is usually compelled either by bad weather or heavy traveling expenses to put an end to his excursion long before he has obtained a full supply of plants. Having had some experience in mountain col- lecting, it appeared to me to be not unlikely that some of our younger botanists might like to take advantage of the knowledge of different localities which I have been obliged to acquire at the cost of a good deal of time and expense. My advice to one who has never botanized on the mountains would be not to go at once to the highest summits, certainly if he Farlow.] 388 [March 2, wishes to study the cryptogamic flora. To be sure there is more to be found there than anywhere else, but one cannot expect more than a few clear days, and in cloudy weather botanizing is difficult if not dangerous. The best way is to go first to some of the lower mountains, not much over 4,000 ft. high, and make a care- ful study of the subalpine flora, and then, when a favorable op- portunity arises, to go to the summit of Mt. Washington in search of species not found below an altitude of 5,000 ft. By so doing, the botanist is not bewildered by arriving first in a field where everything is new, but in a comparatively short time, having already obtained a knowledge of subalpine forms, he will be able to pick out the rarer alpine species. One might suppose that the best way would be to camp out in places like Tuckerman’s Ravine or King’s Ravine. My experience has been that camping in cold ravines is usually either an expensive process or else de- cidedly uncomfortable. Certainly for some years to come, King’s Ravine must be an unfavorable locality. Recent slides have made it dreary and barren to the last degree, and even in its better days, it was not a very good field for botanizing. Rare species, of course, may now and then be found there ms elsewhere, and I once found some very fine specimens of the rare lichen, Baeomyces placophyllus , growing over mosses in the ice cold brook near the boulders ; and at the head of the Ravine, is the only known station of the fungus Doassansia epilobii. The Appalachian hut between Madison and Adams is better placed for botanical collecting than King’s Ravine, but Tuckerman’s Ravine is near a richer collecting ground than either. A prolonged stay in Tuckerman’s Ravine, however, is hardly feasible, except at some expense. Of the summits which are easily accessible and offer good col- lecting grounds Moosilauke and Mt. Mansfield seem to me to be the best suited for those wishing to begin the study of our moun- tain flora. Moosilauke is about 4,800 ft. high, and is situated a little to the south-west of the Franconia range. It stands by itself with fine views on all sides. From Boston one takes the Boston, Concord, and Montreal R. R. to Warren, whence there is a drive of five miles to the Mountain House at the base of the mountain, and a drive or walk of five miles more to the summit where there is a comfortable and comparatively cheap hotel. The summit is practically a narrow ridge, about a mile long, rising at the extremities into what are called the Horth and South Peaks, 1892.] 389 [Farlow. and flanked by a number of ravines. The phaenogamic flora is chiefly remarkable for the immense quantity of Arenaria groen- landica which is so abundant on the bare slopes of the summit that in July they seem in the distance to be still covered with snow. The subalpine carices and mosses abound on the grassy bogs of the northern peak where one also finds Thamnolia ver- micularis , the alpine Cetrariae, Umbilicariae, Cladoniae, mixed with the Buellia geographica found on all bare mountains above the 4,000 ft. limit. The rocks of the South Peak also afford interest- ing lichens, but, as far as my experience goes, the ravines, in spite of an air of mystery thrown about them by somewhat sentimental writers on mountain scenery, and by the romantic names given to them, are of very little botanical interest. Better in some respects than Moosilauke is Mt. Mansfield, the highest of the Green Mountains, about 4,300 ft. high. It is not so easily reached from Boston. One must take the Vermont Cen- tral to Waterbury, Vt., near Montpelier, and thence is a ride of ten miles by stage to Stowe, where one must stay overnight un- less the days are long and the weather good. From Stowe a road leads to the summit, five miles to the foot of the mountain and five miles up a sufficiently good but not very interesting road, at least not until comparatively near the summit. Seen from below Mt. Mansfield is not prepossessing, and not to be compared with Camel’s Hump, the most picturesque of the Vermont mountains. From the summit, however, the view is fine, and it has the great advantage of offering a narrow ridge more than two miles long, along which the botanist can easily find his way without fatigue in almost any weather. Here, as elsewhere, it has been considered necessary to regard the ridge as representing the out- line of a human face, looking upward with the conventional nose and chin, the latter unfortunately in this case 340 ft. higher than the former. At the base of the nose is a small but comfortable hotel which is an excellent spot flora which to make excursions. Laterally the ridge is seamed with numerous clefts and gullies in which hepatics, lichens, and some species of algae abound, and looking down the mountain in the direction of the chin and to the northeast is the Smuggler’s Notch, one of the best collecting grounds in New England. The interesting’ phaenogams of this region are well known from the collections of Pringle and others. The cryptogams are also numerous and interesting. On the Farlow,] 390 [March 2, ridge are to be found the greater part of the lichens known on Mt. Washington, besides a good many subalpine mosses, while in the gullies and numerous streams very interesting hepatics grow luxuriantly. Among other species are beautiful specimens of Jungermannia setiformis finer than I have ever seen on Mt. Washington. In fact, although a few of the Mt. Washington species are wanting, the Hepaticae are, as a rule, finer than on Mt. Washington. Below the chin and near the brink of the Smuggler’s Notch is a small sheet of water which, owing to unfavorable weather, I have never been able to explore, but which promises to be a good field for cryptogams. The Notch may be reached by a steep descent from the chin, or by road from Stowe. The guide books still speak of a hotel in the Notch, but it has been abandoned for several years, and is now a wreck. The Notch itself, more picturesque at a distance than when seen from below, is very wet, and the clouds settle down upon it so that the cryptogamic vegetation is luxuriant. Beautiful ferns abound, including the, in America, rare Asplenium viride and Woodsia glabella , also found on the nose. Still it must be admitted that the ferns are here inferior to those of Lake Willoughby. A good path leads from the summit of Mansfield northwest to Underhill, a distance of five miles, and as Underhill is on a rail- road, the ascent of the mountain on foot is perhaps better accom- plished from this direction than from Stowe. If a botanist, how- ever, is encumbered with a trunk containing microscope, books, and driers, he must start from Stowe since carriages can only reach the summit on that side of the mountain. A word on the Dixville Notch, in conclusion. Whatever may be said in favor of the picturesqueness and geological interest of this isolated pass, to the botanist it is pretty sure to be disappoint- ing. The mountains on either side are too low to afford even a subalpine flora and neither the phaenogams nor cryptogams are of special interest. The not very common lichen, Buellia oederi , however, is there abundant near Table Rock. Having explored carefully the summit of Moosilauke or Mt. Mansfield, the botanical student is then in condition to obtain the most advantage from the necessarily more expensive and fatiguing trip to the top of Mt. Washington or Lafayette. If he decides to camp in any of the ravines he should remember that those with a southern exposure are much to be preferred to those on the northern side of the ridge, the flora on the southern side being decidedly richer. At times one can obtain lodging and tolerable food at the Half-way House on Mt. Washington, but that is not always the case. Prof. G. Frederick Wright illustrated his account of the glacial phenomena of northern France and England with numerous stereopticon views from photographs taken by himself. His observations, under the guidance of Dr. Croskey of Birmingham, Prof. Percy F. Kendall of Stockport, and Mr. Lamplugh of Brid- lington, fully confirm the theory of Prof. H. Carvill Lewis that the so-called Interglacial shell bedsatMoel Tryfaen in Wales, and at Macclesfield, Wellington, and other places in England, are not interglacial, but consist of shells which have been pushed up by glacial ice from the bed of the sea. This theory is sustained by the fact that these shell beds are limited to areas, over which it can be proved, from the transported boulders, that glacial ice has moved after having crossed a sea bottom. In Wales and north- western England these shell beds are associated with boulders from southwestern Scotland and the Lake District, and none are found outside the area covered by such boulders. On the east coast from Flamborough to London the shells are associated with Scandinavian boulders which have been brought across the Korth Sea. In the interior of England south of York and the Pennine Chain there are no glacial marks, and there are no signs of the recent occupancy of the country by the sea. There are no recent shell beds, no terraces, nor sea beaches. Besides, these supposed Interglacial shell beds do not present any indigenous fauna, occu- pancy, and place. They rather contain specimens which naturally occupy diverse conditions and which have been brought together by some such agency as glacial ice. Tertiary and other species implying a warm climate are mingled with sub-arctic species. Professor Wright believes that the investigations set on foot by Professor Lewis explain completely the phenomena which had been attributed by Darwin, Lyell, James Geikie, and others to an Interglacial period. The donation of fifty dollars from the Rev. Robert C. Waterston was announced and on motion of Mr. S. H. Scudder it was voted that Mr. Waterston’s many and continued acts of interest in the F oerste.] 392 [April 6, work of the Society be acknowledged by a vote of thanks to be presented by the Curator in person. March 16, 1892. President George L. Goodale in the chair. One hundred and fifteen persons present. Dr. J. Walter Fewkes gave an account of the Moki Snake Dance which took place at Wal-pi in August, 1891. April 6, 1892. President George L. Goodale in the chair. Sixty-one persons present. The President announced the death of Dr. John Amory Jeffries, a former officer of the Society. Mr. Percival Lowell read a paper on Shinto Occultism, God- possession of people. Dr. Harold C. Ernst read a paper entitled Some recent advances in Bacteriology. The following paper was presented by title at the meeting of November 18, 1891 : — THE DRAINAGE OF THE BERNESE JURA. BY AUG. F. FOERSTE, WITH A SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON THE DRAINAGE OF THE PENNSYL- VANIA APPALACHIANS. BY W. M. DAVIS. CONTENTS. Literature. Prefatory Note. 1. Introduction Geology of the Bernese Jura. 2. Deposition and sequence of strata. 3. Incomplete evidence of land conditions. 4. The period of folding1. 5. Topography of the Jura folds. 6. Degree of erosion of the folds. Origin of the Jura drainage. 7. Previous theories bearing on this subject. 1892.J 393 [Foerste. 8. Consideration of these theories. a. Faults. b. Special account of various cirques. c. Fractures. d. Lowest points of outlets for lakes. e. Glacial streams. /. Backward erosion. 9. Consideration of additional theories. 10. Antecedent origin of the transverse streams of the Jura. 11. The drainage immediately antecedent to the folding. 12. The effects of folding on the general antecedent drainage. 13. Division of the Jura drainage by recent warping. 14. Streams consequent 011 the folding. 15. Sub-consequent drainage. 16. Combes. 17. Capturing of streams. 18. Summary. Supplementary Note on the Drainage of the Pennsylvania Appala- chians, by W. M. Davis. Plates. X. Diagram of the Bernese Jura, showing the restored anti- clines, with the chief streams and cirques. (See section 86.) XI. Profiles of existing anticlinal crests, with notches at cirques and levels of adjacent divides. (See section 8d.) LITERATURE. J. Thurmann. Essai sur les Soulevemens Jurassiques. 1836, pp. 15, 33, 48. A. Gressly. Sur le Jura Soleurois. Mem. soc. hist. nat. Neuchatel, 1840, pp. 180, 192, 194. B. Studer. Geologie der Schweiz. Yol. 1, 1851, p. 150-153. E. Desor. Ueber die Deutung der Schweizer Seen. 1861, pp. 7, 8, 16, 20. A. Jaccard. Description Geologique du Jura Vaudois et Neuchatelois, 1869, pp. 256, 258, 268, 277. L. Riitimeyer. Ueber Thai- und See-Bildung. 1869, pp. 36, 41, 42, 72. J. B. Greppin. Description Geologique du Jura Bernois. 1870. (A. Helland. Om Botner og Saekkedale samt deres Betydning for Theorier am Dalenes Dannelse. Geol. For. Forh. Stockholm, 1875.) A. Heim. Untersucliungen liber den Mechanismus der Gebirgsbildung. 1878, I, pp. 272, 278, 280, 293, 313, 314; II, pp. 79, 320. O. Peschel. Physische Erdkunde. 1880, II, p. 443. M. Bertrand. Excursion entre Morez et Saint.e-Claude. Bull. soc. g6ol. France. Ser. 3, Vol. XIII, 1885, p. 789. A. Philippson. Studien liber Wasserscheiden. 1886, pp. 148, 152. Foerste.] 394 [April 6. La Noe et Margerie. Les Formes du Terrain. 1888, pp. 140-143, 157, 158. A. Penck. Die Bildung der Durchbruchthaler. 1888, p. 45. Prefatory Note. — The following studies were begun at Harvard College in 1890, for a thesis in a second course in physi- cal geography. The work was then based on the excellent topo- graphical and geological maps of the Bernese Jura, and was carried on under the direction of Prof. W. M. Davis ; it was afterwards continued in the field by the writer. For most of the suggestions and theories herein embodied, and for all the training and incentives to work, he is directly indebted to Professor Davis, to whom he desires here to make full acknowledgments and to render his warmest thanks. 1 . Introduction. — In a study of the drainage of mountain systems which are the result of folding, it is obviously of advantage to secure a clear idea of the initial streams consequent upon folding in any area. In a typical case the drainage existing antecedent to folding should have no visible influence upon the location of consequent streams, and such antecedent streams should them- selves sometimes succumb to the changed conditions brought about by the folding, and cease to exist. To avoid unnecessary complications in the problem, a region should be chosen where the folds are not overturned ; faults, volcanic intrusions, and all mountain building forces other than folding should be practically absent ; and subsequent erosion should not have been sufficient to carve out paths for the initial consequent streams greatly at variance with the courses first offered by the folds. Finally, the topography previous to folding should have been as little accentu- ated as possible. The Appalachians, although an acknowledged type of folded mountain systems, do not fulfil the conditions above enumerated. The crests, flanks, and troughs of the folds are strongly eroded, and the varying degrees of resistance to erosion offered by the strata thus laid bare have given rise to the formation of new drainage channels whose origin and direction are due to causes subsequent to the development of the initial drainage that was at first consequent on the folding. The Jura Mountains offer some advantage over the Appalachians in the study of drainage in that the erosion subsequent to folding 1892.J 395 [Foerstc. has not been so marked. Although the softer, more recent strata have been pretty generally removed from the crests and the flanks of the folds, a sufficient mass remains to preserve to a marked degree the topography produced by the folding. A young drainage, consequent on the folding, might be expected here if anywhere ; indeed, when the study of the Jura drainage was first undertaken, there seemed to be no evidence of the remains of antecedent drainage, or of the existence of river courses due to faulting. Further study has, however, led to dif- ferent conclusions, as will be seen in the following pages ; but as far as known the Jura still offer the most typical cases of initinl drainage consequent upon folding. This paper is limited to a study of the drainage of the Suxe and and Birse rivers, comprising the major part of the drainage of the Bernese Jura. The “Description Geologique du Jura Bernois” for the Swiss Geological Survey, by J. Greppin, is the latest ex- tensive geological study of the area (1870), and has been utilized as basis for the geological views here expressed. The topography has been taken chiefly from the excellent contoured maps, on the scale of 1 : 25,000, published by the Swiss government. GEOLOGY OF THE BERNESE JURA. 2. Deposition and Sequence of Strata. — The lowest strata exposed in the Bernese Jura are of Triassic and Liassic age, and wherever erosion in this area has been sufficient these strata have been exposed, so that their continuous extension seems probable. From the beginning of the Lias the entire region continued to be an area of deposition, until the beginning of the Pterocerian epoch, the middle of the upper Jurassic division. At this time a gradual elevation of the land took place. The elevation was more pronounced in the northeastern part of the Bernese Jura, so that this portion first rose above the sea. As elevation con- tinued the sea retreated towards the southwest. Thus, during the Pterocerian epoch, sea deposits did not extend northeast of a line connecting Lauffen, Schelten, and Balsthal, and the north- eastern corner of the Bernese Jura area was dry land. During the Virgulian epoch, sea formations did not extend north- east of a line connecting Charmoille, Undervelier, Grandval, and Solothurn, one third of the Bernese Jura district rising above the sea. During the Portlandian, no marine deposits were formed Foerste.J 396 [ April 6, north of a line connecting La Chaux de Fonds, Courtelary, and Orvin, at least six sevenths of the Bernese Jura district being dry land. During the Purbeckian epoch, the Bernese Jura district was altogether above sea level ; only fresh-water deposits were formed in this area. It is evident that the drainage during all this period of eleva- tion must have been southward into the gradually retreating sea. During Cretaceous times various oscillations of the land took place. The sea again several times reached the line connecting La Chaux de Fonds, Courtelary, and Orvin, but did not pass north of the same. But at the close of the Cretaceous and during Eocene times all of the Bernese Jura district was once more above the sea, and all the drainage of this area, as far as known, was still to the southward. At present, Cretaceous and Eocene strata are usually found only in the synclinal valleys between the folds, the latter showing only Jurassic or older formations along their crest. Careful ex- amination of cross-sections, however, reveals the fact that Creta- ceous and Eocene strata are chiefly confined to the valleys not because they are valle}7 deposits, but because erosion has removed these formations from the crests and from the upper portions of the flanks of the folds. This is shown by the comparative con- formability of the Cretaceous and Eocene strata to the Jurassic formations, even along their most elevated exposures on the flanks of the folds, proving that these later formations were in- volved with the Jurassic strata in the processes of folding, and that their present distribution has been determined by subsequent events. During the Lower Miocene or Tongrian epoch it is evident that a low fold involving the greater part of the Bernese Jura ex- tended in a general east and west direction, giving rise to a second river system in this area. The older series of rivers with their general southern course were now largely deprived of their headwaters, the place of the latter being taken by a new drainage system flowing in an opposite direction, northwards, on the other side of the fold, into the Tongrian Sea. Marine deposits of this northern sea are found as far southward as a line connecting Por- rentruy, Chatillon, and Breitenbach. It will be noticed that it is this area which still receives the drainage of those streams of the Bernese Jura, which, taking a northward course, are finally col- lected in the Birse. 397 [Foerste. 1S92.] This condition of things seems, however, to have been of short duration, since in the Middle Miocene or Delemontian epoch the northern sea had again retreated, leaving the Bernese Jura dis- trict once more entirely above sea level. On the other hand the southern sea seems to have encroached upon the land again, and during the Upper Miocene or Helvetian epoch, marine deposits were formed over southern and central districts of the Bernese Jura, as far north as aline connecting La Chaux de Fonds, Tremelan-dessus, Glovelier, Courchapoix, and the mountain fold south of Numingen. At the same time fresh- water deposits seem to have been laid down over the area north of the line just described. The fresh-water deposits of the north- ern Bernese Jura area owe their origin perhaps to large ponds and lakes in this region, indicating a depression of land here, the remnant, it may be, of that depression of the northern Jura which permitted the digression of the sea upon the northern Hank of the Tongrian fold, as already described. During the Oeningen epoch these fresli-water deposits extended farther southward ; in fact, crossed the Jura and reached central Switzerland. 3. Incomplete Evidence of Land Conditions. — It will be noticed that the limitations of the sea deposits as at present preserved have been the sole basis for the boundaries assigned to the sea in former epochs. In the same way the absence of such sea deposits has been considered sufficient evidence of the dry land conditions of the corresponding areas, during the .period indicated by the hiatus in the regular succession of marine sedimentation. Such evidence includes several sources of error. Manifestly, the only safe means of proving the existence of land conditions in any area is to bring proof of a positive rather than of a negative character ; for example : shore lines, river courses, irregular erosion of sub- aerial nature. So far, the reports on the Swiss Jura here con- sidered do not contain statement of positive proofs of land con- ditions, and hence the preceding r6sum6 is based almost entirely upon evidence as furnished by marine deposits. 4. The Period of Folding. — The lower part of the Oeningen deposits contains many conglomeritic facies. The pebbles com- posing the same are often evidently of igneous origin and must have been derived from different sources. Their lithological characteristics associate them with the igneous rocks found in situ Koerste.J 398 [April 6. in the Vosges Mountains and the Black Forest, towards the north and northwest of the Bernese Jura district. The general distri- bution of these pebbles in the Oeningen deposits of the Alsatian plains and the Jura, and their occurrence even in the Swiss basin, is opposed to any theory advocating the existence of strong folds in the Jura district at this time. The pebbles in fact furnish the strongest evidence so far discovered for a belief in the late Ter- tiary origin of the Jura folds. They also suggest the existence of a general southern slope of the land from the Vosges Mountains and the Black Forest to the southern limits of the area containing the above mentioned igneous pebbles derived from these sources. They also indicate the existence in late Tertiary times of strong currents of water having a general southern direction, following the general southern slope of the land as just described. The entire body of evidence so far accumulated is against the existence of strong folds in the Jura, similar to those now charac- terizing its topography, until after the deposition of the Oeningen formations. In that case it is evident that the Jura folds are of comparatively recent age. 5. Topography of the Jura Folds. — The folds of the Jura have a general east-northeast trend. Along the southeastern border, the side nearest the Alps, the folds are larger and attain greater altitudes. Thence north-westward they decrease in relief and altitude, gradually dying out as low undulations on the adjacent plains of France. Between the Jura and the Alps lies the broad valley of the Aare. No definite boundary separates the Jura system from the French plains. There is a tendency towards steeper slopes on the northern side of the folds. All the evidence is in favor of an origin of the folds due to pressure exerted from the southeast along the whole line of Jura folds. The more southern folds, along the Aare, are the best illustration of the effects of this pressure. On the northeast, however, the folding forces were stemmed by the Black Forest, so that the more northern folds, which were held back by these mountains on the east, were swung farther forward along their western continuation, and assumed a more east and west position than the southern folds. The result is that the western Bernese Jura folds have a northeast trend. The southern folds along the Anre valley were not held back by the Black Forest crystallines and therefore have the more normal east-northeast trend. The 399 [Foerste. 189.2.] eastern folds fork towards the west, thus cansir.g the central folds to assume an intermediate position between the east-northeast trend of the southern and east trend of the northern folds. 6. Degree of Erosion of the Folds. — It is evident that the folds have been greatly affected by erosion. Tertiary and Cretaceous strata are almost invariably removed from the crests and upper flanks of the higher folds. It is not until the more resistant beds of the upper Jurassic limestones — the Portlandian, Virgulian, Pter- ocerian, Astartian, and Corallian — were reached that erosion was greatly retarded. This is especially true of the two lower forma- tions, the Astartian and Corallian, and in almost equal measure of the three upper formations, but at times the Portlandian and Vir- gulian are quite strongly eroded. Owing to the more effectual resistance offered by these upper Jurassic strata, they now often form the crests and the largest part of the flanks of the folds in the Bernese Jura, and thus have at times given rise to the opinion that the folding of the Jura took place in post- Jurassic rather than late Tertiary times. These upper Jurassic strata often form topographical features of a different sort, owing to the softness of the underlying middle Jurassic shales, belonging to Oxfordian and Callovian epochs, when the latter have once been exposed to erosion. This may be seen in the monoclinical valleys on the flanks of the fold north of Courroux, at Bruchenal and Vorburg, also south of Welschenrohr, at Balmberg and near Ruettenen, and south of Bassecourt at Joterie. The lower Jurassic lime- stones belonging to the Bathonian and Bajocian epochs again resist erosion well, and hence they frequently form the bottom of the deeper anticlinal valleys, occasionally remaining as an anticlinal crest between two lateral middle Jurassic monoclinal valleys, whose outer margins are composed of upper Jurassic limestones, as may be seen on the Chasseral, north of Nods. However, although a good amount of erosion has been accom- plished, it must be remembered that the ridges of the Jura are of anticlinal structure, and that they present a much closer degree of correspondence between structure and form than is common in mountainous regions. ORIGIN OF THE JURA DRAINAGE. 7. Previous Theories hearing on this Subject. — If a geologist should take up a good topographical map of the Bernese Jura, Foerste. | 400 [April 6, lie would at once be struck by the beauty and regularity of the transverse valleys made by the Suxe, the Birse, and their tribu- taries, in crossing the Jura folds. The Swiss call them very appropriately, cirques , from the rounded form of their walls. The longitudinal valleys along the synclinal troughs have mani- festly a structural origin ; the occasional shallow longitudinal valleys along the crests of the anticlines have given rise to some dis- cussion, and will be considered below ; but the transverse cirques have attracted much attention. How came these transverse valleys to exist? The most ready explanation is that the rivers here fol- low the direction of old cracks, and subsequent erosion upon the anticlinal structure of their sides has given these valleys their beautiful outlines. J. Thurmann refers to them as ruptures. A. Gressly expressed as his opinion that — “ Examining from afar, the accordance existing between the folds and the cirques ( crat&res ) forming interruptions in their continuity from time to time, the observer is surprised to see with what regularity the different cirques reproduce themselves from point to point, and almost along the same transverse rays, always giving rise to a second series of folds more numerous and more or less ar- ranged in the form of a fan. The different cirques denote the time and places of retardation in the process of elevation, except- ing for which there would have been some degree of rest ; for it is at these points that for a certain length of time all the energy of the agent giving rise to folding exerted itself, finally producing ruptures or faults, of which the most important have given rise to new chains of mountains.” It is evident that Gressly had an incorrect idea of the manner in which the force causing elevation was exerted, but there is no doubt about the fact that he ascribes the origin of cirques to fissures or faults. The more or less circular outlines of cirques he explained by the explosion of huge reservoirs of gas during the process of folding. B. Studer believed in cracks assisted by denudation. E. Desor insisted on the impossibility of streams having given rise to all cirques. “ If this were so the cluses and combes should also be found only along the path of streams. If some fanatical Neptunists still doubt this, we would bring up the case of the Creux-du-Vent, asking the question, where did the water come from, which could hollow out such a splendid cirque .” A. Jaccard says of these transverse val- leys,— “Although the water no doubt contributed to their 1892.] 401 [Foerste. enlargement and shaping, they are certainly not simple valleys of erosion. It is evident that the streams could not have broken through the massive ramparts formed by our chains [mountain folds] if they had not found a crack, a dislocation more or less , complete, which would permit them to flow across these ramparts [folds].” Jaccard, however, appreciated the effects produced by erosion proceeding from streams now occupying the valleys, more than previous writers on the Jura had done. L. Rtitimeyer, although a very advanced thinker in this line of studies, and unusually happy in his observations, still believed that the Jura cirques were cracks. “ Usually linear dislocations are more apt to form longitudinal valleys rather than cross valleys. Atmospheric precipitation in such dislocated countries is therefore more apt to And longitudinal courses of transportation than cross-drainage- courses, and the former must to this extent be considered theoreti- cally older than the latter. However, on elevation of the land [folding?], inclined surfaces will be formed, which at once pro- duce drainage in the direction of steepest slopes ; and, at least at the fault planes along inclined strata, the mechanical action of water will for many reasons be far greater than in already existing longitudinal drainage courses. The growth of cross valleys will therefore in such circumstances anticipate the deepening of longi- tudinal valleys, and cross valleys will therefore be more apt to suc- ceed in serving as drainage channels for longitudinal valleys than the reverse.” Rutimeyer therefore believed that, especially along cracks, side streams would cut valleys out across folds, and then having gained an exit themselves, also serve as means of exit to more or less of the main stream occupying the synclinal valley. J. B. Greppin held substantially the same views as Jaccard. A. Heim denied most emphatically that cross valleys are due to cracks left by faulting. Tunnels under the beds of cross valleys have failed to show such faults. Above ground the strata on either side of the cross valleys show perfect agreement. The origin of cross valleys he therefore ascribed to denudation and erosion, the streams cutting their way backwards into the folds. If two such streams cutting their valleys back into the fold should meet, then they would cut through the fold. If the rate of slope on the two sides be dissimilar one valley secures the prestige and turns the stream of the other valley aside into its own channel. O. Peschel again denies the origin of cirques from the erosive action of streams. PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. 26 AUG. 1892. Foerste.J 402 [April 6, M. Bertrand states that various cluses in the vicinity of Morez in the southwestern Jura owe their origin to the existence of horizontal displacements or faults. By this he probably means that such horizontal displacements would give rise to breaks in the barriers formed by the folds, the greatest heights of the folds not being continuous at such faults, but shifted laterally, permitting lower passages of escape between to the waters dammed back by the folds. This idea is more clearly expressed by La Noe and Margerie. A. Philippson conceives the folding of the Jura to have given rise to a series of lakes occupying the synclinal valleys and the split anticlinal combes. The lakes discharged their waters at the lowest points offered by their barriers. Erosion increased the depressions thus formed, and finally gave rise to the cross valleys so characteristic of the Jura river systems, after the formation of which, lakes could no longer exist. La Noe and Margerie restate Philippson’s theory in an amplified and clearer form. Lakes are supposed to be formed behind the folds, their overflow longitudin- ally being prevented by the joining of the folds under acute angles, while lower crests along the folds would determine their place of overflow transversely. The depressions in these folds be- ing considered of orographic nature, it seems natural that they should be repeated in a direction transverse to the trend of the mountains and in several of the adjacent folds. The cases of the Birse and Some are mentioned in illustration of such an origin. The origin of the cluse or cirque at Morez from a horizon- tal fault as exjdained by Bertrand is also more clearly stated and a figure is added illustrating the principles involved. According to this it is unnecessary that the lakes dammed up behind the folds should reach the level of these folds before beginning their over- flow, because by the horizontal displacement of the folds along some fault, a lower horizon is obtained between the disjointed ends, and a smaller accumulation of water is necessary to start the overflow. The authors also show that by the weathering of the tops of the folds and the carriage of the waste materials into the valleys between, both the height of the folds would be diminished, and the relative elevation of the bottom of the valleys increased. The combined result would be to diminish the amount of water necessary to be accumulated before overflow sets in. A. Penck states that many a cluse in the Jura may have been formed by subterranean streams widening their channels until the covering O O 403 [Foerstej broke down and their subterranean valleys became exposed to the open air. 8a. Consideration of the preceding Theories. Faults. — If the cross valleys here considered be due to faults, the presence of the latter has escaped me. The accordance between the strata ex- posed on opposite sides of the cirques , their strike and dip at cor- responding points in the fold, is too great to make faults at all likely. Even where there seems to be a little discordance it is necessary to be very careful, since the strike and dip of any layer at its exposure in the cirque are not necessarily the strike and dip for this layer as far as the center of the cirque. An ex- amination of the strikes and dips of the rocks at various parts of the folds shows that the folds are by no means so regular as one might suppose, but that, although perhaps these Jura folds are the most regular of any known folds of the same magnitude, many changes of strike and dip occur all over the surface of the folds, changes which attract little attention where the fold is known to be continuous, but which are given undue weight when found on either side of the cirques , with their supposed faults. Moreover, the more rapid erosion of the shales has at times given new dips and strikes to the remaining strata, at their terminations in the cirques. It is evident that the farther the corresponding strata are removed on opposite sides of the folds, the greater must be the chance for error. I have therefore paid particular attention to searching for faults where the strata on opposite sides of the cirques approach within a very few feet of each other, but their presence has escaped me. On the contrary, the evidence that the strata on opposite sides of the cirques are in accord seemed suffi- ciently accumulative to warrant the general denial of faulting here. These observations seem so important that the best localities for exemplifying them are here noted, together with other facts of less relevant nature. 8b. Special Account of various Cirques. — (See PI. X.) — The Boujean cirque is more properly a cluse or gorge, with steep sides up to a level of 640 meters above sea. The lower part of the gorge has precipitous walls, and it is very evident that the stream has been rapidly deepening its channel here, and that hence no great age can be assigned to most of the existing valley. Owing to the precipitous walls, beautiful sections are exposed to view in close proximity across the gorge, and still there is no evidence of fault- Foerste.J 404 [April 6, ing. On the other hand, at the north end of this cluse there is marked evidence that the beds are unfraetured ; the rocks which have been fairly horizontal for some distance suddenly dip at an angle of about 50 degrees towards the north, and farther north, where the corresponding strata on opposite sides of the gorge are shown within 100 feet of each other and perfectly in line, the rocks are vertical, and a little farther north, even a little overturned. At the south end of the Pery cirque the rocks on either side ap- proach to within a short distance of each other, their dip is strongly to the south, perhaps 65 degrees, but the strata are perfectly in line. It is necessary at the mouths of cirques to avoid being mis- led by the fact that subsequent erosion may have removed here a certain thickness of strata on one side of the valley, while on the opposite side a smaller amount of erosion may have taken place, and hence a real concordance of strata may have in appearance become discordant. There is every evidence of accordance in this beautiful cirque until the northern mouth is reached when a slight discordance is at once noted. The strata on the west side have a somewhat lower altitude than those on the east side. It is evident that this is caused by several longitudinal faultings on the west side lowering the strata there. These faults are made up on the east side by a single large fault which gave rise to the hill which projects quite a distance north of the line of strike shown by the strata on the west side. The facts here indicate a crack transverse to the fold, but the strict accordance in the strata over the remainder of the cirque at once assigns these facts simply to local causes of limited importance. Between Tavannes and Sonceboz is a cirque whose importance as such does not seem to have been recognized in geological literature. The absence of a stream trav- ersing it and to which its origin or at least its subsequent enlargement might be attributed, was no doubt to large extent the cause of this. Moreover the outlines of this cirque as recorded on the topographical maps, without the marked assistance to the eye given by the rock outcrops which actually exist in nature, do not readily suggest its character as a cirque. And yet the traveller who traverses it on foot at once discerns the similarity to the broader cirques he has seen elsewhere in the Jura, and if he be a geologist he sees at once that an active stream must have once traversed the gorge and must have carried away in its drainage the vast amount of material represented now by the “wind gap” at this point cutting through the fold. At the southern end of this cirque now flows a tiny stream. Beyond its northern end, at the foot of the cliffs the Birse starts out of an opening in the limestone, with sufficient volume at its source to turn a good-sized saw-mill. The Suxe does not run along the bottom of a synclinal valley below the Fabrique d’ebauches south of Sonceboz, but cuts across the southwest corner of a sub- sidiary fold branching off from the Monto fold. A similar sub- sidiary fold seems to exist at the southern end of the Tavannes cirque forming its southeastern wall beyond the point where the north and south road traversing the cirque makes a strong bend to the southwest. Owing to this subsidiary fold the strata seem to be broken up at the southern end of the cirque , so that a crack might be predicated here ; for the strata on the west side, from an east and west course, with steep southerly dip, take a course slightly north of east on entering the gorge leading to the cirque. The strata near the 703.53 meter level in the road, have a north-northwest strike with the dip southwest. However, on the cliffs south and southeast of the 763.39 meter level in the road, the strike is more decidedly east-northeast than on the opposite side of the gorge leading to the cirque , but the dip is ap- parently 70 degrees to the north. A little further north on this east side of the valley, but in the cirque proper, the strata had a low southern dip, perhaps 20 degrees, the dip increasing south- ward. Corresponding facts were not noticed on the west side of the gorge. The facts may warrant the existence of a break here, at the southern end of the gorge, but they seemed to me to suggest rather the existence of a fold, similar to that directly southeast of Sonceboz, which can be more readily detected. The main body of the cirque shows no evidence of faulting ; unfortunately exposures on either side are so far distant from each other as to make correlation difficult. At the northern end of the cirque , however, it is not only certain that there never was a fault but equally certain that there never was a gaping crack, because a wall of strata here extends across the valley and thence up the mountain side without the evidence of a break of any kind. This wall, jnerced by the Roman emperor in order to reduce the grade of the military road traversing this cirque , is still intact above and forms an arch over the road, and is known as the Pierre Pertuis. It alone should be sufficient to Foerste. ] 406 [April 6, throw doubt upon the theory that cirques are located by cracks or faults. No cirque in the Bernese Jura surpasses that of Court in the beauty and symmetry of its development. At its south- ern end the strata are unequally eroded. In the southern part of the cirque , between the 652 and 642.36 meter levels on the road traversing the same, may be seen three courses of rock crossing the stream, and forming part of its bed. Moreover both south and north of the bridge at the 594.79 meter level at the northern end of the cirque the correspondence of the strata on the east and west side of the stream can be readily seen. Now there are several cases in which a break in the continuity of the strata on either side of the stream might be predicated. The best one of these is near the southern end of the cirque. Here, on the west side of the stream at the 980 meter level on the cliff indicated on the topographical map, is a case of fault and thrust in the cliff, especially well shown near the top. On the east side there are also evidences of faultings apparently of a smaller nature ; but there is also quite a fold here for which there is not a parallel in the strata on the west side. In all such cases, how- ever, it must be remarked that when strata on opposite sides of streams are separated from each other several hundred feet by the eroded intermediate valley (and often for several hundred yards near the middle of these cirques ) it is not possible to draw very definite conclusions unless the discordance be very great. For instance in the case just described, the small fold on the east side of the cirque may compensate for part of the faulting and thrusting on the west side, and had the strata appeared in their continuity across the valley, it might appear that the twisting and faulting all took place along the direction parallel to the axis of the fold, but that there was no break transverse to the same. Indeed in any case where the surfaces of strata are exposed over any considerable area it may be readily seen that the strata composing the folds have been subjected to many local irregularities of folding and twisting whose importance must not be magnified. The Moutier cirque , although smaller, is if anything still more charming, at least for the geologist, for here the correspondence of the strata on opposite sides of the valley is not only seen in the field but receives its expression in the excellent published topographical map of this region. There is a marked correspondence of the strata at the south end^ of .892.] 407 [Foerste. this cirque. In several fine cases, strata with marked peculiar- ities approach close to the water’s edge and show an agreement of strike and dip which is very interesting. The above notes, although by no means exhaustive, are still sufficient to illustrate the character and relative weight of the evidence which denies the existence of faults as chief factors in the formation of the Bernese cirques. 8c. Fractures. It is difficult to believe that closed fractures or seams could have had anything to do with the location of cirques , since there are so many of these seams on the mountain sides, and the existing smaller streams traverse them at all angles as if their courses were perfectly independent of the existence of seams. Open cracks or gaping fissures would have offered more ready op- portunity for the location of streams, but if such gaps ever existed it seems curious that each gap should have been deep enough to reach the synclinal valley below, and then to serve as drainage channels. If gaping cracks played such an important part, why should they not be much more frequent in the structure of the Jura Mountains, and why should they not frequently have extended only half way down from the crests of the folds, and still permit their ready detection on careful search. That every gap should have become a transverse connecting water channel seems extremely improbable. Some would have remained as “wind gaps.” The Tavannes cirque might be cited as evidence of such a crack left as a wind gap, but the great erosion there displayed gives rise to a belief that a stream of considerable volume once traversed the same, capable of carrying away the eroded materials. Besides the Pierre Pertuis must ever remain as conclusive evidence that no gaping crack ever existed here. And the rocky bed of the Suxe where this stream dashes through the gorge in the Boujean cirque shows not the slightest evidence of a once gaping crack. On the other hand, the walls forming the gorge still show in places concave depressions upon their sides, far above the stream, places where once the waters of the Suxe had dashed while it was cutting down its channel. Some of these concave depressions look like pot-holes, which under continued erosion have lost the parts nearest the stream’s center, and now appear only in section ; the remainder has all been cut away. However, another view may be taken of the case. If gaping Foerste.] 408 [April 6, cracks ever existed, the streams must at once have occupied the lowest levels of the cracks, and since that time the streams must have been deepening their channels below the lowest points to which the cracks extended ; in that case it would not be likely that any indications of the former gaping cracks could still be found. Geologically it would be difficult to disprove such a theory, no matter how clearly all existing evidences might point to the present non-existence of fractures of any structural import- ance. Considerations of this kind were constantly forcing them- selves upon my mind, and tempting me to believe in theories of fracture, even after I had satisfied myself that there was no evi- dence in favor of this view. 8d. Lowest Points of Outlets for Lakes. (See PI. XI.) It is well known that the bottoms of synclinal valleys usually do not main- tain the same level or preserve the same pitch throughout their entire length. In a similar way the heights of the folds on either side are known to vary. It is readily possible therefore that, where two pitches from opposite sides of the same synclinal valley meet, lakes may accumulate. Should these lakes attain sufficient height, they might overflow at either end, or, in case the elevation were lower, find an exit across some point along one of the folds bounding it on either side. In this second case, an outlet once formed might in the course of time cut out a cross valley of suffi- cient depth to drain the lake, and develop itself into a cirque. There are, however, several reasons why this theory is very im- probable in the case of the Bernese Jura cirques. First. In the case of the Boujean, Court, and Moutier cirques it is evident that there were lower points of outflow than those furnished by the crests of the folds where the cirques now are. Thus the highest point of the synclinal valley northeast of the Boujean cirque is 724 meters. The elevation of fold at tli ^cirque was at least 800 meters, and probably exceeded 900 meters. The highest point in the valley between the Moron and the Graitery fold is 855 meters, while the elevation of the fold at the Court cirque was at least 1,050 meters, and probably much more. The highest point in the valley northwest of the Moutier cirque , be- tween the Roche fold and its Raimeux branch, is 746 meters, while the elevation of the fold at the Moutier cirque was at least 800 meters, and probably exceeded 900 meters. Second. It is inadmissable to suppose that the Court and Moutier cirques could represent lowest points of outflow for lakes, i892.] 409 [Foerste. since both the Graitery and the Raimeux fold pitch strongly to the west at these cirques , and any point whatever toward the west of these cirques (until the highest level between the valleys just mentioned is reached) would represent a lower point of out- flow than the one chosen. Third. It is hardly to be supposed in accordance with this theoiy that the same lake should have cut down two outlets. At quite an early date, geologically, one of the outlets should have gained the advantage over the other, by deepening its channel more rapidly, and then drawing away all the overflow from the other outlet. And yet between Monto and Graitery folds there are three cirques. The Court cirque has already been discussed. The Cremine cirque and Balsthal cirque drain the remainder of this valley. Both, I think, would have found lower outlets across their synclinal barrier on the west than at those points of the folds now cut by the cirques. There is only a very slight barrier between the Raus and Duennern at present, and even a small lake at this point would at once have concealed the same, so that it practically could not have existed during the hypothetical lake period, and yet two deep cuts have been completed, one at the northwestern, the other at the southeastern end of this “lake.” Fourth. Under any such theory the existence of the Tavannes cirque is truly anomalous, considering that the Monto fold forms the drainage divide. It must therefore be concluded that this favorite and simple method of explaining the cirques , while deductively possible, is not actually applicable to the case of the Jura. 8e. Glacial Streams. It is well known that erratic boulders are found on the crests of the more southern of the Bernese Jura folds. It is probable that these were carried here by glaciers and left by the retreating ice. Sub-glacial streams might have cut the cirques crossing the more southern folds, but hardly the Court and more northern cirques , which although in part possibly reached by the ice hardly came under its influence to any marked degree. Even sub-glacial streams, however, would very likely have found more ready egress between the Graitery and Moron folds, than at the great height presented by the Court cirque. 8f. Backward Erosion. The backward erosion of the head- waters of lateral streams carried on until a cut was made across the folds might form the beginning of a cirque. If two such lateral Foerste.J 410 [April 6, streams from opposite points of the same fold should begin cutting, the operation would be still more effective. The deepening of such a cross valley might furnish an outlet to the drainage behind the fold, by “tapping.” The inconspicuous part played by the lateral streams on the sides of Jura folds makes such a theory very improbable. Numerous dry notches or “wind gaps” ought to exist all over the Jura Mountain system, representing this back- ward erosion, in various stages of progress, to bear witness to the method of operation employed in the production of such cirques. While backward erosion has done much at various points along the Bernese Jura, it nevertheless is hardly of sufficient magnitude and frequency to account for the cirques. This theory is particu- larly at fault when the strange grouping of cirques along lines transverse to the folds is observed. Thus the Boujean and Pery cirques , the Sornetan and Undervelier cirques , the Court, Moutier, Roche, and Choindez cirques , lie along certain lines, and it is un- reasonable to suppose that backward erosion should have selected points so intelligently as to bring about these results. 9. Consideration of additional Theories. It has thus been seen that almost all known theories of the origin of cross valleys have been applied at some time or other in the explanation of those of the Jura Mountains ; yet none of them seems entirely satisfactory. But there are two theories that, as far as I am aware, have never been considered in the case of the Jura. Both are intended to explain the origin of cross valleys under certain conditions. The first theory requires that a fold or even only a hard stratum dipping at more or less of an angle should be covered unconform- ably by layers of more recent formations. Streams adapted to the topography offered by the later formations might cut down their channels until they reached the concealed fold or hard stratum beneath. If the erosive power of the stream were suffi- cient, the stream would cut through its barrier before its head branches could be captured by other streams. If the unconform - ably superimposed beds were more or less removed, but the fold or hard stratum beneath resisted erosion well, then, in the course of time, the surrounding and overlying formations would be re- moved from this area, but the river, having already fixed its course in the harder rocks formerly concealed, would retain this channel. The direction of such a superimposed stream would not be given, however, by the beds in which the stream is now running, but by 411 [Foerste. 1892.J the topography of the formation which once covered them. This theory has never been applied to the cirques of the Jura, since the geological conditions required for it were evidently never present : there is no evidence that the folds have ever been un conformably buried and then uncovered. The second theory supposes that a river held the same course antecedent to the folding that it does now, and that during its later history it was able to maintain its course in spite of folding, by cutting down its channel while the fold gradually rose. This second theory, which has been applied with success elsewhere by Major Powell and others, has not received sufficient considera- tion in an explanation of the cross valleys of the Suxe, the Birse, and their tributaries, as the following pages may show. 10. Antecedent Origin of the transverse Streams of the Jura. It seemed at first that if the streams gradually cut across the barrier formed by the rising folds, then there ought to be evidences of this progressive action in gravels at high altitudes on the walls of the cirques and in erosion-benches forming broad curves on either side of the cirques , the lower benches successively of less curva- ture, and all of them representing the levels at which the river stood at various times, during the progress of the folding. It was a great disappointment not to find these direct evidences of the antecedent origin of the streams in the field. It seemed for a time as if the Boujean cirque afforded such bench marks, but the greater part of the fold along this cirque is composed of compara- tively flat-lying strata, and such benches if real prove nothing. Owing to the few shaly members exposed in the lower part of this cirque , it has developed into a narrow gorge, the picturesque Taubenloch, with its steep wooded cliffs, its dashing stream, huge boulders, and numerous pot-holes, some earlier examples of the latter still being obscurely indicated by depressions along the sides of the cliffs above. Although the direct evidence of the progressive erosion of the streams during the rising of the folds is lacking, the sys- tematic arrangement of several series of cirques in straight lines is strongly suggestive of the antecedent origin of their streams. This and the failure of other explanations to meet the facts are the main support of the theory of antecedent origin. The cirques of the region examined that lie in lines transverse to the folds are : — the Boujean and Pery, the Sornetan and Under velier, and Foerste.] 412 [April 6, the Court, Moutier, Roche, and Choindez. Their correlated ar- rangement is so apparent that they must have causal connection ; and as this cannot he sought in lines of fracture, nothing else seems so probable as antecedent streams. The theory of the antecedent origin of the transverse streams does not at all deny the possibility of the formation of lakes of greater or less extent behind the barriers formed by the rising folds as suggested in the earlier pages of this paper. It only ex- plains the origin and position of the cirque s. No doubt at various times the streams along the synclines were turned into swamps and then into shallow lakes owing to such causes, but as cutting proceeded on the anticlines the lakes were again drained, and their presence can now be detected only with difficulty, if at all. The intermediate parts of the drainage connecting the cirques , it is believed, do not represent as a rule the antecedent drainage, but are probably in part shifted courses of the same, or entirely new courses, located during or after the folding, and are there- fore to be regarded as consequent streams. This must espe- cially be true of the synclinal portions of the streams between the cirques , where such exist. 11. The Drainage immediately antecedent to the Folding. Ero- sion, however, did not begin only after the folding had ceased. The first elevation of the land above the level of the sea must have given opportunity for aerial erosion. Et will be remembered from the preceding notes that land conditions had prevailed at various times previous to the folding, and that the existence of streams during these times was inferred. The period immediately preceding the folding, the Oeningen, was a period of fresh- water deposits. During this period some parts of the Bernese Jura were probably dry land, and it is not at all a vague supposition to believe, in accordance with evidence already adduced, that just previous to the period of folding, the Oeningen deposits having ceased forming, land conditions prevailed and that this area was then drained by southward flowing streams. 12. The Effects of Folding on general Antecedent Drainage. The first effects of folding would be to alter somewhat the position of the watersheds between individual streams. Since the processes of folding were probably very gradual, it is not at all necessary to suppose that the streams would at once alter their positions ; they would probably only deepen the channels where necessary in order 413 [Foerste. iMd to maintain their positions. At the same time the more elevated land areas offered greater slopes and invited greater erosion. With increased folding, it must have become less and less possible for the weaker streams to maintain their original ground and so they then must have sought new channels, or must have ceased to exist altogether. The stronger streams might, however, still con- tinue their old courses by cutting down the folds gradually arising across their path. And so it no doubt came to pass that, as fold- ing continued, the slopes offered to erosion became steeper, aerial erosion became more marked, all the weaker and medium streams ceased to exist, and only the largest and strongest streams ran in their old courses by cutting down their gradually rising barriers. Theoretically, this process may go even farther. Folding may take place too rapidly, or the strata brought up by the folds may be too hard, for even the larger streams to cut down their bar- riers synchronously with their elevation. The synclinal regions between the folds may become marshes and then lakes. Still that portion of the old streams which cut across the folds might still remain the most ready outlet for the accumulated drainage and thus the general direction of the largest and strongest streams might be preserved ; but at intermediate points they would be represented by marshes and lakes, and only the connecting chan- nels cut across the folds would remain to represent any part of the drainage which had existed previous to the folding. When the channels across the folds had been cut down sufficiently to drain the lakes and marshes, it is not likely that the submerged channels would be sought out again. Covered by lacustrine deposits their history has ceased. This was probably the history of some of the Bernese Jura rivers, as will be seen in the latter part of this paper. Owing to unequal folding, unequal resistance to erosion, or the influence of the new drainage systems developed during folding, it is, however, by no means certain that those portions of the old channels which still remained in existence would still be occupied by rivers flowing in the old direction. The direction of drainage through these channels might be reversed, or their history as drainage channels might even cease, and these beds of streams which had existed previous to the folding might remain only as “wind gaps.” 13. Division of the Jura Drainage by recent Warping. It is be- Foerste.] 414 f April 6, lieved, therefore, that the various cirques of the Bernese Jura represent parts of an antecedent drainage, and that this drain- age during a large part of the period of folding was towards the south. This southward drainage will readily be admitted for the Suxe river through its Pery and Boujean cirques ; less readily perhaps for the Birse and its branches, through their various cirques , where such an interpretation requires an inverted drain- age. Aside from the fact that the last deposits before folding, the Oeningen conglomerates, indicate a southward drainage, the Tavannes cirque it is believed also furnishes evidence of south- ward drainage until a much more recent date, as the following remarks will show. In the Pery cirque the Suxe has a quite level bed until it reaches the mill directly east of Rondchatel, about two thirds of its way through the cirque ; beyond this it has quite rapid de- scents to the mouth of the gorge. Thence to the beginning of the Boujean cirque the stream has a comparatively level bed. This remains true for some distance into the gorge, but along the middle, the descents are rapid, and towards the southern end the flow is tumultuous, and the rough dashings and whirlings of the stream are the main features in the picturesqueness of the Taubenloch. Now the Tavannes cirque presents a similar con- figuration. From the Pierre Pertuis northward the descents are rapid. From the same locality southwards to a point a little more than one fourth of the way across the fold, there is a slight rise, the result largely of recent drainage backwards through the Pierre Pertuis, helped probably in great part by Roman shovels or their equivalent. Then there is a quite level stretch, as far as the house in the cirque. After this the valley descends, at first gradually, then more rapidly, until at its southern end, where the valley turns strongly to the west, the descents are quite rapid. The configuration of the valley bottom in the Tavannes cirque therefore is analogous to those of the Pery and Boujean cirques and indicates a southward drainage through the cirque. The present stream at its south end is altogether too small to have done all the cutting and carrying implied by the cirque. It required a larger stream to carry away all the debris to which the formation of such a cirque must have given rise, and such a stream must have collected its waters from a greater area than that pre- sented by the cirque. In other words, the stream must have 415 [Foerste. i89i.J arisen on the north side of the fold. At present, of course, this could not be the case since the land north of the fold lies at a considerably lower level than that at the highest part of the cross valley. This, however, is very likely due to subsequent more rapid erosion and degradation of the softer strata in the valley between the Monto and Moron folds, with their large drainage area, than along the Tavannes cirque , after it ceased to be occu- pied by a stream. The work accomplished by the Birse and Suxe and their tribu- taries seems tremendous and almost inconceivable if all the folds are supposed to have arisen simultaneously. It is probable, how- ever, that folding began along the southern margin of the Jura territory, and that folding was there already in progress while farther north the land as yet showed no signs of folding but re- tained its original southern slope. As these southern folds in- creased in size additional folds must have been successively added towards the north, and thus the southern cirques might have been in a fairly advanced stage of development before some of the more northern folds had even reached their incipient stages of formation. After the cirques had been formed, it may be inferred that the entire Bernese Jura area, with all its folds and valleys as mere surface features, was subjected to warping on a large scale, and thus the very broad and low anticline was formed which dis- turbed the general southward drainage at various points along the Jura folds, cutting off along its crest the headwaters of the southward flowing persistent streams, and inverting these head- waters into a northward flowing drainage system. In the case of the drainage here discussed, the Tavannes cirque must have lain near the crest of this low and comparatively recent anticline. 14. Streams consequent on the Folding. Thus far, little atten- tion has been given to anv but the transverse streams of the cirques. The new drainage channels, whose directions w^ere de- termined by the new inclinations given by the processes of fold- ing, may now be considered. They will be here called initial consequent streams. Of these there are two kinds : longitudinal or synclinal streams, following the valleys between the folds, and lateral or cataclinal streams, running down the sides of the folds. The first are the chief valleys of the region ; the second are in- conspicuous. Both kinds are abundantly represented in the Jura Foerste.J 416 • f April 6, drainage system, somewhat advanced in their development since so many hundred meters of Cretaceous and Tertiary strata must have been eroded from the crests, flanks, and even in many cases from the valleys. Indeed, it can hardly be asserted that all of the present synclinal and cataclinal streams had their origin at the time of the folding. Since then, many streams having the same general direction have probably replaced each other. 15. Sub-consequent Drainage. As the antecedent and conse- quent streams denude the folded surface, the outcropping edges of weak strata are exposed, and valleys are developed along the strike of these strata, by the headward erosion of branch streams. Such streams will here be called sub-consequent. There are very few of the smaller streams of the Jura whose courses have not been in part modified by subsequently exposed structural features. Many streams are sub-consequent along the upper parts of their courses, where they occupy valleys cut in the softer rocks along the flanks of the folds, bounded on the side towards the synclinal valley by some harder and more resisting stratum : these are monoclinal sub-consequent streams. Their lower courses may be lateral cataclinal streams, of earlier strictly consequent origin. Others occupy the crests of the folds and are then anticlinal sub-consequents. Both may be formed by the headwaters of some lateral stream cutting down deep enough into the flanks of a fold to gain entrance to some quite soft stratum, and then cutting laterally and undermining the overlying strata in a direction more or less parallel to the axis of the fold. Such streams are also common in the Jura Mountains, and are thus explained by La Roe and Margerie. The natives of the Jura are keen observers of topography and have a local word for anti- clinal sub-consequent valleys ; they are called combes. 16. Combes. Many writers have regarded combes as valleys originating in long cracks following the trend of the folds, and have considered these cracks as due to the splitting open of the rocks during folding. This belief finds its expression by J. Thurmann, and most subsequent writers ^although L. Rutimeyer admitted that aerial denudation alone might be sufficient to start combes. A. Heim says that in the upper strata of a fold fractures may have opened, but these would not extend to deeper strata subjected to greater pressure from superincumbent weight, and hence more plastic. Foerste.J 416 • fApril 6, drainage system, somewhat advanced in their development since so many hundred meters of Cretaceous and Tertiary strata must have been eroded from the crests, flanks, and even in many cases from the valleys. Indeed, it can hardly be asserted that all of the present synclinal and cataclinal streams had their origin at the time of the folding. Since then, many streams having the same general direction have probably replaced each other. 15. Sub-consequent Drainage. As the antecedent and conse- quent streams denude the folded surface, the outcropping edges of weak strata are exposed, and valleys are developed along the strike of these strata, by the headward erosion of branch streams. Such streams will here be called sub-consequent. There are very few of the smaller streams of the Jura whose courses have not been in part modified by subsequently exposed structural features. Many streams are sub-consequent along the upper parts of their courses, where they occupy valleys cut in the softer rocks along the flanks of the folds, bounded on the side towards the synclinal valley by some harder and more resisting stratum : these are monoclinal sub-consequent streams. Their lower courses may be lateral cataclinal streams, of earlier strictly consequent origin. Others occupy the crests of the folds and are then anticlinal sub-consequents. Both may be formed by the headwaters of some lateral stream cutting down deep enough into the flanks of a fold to gain entrance to some quite soft stratum, and then cutting laterally and undermining the overlying strata in a direction more or less parallel to the axis of the fold. Such streams are also common in the Jura Mountains, and are thus explained by La Hoe and Margerie. The natives of the Jura are keen observers of topography and have a local word for anti- clinal sub-consequent valleys ; they are called combes. 16. Combes. Many writers have regarded combes as valleys originating in long cracks following the trend of the folds, and have considered these cracks as due to the splitting open of the rocks during folding. This belief finds its expression by J. Thurmann, and most subsequent writers ; although L. Xiiitimeyer admitted that aerial denudation alone might be sufficient to start combes. A. Heim says that in the upper strata of a fold fractures may have opened, but these would not extend to deeper strata subjected to greater pressure from superincumbent weight, and hence more plastic. FOERSTE, BERNESE JURA Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., Vol. XXV. Plate XI. EOERSTE, BERNESE JURA. 417 [Foerste. 1S92.J So much has been eroded from the tops and flanks of the folds that it is difficult at the present time to state what happened during folding. It is certain that there is no evidence at the present time of open cracks along the crests of the folds, in their present state of denudation. At the beautiful cross-sections pro- vided by the cirques no such longitudinal open cracks could be observed. Such cracks, however, may have existed at an earlier stage of the history of Jura folding. In these cracks streams may have been located, but it is certain that subsequent denuda tion has in that case cut down below the level to which the cracks extended, and has enlarged the original open cracks into broad valleys. If, however, it be remembered that the Cretaceous strata which once capped the Bernese Jura folds are softer and were prob- ably more plastic than the Jurassic, and that the Tertiary strata were still more plastic, it seems more probable that the upper strata managed to accommodate themselves to the curvatures pro- duced by folding in the lower strata, without the intervention of open ruptures. Still the existence of cracks in these more recent strata, now removed from the folds, cannot be denied. 17. Capturing of Streams. In the backward erosion of the headwaters of a stream it is evident that one stream may often tap the other at various points along its course, and turn all the waters above this point of tapping into its own channel. This may have occurred in case of some of the Jura streams, but the evidence of such capturing in the Bernese Jura is not suffi- ciently clear, or the observations in the field were not extended enough, to bring to light unequivocal typical cases. Possibly the head waters of the Raus south of the Cremine cirque may represent such a case of capture. This would not agree well with some of the views previously expressed since in that case the formation of the Cremine cirque would probably have to be ascribed in large part to backward erosion and not to antecedent streams. 18. Summary. The chief streams of the Bernese Jura follow consequent synclinal valleys for the most part ; but they fre- quently pass from one synclinal valley to another by transverse cirques , which seem to be persistent courses of streams that flowed here antecedent to the folding of the region. The general PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. 27 Aug. 1892. Davis.] 418 [April 6, transverse drainage was probably southward when the folding was begun and so continued till it was nearly completed ; but a broad up-arching of the middle district in relatively late time seems to have broken the drainage in two, and reversed the northern part to a northward course. The smaller valleys are partly cut by cataclinal consequent streams, and are partly etched out on the strike of the weaker strata by sub-consequent monoclinal or anticlinal streams. Supplementary Note : on the drainage of the Pennsylvania APPALACHIANS, BY WILLIAM M. DAVIS. The choice of the subject of Mr. Foerste’s essay, the Drain- age of the Bernese Jura, was made chiefly at my suggestion, in order to test the validity of a certain postulate that I had adopted, several years ago, in a discussion on the origin of the rivers and valleys of Pennsylvania. The postulate, accepted without special examination from the writings of several European authors, was briefly to the effect that the rivers of the Jura Mountains were essentially of consequent origin; that is, their courses were chosen in accordance with the form given to that region by the folding that it has suffered. This view was based upon the observation that certain transverse valleys cutting across the anticlinal ridges of the Jura were located as if they had been the outlines of lakes held in the adjacent syn- clinal basins or troughs, their position being determined by the lowest point of the surrounding anticlinal rim. An illustration of the evidence for this conclusion is given by La Noe and Margerie, which seemed convincing ; but judging by the obser- vations of Mr. Foerste, this illustration is not of general appli- cation. The postulate was employed in my discussion upon the rivers and valleys of Pennsylvania in order to support the pro- visional assumption there made as to the original course of the rivers in the Pennsylvania Appalachians, when those mountains were young. It appeared to be possible to bring about the present river courses from the assumed original course by a series of natural, spontaneous adjustments of the rivers among them- selves ; but the result of Mr. Foerste’s study, both on the maps, here in Cambridge, and on the ground, in Switzerland, has been completely to contradict the correctness of the accepted postu- 1892.] 419 [Davis. late, and thus to throw much doubt on the assumption concern- ing the original courses ot' the Pennsylvania rivers. The longi- tudinal streams of the Jura appear to be truly consequent noon the folding, but the transverse streams are in most cases dis- tinctly not consequent, and are apparently antecedent. This result is of interest in itself, as a product of the most careful and critical study of the drainage of the Bernese Jura that I have yet seen. It appears to me to have an especial value in being reached on the ground by one familiar with the general natural history of rivers and their peculiar methods of develop- ment, as well as with the structure and deformations of moun- tains. Other writers have suggested explanations for the Jura streams, but none have so carefully examined all possible sug- gestions and carried their conclusions so far towards demonstra- tion as lias Mr. Foerste. But the bearings of his conclusion on my previous work have naturally a particular interest; for me. In their light it is necessary to withdraw the assumption that, the Appalachian streams were necessarily consequent upon the structure of the mountains when the mountains were young. They may have been, and valid arguments may be advanced to show that for the most part they probably were ; but the drain- age of the Jura can no longer be adduced in support of the view that no antecedent rivers survived the Appalachian folding. That the Pennsylvania drainage was originally consequent ap- pears to me still probable, chiefly because the deformation of the Appalachians was so much stronger than that of the Jura. It is not, however, essential to the argument that I pursued in the study of the Pennsylvania rivers to assume that the initial rivers there were of consequent location ; and it is to emphasize this point that I have prepared this note. The problem as it now appears to me stands in this position : the present courses of the streams have a very specialized relation to the structures that they flow over. This specialized relation involves a series of pe- culiar adjustments for its production. Then, whatever the orig- inal location of the rivers, it follows that whether they were consequent or antecedent, their present courses cannot be ex- plained as the persistence of their ancient original courses, but can find explanation only by regarding them as having changed from their original positions in the process of adjusting themselves to the structures over which they run. Hence, while the safety of Davis.J 420 [April 6, the fundamental assumption made in my earlier essay is weak- ened, it still appears to me reasonable to regard the existing rivers as the product of adjustment of stream to structure. I would not regard this conclusion in the light of a demonstration, but rather as a conclusion that gives reasonable explanation to various striking peculiarities exhibited by the rivers. The most manifest exception to this explanation is in the case of the Sus- quehanna, a short distance above Harrisburg, where it crosses two pairs of synclinal ridges, formed by the hard Carboniferous sandstone. This peculiarity in its course was regarded in my essay as a departure from an adjusted location on adjacent softer beds, produced by superimposition after the ridges had been baselevelled, and thinly covered with flood-plain or estuarine deposits, late in Cretaceous time : and certain special features of some of the Susquehanna tributaries were instanced in further support of this rather far-fetched hypothesis. In the light of Mr. Foerste’s paper, however, it may be now better to regard the Susquehanna above Harrisburg as a long surviving antecedent stream, while only the smaller rivers maybe properly regarded as adjusted in their courses. The further discussion of this special division of the problem will involve a more carelul examination of the Susquehanna branches to discover if they surely indicate superimposition through Cretaceous flood-plaining as I have already supposed, and also an examination of other similar rivers, such as the Delaware and the Potomac, to see if they and their branches also show the same peculiarities. This examina- tion I hope to undertake in the not distant future. Mention may be made in this connection of the results obtained by my co- worker, Mr. R. DeC. Ward, from a study of some small branches of the Delaware above Trenton, which appear to confirm the belief that flood-plained streams deflect their tributaries mouth- wards, as first announced I believe by Lombardini ; and that streams thus affected may retain their deflection even after eleva- tion, by which they are allowed to cut down through the flood - plain cover and thus superimpose themselves on the buried structures beneath. Although of small size, these streams serve to illustrate the process suspected in the somewhat larger tribu- taries of the Susquehanna, but the flood-plaining examined by Mr. Ward was of Tertiary date ; not Cretaceous, as supposed by me in the case of the Susquehanna. lS92.j 421 [Hartwell. April 20, 1892. President G. L. Goodale in the chair. One hundred and twenty-one persons present. Mr. W. A. Jeffries, for the Committee on the nomination of officers for 1892-93 presented a report. The President announced the award by the Council of the Walker Grand Honorary Prize to Prof. James Dwight Dana of New Haven for distinguished services in natural history. The amount awarded was one thousand dollars. The election of Miss Ida S. Hainmerle, Messrs. F. S. Hollis and J. G. Jack, and Miss Jennie M. Jackson as Corporate Mem- bers was announced. The following papers were read by title : — Fusion of hands, by Thomas Dwight ; An embryological bibliog- raphy, by Charles S. Minot. Dr. John Murray of Edinburgh gave an account of some of his recent investigations into the physical and biological conditions of the lochs and fiords of the west of Scotland. Mr. G. II. Barton sketched the distribution of drumlins in Massachusetts. The number already mapped exceeds 1,100. The following paper was read : — THE PEARL HILL POT-HOLE. BY E. ADAMS HARTWELL. A continuous ledge of mica schist may be traced through the easterly part of Fitchburg, Mass. It is broken in three places by as many water courses : the Nashua River at the southern portion, Falulah Brook about midway, and Lord’s Brook at the northern extremity. Beginning at the south, its various elevations are known as Mt. Elam, Hale Hill, Mt. Vernon, Pearl Hill, and Rat- tlesnake Ledges ; the greater portion of the latter, however, are in Ashby. The strike is not far from the true geographical meridian, and the dip does not vary much from 45° to the west, except near Rollstone from Hale Hill, where the dip of the strata gradually in- creases, until it is nearly, if not quite, vertical, rendered so by the ejection of Rollstone granite between the strata. Hartwell.] 422 [April 20, Pearl Hill is situated from two and one half to three miles from the railroad station. As we approach, its steep sloping sides covered with pasturage are noticeable, and, at the summit, nine hundred and eighty feet high, the sharp outcrop of the strata is known as “The Peak.” The Peak is destitute of soil, hut just beyond it, owing to the grass and shrubbery, the outcrop is lost to view ; it reappears in bolder proportions further on. The carriage road leads along the eastern base of the hill ; a broad valley lies on the right, while on the left the cliffs rise to the height of one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five feet, either perpendicularly, or assuming the form of gigantic steps. Following the carriage road for three fourths of a mile we reach the top of a ridge at a place called “High Rock,” one of the two highest points of Pearl Hill, the other being about midway be- tween High Rock and The Peak. The one thousand foot con- tour line of the U. S. Geological Survey surrounds both. These points constitute the highest land in Fitchburg, with the exception of Brown Hill some three miles directly west and more than 1,180 feet high. The western side of Pearl Hill is far different from the precipi- tous eastern side. Its slopes conform to the angle of the dip, until they reach Falulah Brook, which is from three hundred and fifty to five hundred feet lower than the summit of Pearl Hill. What is true of the two sides of this hill is also true of the eastern and western sides of Mt. Vernon and Mt. Elam. Retracing our footsteps one fourth of the way from High Rock to The Peak, we can see from the roadway the boulder con- taining the pot-hole ; to the east is the valley three hundred and fifty feet lower than the highest points of Pearl Hill ; on the west is the debris from the ledge and the decay of leaves and trunks of trees, rising at the inclination which such debris assumes, so as to cover nearly half the altitude of the ledge : the length of this in- ch hundred feet. Above this debris the mica schist rises in three irregular steps. The rise and tread average about fifteen feet. The boulder lies fifty-five feet up this incline ; its length is fifteen feet, leaving thirty feet between it and the first step. In general form the boulder is pyramidal. From a triangular base, each side of which is almost six feet, it enlarges so as to have, six feet from the base, a lateral width of from eight to ten feet* the sides tapering to a point,, 423 [Hartwell. 1892.J All the other boulders on Pearl Hill are of granite ; this is of mica schist ; it has the cross-shaped crystals of staurotide, which the ledge contains : and the triangular base shows a stratification similar to that of the ledge. Upon the supposition that this boulder was from the ledge above it, search was made for the locality it once occupied and the contour of the first step gives conclusive evidence of its former rest- ing place, which is not far from nine hundred and seventy-five feet above sea level ; in addition to the contour just to the north there are the lateral remnants of two other pot-holes, which time has almost obliterated. The apex of the boulder now points eastward, i. e. away from the ledge. The position of the strata, as well as the excavation whence it came, indicates that the apex must have pointed toward the north : in other words it has turned quarter way round in its journey from its former to its present resting place, a distance of some sixty feet (twenty-five feet vertical). The pot-hole is situated near the apex of the boulder. Its|di- mensions are as follows : At the top its diameter is ten inches, which gradually increases, so that in the course of twelve and one half inches it is fourteen inches in diameter. It then narrows to nine inches in diameter in the course of two and one half inches, which diameter it retains for the remainder of its depth, which is nine inches* The whole depth is jtwo’[feet and the last three Hartwell.] 424 [April 20, inches are unbroken. Water freezing inside has removed the rock from one side of it. This fragment has not been found ; it may be buried in the debris. And now comes the question as to the water which made the pot-hole. The streams around Pearl Hill at the present time are : first, Lord’s Brook, on the north, a considerable stream, flowing between Pearl Hill and Rattlesnake Ledges, in a valley 400 to 500 feet lower than the top of Pearl Hill; secondly, Falulah Brook, a larger stream, flowing in a valley on the west, 350 feet lower than the summit of Pearl Hill. Between Pearl Hill and Mt. Vernon the valley is 500 feet lower than the summit. Rattlesnake Ledges are at present 800 feet high, and Mt. Ver- non is 760 feet, which makes Pearl Hill from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet higher than any hill in the immediate vicinity. When five or six years ago this pot-hole was first found by mem- bers of the Agassiz Association their first and natural conclusion was that these streams had formed it. But this conclusion was abandoned after more diligent study and closer observation made upon the ledges. Our study convinced us that these streams must have flowed over Pearl Hill hundreds of thousands or mil- lions of years ago : for if a foot is eroded in 5,000 years, as is well established by experiments, simple multiplication will give the time it has taken to erode the present valleys. Observation shows that the mica schist is so soft and easily crumbled that this pot-hole would have been entirely eroded dur- ing this period of time. Observation also shows that where these streams flow over the mica schist, either as rapids or with a verti- cal descent, there are no pot-holes being eroded as fast as made, e. g ., Crystal Falls, on Lord’s Brook, a vertical descent of six feet ; Scott’s Falls, which consist of two falls ; while three fourths of a mile below Scott’s Falls, where the stream flows over granite in rapids and falls of two or three feet, we meet with several pot-holes and other oblong excavations. It becomes necessary, therefore, to look to a more recent period for the formation of this pot-hole. It is a well-known fact that streams form on the surface of a glacier and plunging into some crevasse form a cylindrical hole, called moulin, and the descent of water down this moulin would produce a pot-hole in the rock beneath. In this manner this pot-hole was formed, and the work 1892.] 425 [Annual Meeting. of the geological agencies during the lapse of time since the glacial epoch, which took place in very recent times, has partially eroded it. Considering all the testimony for and against the formation of this pot-hole by the present streams and those of the glacial period, the weight of evidence is in favor of the latter, which de- cision adds one more Pot-hole, or Giant’s Kettle, or Indian Pot, to the list already found and described. Annual Meeting, May 4, 1892. President G. L. Goodale in the chair. Sixty- three persons present. The following reports were presented : — Report of the Curator, Alpheus Hyatt. Having had occasion during the year to draw up a brief account of the work done by the Society since 1870 it has been suggested to me that it would be of sufficient interest to the members to justify its incorporation in the annual report. In order to answer the question, “ What has been accomplished in the management of the Boston Society of Natural Plistory since 1870,” one must first know what was the actual condition of the Museum and Society at that date, and also the conditions sur- rounding and necessarily governing the policy of the Society. I shall omit the history of the library and publications because they had been brought to such a stage of development by Mr. Samuel H. Scudder that they have continued practically un- changed during this period, and also the history of the meetings, the center of all the social and scientific functions of the Society as such, which were in full play before Mr. Scudder came into office, and have remained in effective working condition up to the present time. The Museum in 1870 had, however, been left far in the back- ground by the development of these two divisions, and it was essential that it should receive more attention and be brought up to a level with them. It was found by the Curator, after his election as Custodian, that the Society had no settled policy and no written plan of or- ganization, and his first work was to make a plan based upon work already done and following the lines of policy indicated bv the history and existing surroundings of the Society. This plan Annual Meeting'.] 426 [May 4, having been written and tried for a year was subsequently adopted by the Council and is published in the report for 1871. It suf- fices here to say that all departments of the Society were included, and their relations to each other, and the relations of the Society to neighboring institutions, were also considered. Our position with reference to the Museum of Comparative Zoology was the most important and in reality a governing factor in the policy advocated and finally adopted. Prof. Louis Agassiz was striving, with what was then the most potent influence in the United States, to build up a grand national museum at Cambridge. It was evidently as useless as it would have been wasteful for the Society to adopt a parallel and inevi- tably rival course. It was obvious that an attempt to build up a museum similar to that at Cambridge would eventually over- burden and either ruin the Society as such, or oblige it to dispose of its Museum, as had been done by many European societies, to the city or some other corporation. Its trust funds required it to keep a free public museum, and it was in considering how to do this safely and consistently with its past history and the environ- ment that the Curator was led to recommend the policy that was finally adopted in 1871. We therefore took the only road open to us, that of getting up a large educational collection and devot- ing ourselves also to the accumulation of a New England collec- tion of all the native natural history products. The collections, with some notable exceptions, were then in the hands of young men some of whom were changed at every annual election and all of whom were working without remuneration. Most of the older members who had built up the different collections had withdrawn from active participation in the work of the Museum because of the increasing pressure of professional duties and other causes, and some of the collections, that had been got together by their care and personal efforts during the earlier years of the Society’s existence, consisting of preparations in alcohol and dried specimens, had either suffered severely or been wholly destroyed. No one could be held personally accountable for these losses. They were the inevitable results of a defective system of admin- istration, and the blanks thus left had to be filled in with new accessions. The New England collections which did not exist, except to a very slight extent in some departments, had to be made. The 427 [Annual Meeting. 1893.1 greatest practical obstacle, however, was the rearrangement of the different departments in proper sequence in accordance with the then newly introduced theory of evolution. This had at that time never been attempted in any museum and was declared by Agassiz to be foolish and by Wyman to be desirable but probably impracticable. The results are well-known to members of the Society. All the collections have been added to and built up to efficient proportions, they are all placed in approximately natural sequence in a series of departments, and each one has acquired additional and altogether novel value from this mode of arrange- ment. Some years ago Secretary Herzog of Prussia, and lately Doctor Reuscli of Norway, both holding high official positions in the bureaus of education in their respective countries and well acquainted with foreign institutions, spent several hours inspect- ing the Museum and gave unstinted praise to the novelty and efficiency of the method of arrangement. Professor (foode, Di- rector of the National Museum, and the late Professor Baird, both experts of high standing in Museology, have reviewed the collec- tions and expressed themselves in similar terms. The Educational series, including the exhibits in the departments of Mineralogy, Geology, Botany, Synoptical Zoology, Osteology, and Paleon- tology, is used continually by teachers and students of natural history, and its efficiency is thus constantly demonstrated. The cataloguing of the specimens in all departments is practi- cally complete up to date in all collections except insects and worms, and final reports have been made upon nine departments. Three collections have been finished and illustrated by treatises which are really text books containing the results of much original research. A general guide giving a view of the principles upon which the Museum is arranged has been published and the guide to the Synoptic collections is now in preparation. The special printed guides are intended to be permanent contributions to knowledge illustrated by the collections of the different depart- ments. They are manuals of such a character that they can be of use to students in the Boston University, Institute of Tech- nology, and even to teachers of natural history in schools of all grades. These are founded upon more or less original investiga- tion, they take years of special study and preparation for their completion, and can only be produced after each department has been brought to a certain standard of perfection requiring the Annusl Meeting.] 428 [May 4( expenditure of a considerable sum of money. The completion of these books being, therefore, a matter of time and money, it became evident that something should be done to make the Mu- seum useful to visitors while they were preparing. Through the generosity of a Boston lady this difficulty has been tempo- rarily met by maintaining an educated ^roung man as guide in the Museum on public days. He delivers several peripatetic lectures on each public day during the summer and on favorable days in winter, taking parties through the Museum free of charge and at stated hours. A movement is now being started to obtain means for putting the necessary heating apparatus into the Museum free of expense to the Society, so that the work of the guide may not suffer interruption during the coldest part of the year. The duties of the guide have assumed greater importance with each succeeding year in spite of the drawbacks arising from the frequent changes that have been made. There have been four different occupants of the office since it was originated in the year 1888, and each one of these men had to be drilled and taught before he could act as guide. The appointment of any one as guide to the Museum seemed to be a signal for the advent of more tempting offers of employment from other quarters. In order to carry out the design fully it is obvious that we shall have to make this position desirable and permanent by means of a sufficient salary. The obstacles in our way at present are simply of a pecuniary nature and will doubtless be overcome by persistent effort. The importance and novelty of this mode of making the col- lections useful have been explained in former annual reports and it is believed that this is the only existing public museum in which an educated man is systematically working in this way. The growing importance of the department demands recognition, and the report made by Mr. Grabau has been introduced into this annual report under the title of ‘■‘Teaching in the Museum.” Provi- sions for such lectures were made in the final paragraph of the original plan of organization, and it may therefore be said that the last step proposed in that plan has been successfully begun, and thus all of its propositions have been proved to be practi- cable. The Museum is not a large one but its present excellence has been affected with all the drawbacks attending a small income, at 429 [Annual Meeting-, 1S92.] present only about $300 per year, plus its own earnings, and the small paid staff of two assistants, one of these on half time. The finishing of the mineralogical and geological collection re- quired, however, a considerable sum, probably about six thousand dollars exclusive of the printing of the guide to mineralogjr. The guide to the geological collections is now in press, and is printed by private donation and subscription. The greatest dif- ficulty has been to obtain specimens ; this was overcome in large measure by the solicitation of donations, the personal exertions of the assistant and the Curator, and considerable has come from the Teachers’ School of Science and the department for the sale of geological specimens.1 The New England department consists of widely separated collections ; the minerals of New England are in the mineralogical department, the rocks in the geological department, and so on. It is hoped that in course of time either in this building or some other, these may be brought to- gether, to form by themselves a series capable of exhibiting to a visitor all the natural history of New England. We are ready for this move now and can immediately fill a suite of rooms with such an exhibit. We have also in course of preparation by Mr. Crosby, an ex- position of the geology of Boston and its vicinity ; this embodies the results of a large amount of original work and would of itself fill one room. Most of these collections are now stored in rooms A to J inclusive. There is besides the collections included in Educational series and New England series, another series of Systematic collections, all of which have been labeled and cata- logued, and are kept in good condition by constant inspection and care. These are included in the gallery of room J and floors of rooms Iv and N together with certain parts of the New Eng- land collections. 1 This has been discontinued during the past year. It was allowed a place in our building in 1880 in order that Professor Crosby should be able to supply teachers with suites of specimens illustrating his Science Guide. It has continued this work effectively since that date and the objects of the Teachers’ School of Science have been materially promoted through this means. It has also helped us to support several students and assistants whose work has been of direct benefit to the Museum and to the Society. Nevertheless its proper development could not be attained while carried on in an unused part of our basement and this consideration, with the fact that the room would shortly be needed for our own occupancy, caused its removal into the hands of Mr. Geo. B. Frazar of West Medford. Annual Meeting.] 430 [May 4, The collection of Ornithology occupies all the galleries of rooms K to N and the main gallery of the third floor. This last con- sists of about eighteen thousand mounted birds and skins. We had received most of these before 1870, but they were stored in defective cases and were in such condition that it not only required several years constant work before the insects that infested them could be exterminated, but a new mode of building cases and new fastenings for the sash doors had to be invented before the results of this work could be secured. Even now constant vigilance is essential for their safe keeping. Co-operation with the Institute of Technology began imme- diately after the Curator came into office and has continued to the present time. The Institute of Technology has only small col- lections of its own for the teaching of mineralogy, geology, paleontology, botany, comparative anatomy, and zoology, and its students use our collections and our library. Co-operation with the Boston University began in 1876 and has also continued to the present date. We have rendered important service both to the Boston Uni- versity and to the Institute of Technology, and the history of these two institutions shows this fact. The Annisquam Laboratory was supported by the Woman’s Educational Association and the personal exertions of the Cura- tor and Mr. Van Vleck during the summers of seven successive years and was then discontinued and all its influence used for the foundation of the now successful Biological Laboratory at Wood’s Holl. The Teachers’ School of Science, which was started in 1871, through its direct teachings and publications has made us the headquarters of the teachers and others interested in introducing the sciences of natural history into the public schools, and it is hoped that it also, may become the nucleus of a new institution. Definite movements in this direction have been going on for several years and are now in progress. The Teachers’ School of Science has a very complicated problem to solve and it has taken many years to get it into a position in which the foundation of a permanent institution could be considered by the proper class of persons. Our Museum has incidentally received considerable donations of specimens from the School and it has helped to introduce to us a large circle of persons living in Boston and in 431 [Annual Meeting-, 1892,] all the towns of Eastern Massachusetts. It is at present sup- ported entirely by Mr. Lowell and managed by him and the Curator. In estimating the value of co-operation with the Boston Univer- sity, the Institute of Technology, the Teachers’ School of Science, and the part we took in the foundation of the Wood’s Holl Laboratory, it can be shown that they have not only made influential friends in all branches of education but that they may be made useful in many ways. The history of these connections and that of the origin and conduct of the Geological and Natural History Survey of this State, in the earlier years of our existence, testify to the continual and effectual work done by this Society for the public service of education, not only in the city of Boston but throughout the state of Massachusetts. The record of public activity that has been made in these different con- nections and in the educational function and work of the Museum, and also our most recent effort to found Aquarial and Zoological Gardens, will some day be of great material value. They can be effectively used whenever desired as a claim to the support of the Government of the State, the City Government, and the public in general, and have given us a reputation that will gain a favorable hearing. It is safe to assert that no similar institution in the United States, Canada, or Europe can produce a better record . With regard to the future use of these influences, it ought to be said that, while the time does not seem to have come which would be favorable for this purpose, it is approaching. There are causes now at work which may at any time oblige us to make an appeal to the legislature, the city, or the public, or to all three at once. We are fully prepared for this step and farther than this our Museum can accommodate itself to any change that may be considered necessary. We can continue in our present building with limited collec- tions, and do effective work with our Museum without crowding upon or interfering with the social and scientific functions of the Society as such, or we can move into a new building and become a large municipal museum without materially altering the plan of arrangement of the different departments. The possibility of this last mentioned change has been foreseen and provided for. The Educational and New England series of Annual Meeting.] 432 [May 4, collections can be removed into another building and the arrange- ment remain practically the same. Each of the departments in the Systematic series, except the collection of birds which is already large enough and the Mollusca which is very nearly large enough for the purposes of a great museum, would require only to be expanded. No change in the order of their succession would be desirable. Great faunal collections, outside of New England, do not exist in the Society’s Museum, and should never be built up, as long as those at Cambridge are maintained in their present extent and perfection, and they have been omitted from the plan of our arrangement on this account. Part of the results attained during the past official year has been included in these retrospective remarks, and noting the omission of these, we can now pass on to the usual record of the work done during that time. Permission to visit and study in the Museum on days when the public is not admitted has been granted to thirty-eight teachers representing thirty-seven schools and six hundred and seventy- two pupils. This increase is so large, being nearly three times as great as the records of last year, that it suggests possible errors in the mode of keeping the entries, but allowing for all of these a margin of nearly one third, the fact remains that the num- bers of teachers and their pupils brought to this Museum in an official way have doubled within the past two years. The rooms and collections have been used as in times past by the officers and pupils of the Institute of Technology and Boston University. The staff of the Museum remains the same as during the past year, with the exception of the addition of one person, Mrs. E. D. Ramsay, who has had the care of the collection of microscopy and has done considerable work upon them, which is reported upon under the appropriate heading. The acknowledgment of our obligations to Miss J. M. Arms, Mrs. E. D. Ramsay, Miss E. 13. Boardman, Mr. John Cum- mings, Mr. C. B. Cory, and Dr. R. T. Jackson, for labor in the Museum, while due to them, is not in any sense an adequate return for the important services they have gratuitously rendered the Society. 433 Annual Meeting’. 1892.] Teaching in the Museum. Under this new title it is proposed to place in future the report of the work of the guide and lecturer and any other work of a similar character done in this department. The Curator has received reports from former guides showing the success of this plan of giving instruction to the public, and they all tell the same stories of children and grown people coming here as to the show of a Dime Museum or a Nickelodeon and going away with ideas enlarged and fully satisfied that a museum of natural history is a book of a new sort, and a collection some- thing that may be profitably studied, as well as merely looked at to pass away the time. The guide gives examples also of persons coming for a few minutes’ sightseeing and impatient to get through, but who finally spend a couple of hours in the new realm opened to them by his explanations. Mr. A. W. Grabau began to serve the Society in this capacity, May 1, 1891, and with the omission of the months of July and August gave several lectures on each public day until December 1, 1891. On account of the absence of heat in the halls of the Museum the lecturing ceased after this date until March, 1892,. except on a few sunny days when the rooms became warm enough to be inhabitable. The attendance, meaning by this those who listened to the guide and followed him about through the Museum, was as fol- lows : — May 1891, 151. June “ 220. Sept. “ 320. Oct. “ 375. Nov. “ 198. Mar. 1892, 125. Apr. “ 535. This shows a steady increase of interest from May to Novem- ber, 1891, when the cold days began to affect the attendance un- favorably, and a sudden rise in numbers in April, 1892, which was probably due to the improvement in the modes of work men- tioned below. The hot months, July and August, are at present omitted and probably this practice will continue until we are PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. 28 aug. 1892. Annual Meeting.] 434 [May 4, able to employ some person to take the place of the regular guide during these two months of vacation. In the early part of the year a change was made which greatly increased the efficiency of the work in this department. Notices were posted that the guide would conduct parties through the Museum, meeting them in the vestibule at stated hours on public days. This resulted in giving about six peripatetic lectures per week to limited but interested audiences. Whenever the number of visitors at the Museum is slight, as it often is in bad weather, the guide devotes himself to the small parties that may be gathered in the vestibule and sometimes makes as many as ten explanatory trips through the collections in one day. Dynamical Zoology. Miss E. D. Board man has selected a series of the Steinheim shells out of the Curator’s collection from this locality to illustrate the evolution of the different species of Planorbidae at this famous locality. This has been mounted by Miss Martin and with the accompanying plate of magnified figures of the same shells gives a duplicate of the same series as published by the Curator in his k ‘Genesis of the Tertiary species of Planorbis at Steinheim.” The series of mollusca picked out by Dr. Jackson last year to illustrate geomalism has been mounted and placed on exhibition by Mr. Henshaw. The Curator has given all the time that could be spared from his routine work and more pressing duties to the study of the Gulick collection but nothing has yet been mounted. Geology. A successful effort has been made to secure the publication of the Guide to the collections in the Vestibule and Room B, illus- trating Dynamical Geology and Petrography, the completion of which was announced last year. The state of the Society’s treas- ury not permitting an appropriation to be made for this purpose, a circular was issued inviting subscriptions to a special edition of the Guide at one dollar per copy. At the end of six months 111 persons had subscribed for 173 copies; and the expenses for printing and postage had amounted to $35, the net return being $138. This resource being exhausted, and scarcely one third of 1892. J 435 [Annual Meeting. the desired amount having been' obtained, Miss Marian Hovey was applied to and generously contributed $250, on the sole con- dition that the Guide should be dedicated to the late Dr. Lucy E. Sewall, an enthusiastic student of geology who had taken a deep interest in the growth of our geological collections. Miss Hovey’s gift was also accompanied by an offer to bear the expense of placing one copy of the Guide to Geology, and one copy of the Guide to Mineralogy, published six years ago, in each public school library in Boston and vicinity. Subsequently, Mr. Thomas A. Watson gave the sum of $50 to place fifty copies of the Geologi- cal Guide in the schools of Braintree and Weymouth. A sum equal to the estimated cost of issuing the first edition of the Guide having been thus secured, and another friend of science having offered farther financial assistance in case it should be needed, it was considered advisable to proceed with the publica- tion. Professor Crosby has carefully revised and completed the manuscript, making such changes and additions as were necessary, and he has renumbered all the specimens, a system of reference numbers having been devised which will make it possible to add desirable specimens to the collections in the future with the mini- mum amount of alteration in the Guide. This end is secured by simply numbering each section of the case independently, allow- ing 100 numbers (1 to 100) to each section or dotor and 20 num- bers to each shelf in the section. This Guide was finally sent to press April 12th, and the first edition is now printing. It is a comprehensive hand-book of Dynamical and Structural Geology, illustrated by the collections, and will, it is hoped, greatly enhance the educational value of the latter to teachers and students as well as to the general public. During the year Professor Crosby has devoted a large amount of time to the investigation of the local geology and the collection of material for a systematic, exhibit of the Geology of the Boston Basin, in accordance with the plan outlined in last year’s report. Considerable new matter has been added to the monograph on Nantasket and Cohasset, including the results of a detailed micro- scopic examination of the newer eruptive rocks by Mr. George P. Merrill of the National Museum. The monograph on Hingham is entirely finished ; and that on the next natural division of the basin, including Weymouth, Braintree, Quincy, and the Blue Hills, is well advanced. Annual Meeting.] 456 [May 4, The arrangement in the cases of the specimens collected in con- nection with this local survey has been commenced ; and copies of the illustrations, as fast as prepared, will be placed with the speci- mens, the plan being to reproduce the more important maps in relief. Botany. The Society has again occasion to tender its thanks to Mr. Johri Cummings for the continued support of this important depart- ment, which, with the exception of Insecta, is the most difficult to keep in good order and proper preservation. Miss Carter reports, that the final revision and cataloguing of the herbarium has been carried through the cryptogamous plants exclusive of Algae, with the following results : Genera. Species. Specimens. Filices 56 425 784 Equisetaceae 1 13 41 Lycopodiaceae 3 37 76 Marsiliaceae and Characeae 7 21 48 Muscineae 122 618 1157 Hepaticae 36 99 163 Lichenes 72 804 2458 Fungi 282 1766 2848 Total exclusive of Algae. 579 3783 7575 Progress has been made in revising and poisonin ig the plants of the Lowell Herbarium. All duplicates of the phaenogamous plants are now properly arranged and labeled ready for ex- changes. The following accessions are hereby acknowledged : Miss Rodman, four specimens for the New England collection, Mr. W. A. Setchell, three specimens for New England collec- tion, Mrs. Caroline A. Kennard, a fruit of Ficus elastica (Rub- ber tree) grown on a small tree kept in the house. Twenty-one persons have been permitted to use the herbarium under the supervision of Miss Carter, and about two weeks of her time has been d.evoted to this kind of work. About two thirds of this number were teachers and students who had become inter- ested in botany through the lessons given in the Teachers’ School of Science. The information sought for in great part related to the flora of New England. 437 [Annual Meeting. 1892.J Synoptic Collection. Miss J. M. Arms has continued her work on this collection and is gradually bringing it into its final shape. Progress is neces- sarily slow since it is the preparation of a general exposition of the natural relations of forms in the animal kingdom and the work involves the selection and judicious exhibition of such obvious facts as can be advantageously used to prove the truth of the plan of classification. This, although necessarily for the most part a compilation, is also original work in so far as the treatment and arrangement of the results are concerned and therefore consumes a large amount of time. The descriptive text on the Protozoa has been finished. It con- sists of 108 pages and is illustrated by 217 figures drawn by Miss Martin, 181 of these figures are new while the remainder, which were previously in the collection, have been redrawn. The new figures, representing 32 species, are distributed among the classes of Protozoa as follows: Monera 18, Amoebina 44, Foram- inifera 37, Heliozoa 6, Radiolaria 13, Infusoria 63. The following specimens of Foraminif era have been mounted by Miss Arms for the collection : Orbiculina adunca showing the spiral and annular mode of growth, Nodosaria soluta, Globi- gerina ooze, Globigerina rubra, Orbulina universa, the same showing Globigerina-like shells in the interior, and Polycystines from the Radiolarian marl of Barbados. Specimens of the species of Peneroplis, found in the Bailey col- lection, and finely illustrating the spiral and rectilineal mode of growth, have been selected and mounted for the collection by Mrs. E. D. Ramsay. The descriptive text on the Mesozoa has been written, and a plan for the arrangement of the Porifera, according to the prin- ciples of a natural classification, has been made, and descriptive text on the calcareous, silicious, and horny sjDonges has been in part prepared by Miss Arms. Microscopic preparations of spicules of the following genera have been mounted and given to the Society by Mrs. E. D. Ram- say : Hyalonetna, Euplectella, Geodia, Suberites, Cliona, Spon- gilla, Chalina. Specimens of the silicious skeleton of Tethya, and the stato- blasts and spicules of Spongilla, have been selected and transferred from the Bailey collection to the Synoptic collection. Annual Meeting.] 438 [May 4, Paleontology. MissE. D. Boardman lias finished the collection of Planorbidae made at Steinheim by the Curator, and lias terminated this tedious and difficult piece of work, which has lasted for several years, by picking out a duplicate series for use in the Dynamical collection as mentioned under the appropriate heading. This lady has also begun work upon the collections made in a similar locality near St. Johns, New Brunswick, by Mr. Matthews of St. Johns and the Curator some years since. This, if carried on to a successful result, will include a large amount of original work for which Miss Boardman’s training in the separation and arrangement of the Steinheim collection is an excellent preparation. Microscopic Collections. Mrs. Ramsay, having been requested by the Curator to look over the miscellaneous collections heretofore kept together under this title, for the purpose of arranging and classifying them in a more natural way, has completed this part of the work and reports upon the present condition of the Bailey and other collections as follows The mounted part of the Bailey collection consists of about 874 slides, in fairly good condition. Of the twenty-four boxes containing these slides, fourteen are wholly or mainly filled with diatoms, both fossil and re- cent. The mounting of the diatoms is very crude, much dirt and flocculent matter being in each slide, they are not sorted, and many a«e only fragments. All the species are named, however, and represent a wide range of localities. The specimens can be found, on the slides, by the aid of an “indicator,” which is an invention apparently of the mounter, and difficult to use. The glass is very opaque and thick, and mostly with rough edges. Five boxes contain recent and some fossil Foraminifera mounted but not named ; Globigerina and Textularia are the most abundant genera. Many of these are casts, having been treated with acid and showing the brown sarcode of the inside. Some also are glauconite casts in the greensand. The Foraminifera are not sorted, and not very well cleaned. i892.] 439 [Annual Meeting-. The remaining six boxes contain the usual miscellaneous assort- ment of a general microscopical collection. They have all, however, been carefully catalogued in the Society’s books. There is also a small collection of mounted Foraminifera, of no special value. They are from the Gulf of Mexico, Nantucket Shoals, and Monterey, Cal., the latter being fossils. Besides the twenty-four boxes of uniform size above mentioned, the collection comprises some 568 slides in odd boxes and par- cels. Of these owing to the style of mounting 40 have been destroyed, and half as many more would not stand much hand- ling. They were mounted with mica covers, which have begun to scale off. These miscellaneous parcels contain mainly diatoms,1 though some include Foraminifera. The diatoms are named, and many are very neatly mounted ; and some of the parcels are well pre- served. There is also a small box of desmids ; some chemical crystals, a number of slides from chalk, and a small box of French mounts, and a section or two of rock or silicified wood, comprise the miscellaneous part of the collection. This collection also contains a lot of 27 slides, of dry infusorial matter, without covers, labeled by Dr Durkee. The unmounted material of the Bailey collection is valuable. The majority of the boxes and parcels contain diatomaceous earth, either fossil-bearing cleaned materials, or mud from dredgings and artesian well-borings. The value of the whole lot would be very great to a student, many localities being represented, and much of the material being now hard to obtain . Professor Bailey was in correspondence with scientific men all over the world, and many of the samples of earth are accompanied by letters. There are a number of parcels of uncleaned deep-sea dredgings, which would yield Foraminifera, and evidently were collected for that purpose, but all of the unmounted material is more or less represented in the collection of slides. Some old fashioned da- guerrotypes of diatoms accompany the material, and a book of fine drawings of Polycistinae and diatoms. The mounted material of the Greenleaf collection is as fol- lows: The slides are catalogued as numbering 2,114; of these about 1,000 are diatoms, finely mounted, and many sorted and named, and are in good condition. 1 Loose bundles, containing 160 native and 71 foreign diatom-slides. Annual Meeting.] 440 [May 4, There are 72 slides pollen grains, 72 anatomical slides and 72 rock sections, etc., all well done and in good condition. The remainder consists of miscellaneous material of no special value, all labeled and catalogued. A fine box of odontophores, from the Island of Guernsey, by H. M. Gwatkin, is also included in this collection. The unmounted materials are as follows : 139 bottles of sound- ings, mud, sediment, sand, etc., containing material for mounts of diatoms only. All of these are labeled, but not catalogued. There are also five note books on diatoms containing the results of Mr. Greenleaf’s work on this group, and 77 small boxes contain- ing a miscellaneous assortment of material for microscopic study, but nothing rare or of much value. All of these are labeled, but not catalogued. The Glen collection is stored in four cases and seven book- shaped boxes. Five boxes of slides are filled with sections of Echinus spines, and there are many others scattered through the miscellaneous parts of the collection. These are all named and labeled. Next in importance and in beauty of workmanship are the sections of the shells of mollusks which are scattered throughout the various boxes. A large number of anatomical mounts, both of human and of the lower animals, and a few wood and bone sections make up the balance of the collection. The collection numbers 477 slides — as noted in report of May, 1877.1 The Burnett collection consists mostly of animal parasites, and about 254 slides have been transferred to the collection of insects, reported by Mr. Henshaw to be in fairly good condition. There are 200 slides of miscellaneous mounts, among them 61 slides of hair, six showing development of Taenia ; and some anatomical mounts. Many of them are in rather poor state of preservation, and would not stand much handling. The large catalogue calls for a total of 5750 slides. Of these Mrs. Ramsay has looked over and reported on 5547. They include the Glen, Bailey, Burnett, and Greenleaf collections. For a report on the Habirshaw collection of Diatomaceae see 1 The odontophores noted in that report are only a very few scattered through the boxes. 1892-] 441 [Annual Meeting. the Proceedings Boston society natural history, Vol. XXI, pp. 451-452. Besides the Bailey, Burnett, Glen, and Greenleaf collections there is a large collection of samples of greensand and marl made by the late Prof. W. B. Rogers, deposited by the Institute of Technology, and some miscellaneous material. Miss Martin has prepared and mounted a considerable number of sections of sponges for use in the Laboratory. Protozoa. Miss Martin has mounted and repaired the models of Foram- inifera received last year from the Peabody Museum in Salem. The models of living forms have been placed on exhibition. Mollusca. Mr. Henshaw reports as follows upon his work in this depart- ment: The Unionidae of the Mayo collection, 219 species, 980 specimens, have been assorted and arranged according to Lea’s Synopsis. The Achatinellidae of the Mayo and General collections, exclusive of the- Gulick collection, and consisting of 141 species, 1,165 specimens, have been arranged and labeled according to Hartman’s Catalogue. This series includes several species not represented in the Gulick collection. A list of the known Acha- tinellidae has been compiled. The Zonitidae, Mayo and Gen- eral collections, 125 species, 1,100 specimens, have been arranged and labeled according to Tryon’s Manual. Of the remaining Pul- monifera the North American series of both the Mayo and General collections have been labeled and arranged according to Pils- bury’s List, the others belonging to the Mayo collection have been assorted and arranged according to Pfeiffer’s Heliciorum Viven- tium. The valuable series of Patula strigosa, 28 varieties, 228 speci- mens, also from the Mayo collection, has been catalogued and labeled. The Cypraeidae, Mayo collection, 166 species, 1,050 specimens, have been arranged and labeled according to Roberts’s Monograph, and catalogued by Miss Martin. Some work has also been done by the same assistant upon the Cones and Murices of the Mayo collection, and he has also identified, mounted, and labeled ready for exhibition in the general collection 28 species, 67 specimens, of Polyzoa and 26 species, 120 specimens, of Bra- chiopoda. Annual Meeting'.] 442 [May 4, The Curator has worked up and named all of the Pinnidae in the Society’s collection and published an abstract of a memoir upon the same in the Proceedings Vol. XXY, pp. 335-346. Dr. R. T. Jackson has done considerable work upon the arrangement of the Pelecypoda of the Mayo collection, having separated this group into families and for the most part picked out the genera. Accessions have been received from C. J. Maynard, E. S. Morse, Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, and E. W. Roper. Mr. May- nard’s donation consists of the types of 15 species of Strophia and with those formerly presented gives us a complete set of the Strophias described by him in his Contributions to science, Yol. I. Miss Martin has labeled and catalogued the Achatinellinae of the Gulick collection and secured the labels by writing numbers corresponding to those on the labels on each shell. Insecta. From the Holmes Hinkley collection received last year Mr. Henshaw has selected, identified, and labeled about 250 sj)ecimens for the New England and General collections, and has also cata- logued and labeled 150 bottles of Arachnida. Accessions have been received from Messrs. W. S. Bigelow, H. K. Burrison, Miss C. H. Clarke, Messrs. C. B. Cory, H. Ward Foote, J. G. Jack, F. A. Sherriff, aud Miss C. G. Soule. . * Laboratory. The room in the southeast corner of the basement was fitted with tables and gas fixtures in the early part of the present year and used by the Saturday class of teachers studying Botany under Dr. R. W. Greenleaf. The room in the southwest corner was used by a similar class in Historical Geology instructed by the Curator, aud by the usual classes from the Boston Uni- versity. Teachers’ School of Science. The instruction in this school has been organized and conducted during the past official year upon the new and more effective lines of work suggested in the last annual report. All of the i892.] 443 [Annual Meeting’. courses have been given in the from either of laboratory lessons or of field work. The teachers have been required to keep note books and attend examinations and in return for this it is proposed to issue certificates to those who attain satisfactory proficiency in the different subjects taught. The field course in geology by Mr. Barton, referred to as the spring course in the last annual report, was successfully finished on the 20th of June, 1891, having been begun as previously stated April 18, 1891. Ten lessons and excursions were given according to the programme described in previous reports. The whole number of tickets issued was 70, many of the mem- bers having been in former classes. Admission was granted to all applicants and on one excursion 63 persons presented them- selves. The average attendance was 32.46. One of the lessons involved a stay over night at Newport, and Mr. Barton, at the special request of the class, gave an additional excursion on June 17 and another on June 27-28, spending two days in the examin- ation of the geology of Gay Head, Martha’s Vineyard. The field course, consisting of ten excursions given in the autumn by Mr. Barton, began on September 12 and was finished November 14, 1891. The whole number of tickets issued was 81, of which 51 were given to members of former classes. The average attendance was 35.5. The excursions were held principally in the immediate vicinity of Boston, but two lessons were at a greater distance. One of these occupied two days in a trip to the Hoosac Tunnel and vicinity, and on the other the class visited an entirely new place, Mt. Holyoke in the Connecticut Valley. Having found it feasible to reach the latter and give the lesson in a single day the attempt was made and it turned out to be one of the best places for field work of this kind that could have been selected. The spring course in geology for 1892 was begun by the same gentleman on April 2d and is now in progress. The winter course in petrology consisting of fifteen laboratory lessons of two hours each, also given by Mr. Barton, was begun December 5,1891 and finished March, 1892. The whole number of tickets issued was 75 and the average attendance was 50.6. This course was the third in a series of four consisting of one each in mineralogy, lithology, petrology, and historical geology. A few members of the preceding classes dropped out Annual Meeting.] 444 [May 4, owing to pressure of other work, but their places were filled by new applicants. The first half hour of each lesson was always used for a written examination, covering all the ground already gone over, thus keeping the subjects of mineralogy and lithology fresh in mind. The final examination was made no more dif- ficult than each of the others except that it covered all the ground gone over during the previous year. The rank, or stand- ing, has been made out from the results of all the examinations during the term, and these having been written form a good record of the work done. With the severest marking five at least will hold the highest rank, while fully one half the remainder will hold a high second grade. Nearly if not quite all will pass, with the exception of a few who were excused from taking the examinations and attended simply as listeners. The class has been a very gratifying one to the instructor be- cause of the great interest shown in the subject and the efforts of the members to take advantage of the opportunities offered them. A course of laboratory exercises in botany consisting of fifteen stated lessons of two hours each and examination was given by Dr. Robert W. Greenleaf. They began November 7, 1891, and ended March 26, 1892. There were 87 applicants for the course, but the seating capacity of the laboratory with table room being limited, only 36 (A) tickets entitling the holders to those seats were distributed, but 14 (B) tickets were also issued giving their holders a right to occupy chairs at the side of the room, and to avail themselves of any vacancies occurring at the table. Two of the applicants, Miss Jennie M. Jackson and Miss Helen Sharp, and Mr. Brooks, a former member of Dr. Greenleaf’s class in the Mass. College of Pharmacy, were selected to act as assistants. The total number of persons connected with the class was there- fore 51, and the average attendance was 39.5. The mode of study was as usual, by direct observation of specimens and in- dividual teaching by the instructor and his assistants, the members of the class being also required to make sketches of the objects studied. Each exercise was preceded by a brief written examina- tion, and the last lesson was replaced by an examination cover- ing all the work previously done. Forty of the class took the examination and the results although not fully known as yet are quite as satisfactory as in the other classes. i892.] 4 45 [Annual Meeting-. The instruction lias been this year of a preparatory nature covering the usual groundwork of botanical teaching, a mixture of morphological and structural, including some histology, and physiological botany. Forty-two teachers have requested the continuance of this course. The course in historical geology begun last year has been con- tinued by the Curator. The whole number of tickets distributed was 59 and the average attendance was 32. The mode of in- struction was the same as in the botanical class except that the examinations were held at convenient intervals, and were partly oral and partly discussions with the pupils. The results of the final examination were, to say the least, better than any heretofore obtained by the Curator from any other class. Twenty-three persons took the examination ; nine of these handed in note books, classified, and arranged a set of test specimens, and answered a series of questions in writing so as to get above 90 per cent and five others above 80 per cent, while two or three of the whole were unable to pass. Considering the severity of the test, many of the pupils remaining at the tables engaged with the specimens and in writing for nearly four hours, and none less than three hours, the proportion of students attaining honorable mention is remarkably large. The Curator desires to express his obligations to Dr. R. T. Jackson and Miss J. M. Arms who assisted him in giving the lessons. Report of the Board of Directors of the Natural History Gardens and Aquaria, Samuel H. Scudder, Chairman. The work undertaken by the Directors of the Natural History Gardens and Aquaria the past year was one to which they were wholly unaccustomed and proved to be both very exacting and not altogether agreeable — that of soliciting subscriptions to the fund necessary before any further steps could be taken toward the actual accomplishment of the purposes of the Society. We invited subscriptions conditional upon one third of the two hundred thousand dollars being pledged before this present meeting. We are frank to acknowledge that this has not been attained or nearly attained ; but we have made some progress Annual Meeting-.] 446 [May 4, toward it and are pleased to announce that without direct solicita- tion we have received in cash or pledges, from twenty-eight dif- ferent persons, the sum of $4250 ; besides which we have pro- mises, more or less definite, amounting to between ten and fifteen thousand dollars, due to personal solicitation. Our appeal to the public, both through our pamphlets and by numerous more or less public addresses which members of our board and others have made to different bodies, has been re- ceived with all the praise and encouragement and even the enthusiasm one could wish from hosts of friends, very many of whom have given us tangible pledges of their interest ; but we have not yet succeeded in securing many of the larger subscrip- tions we had hoped to gain. This we believe has been in the main owing to the difficulty of reaching by personal call those to whom we naturally look for the larger gifts. Very much has been done in this direction by visits made by two, three, or more of the Directors, sometimes by the whole body together ; and no one who has not tried it would believe what an extraordinary amount of unavailing work will result from the absence or engagement of the parties called upon, which to men themselves busy in arduous professions, as was certainly the case with most of those whom you have chosen as Directors, has not been con- ducive to concerted action. We had hoped to make an aggressive campaign immediately on the publication of our Appeal, but its delay from unavoidable causes to the period when the annual exodus to the country begins rendered that impracticable. Then one of our few mem- bers has felt compelled to resign, and another and the most active was removed from us by death, while at the very beginning of the year we also lost the Secretary of the Society on whose youth- ful ardor and energy and especially on whose lively interest in the Gardens we had counted for the greatest aid. We have been much hampered also from having no means whereon to draw for personal or other service, not even for postage except a small sum generously placed last year at our disposal by the Woman’s Education Association, an association which has so often and with such a fine spirit aided the educational projects in which our Society has at different times been interested. We have indeed worked for almost the entire year under the incubus of a debt contracted for printing our Appeal, but now, we are 447 iSgz.] [Annual Meeting. rejoiced to say, not only has this been removed by the self- sacrificing efforts of the same body, but the Association has generously asked us our further immediate needs, and has re- sponded to our requests by placing in our hands a sum sufficient to enable us now to follow up our Appeal by better and more wisely directed personal effort which can hardly fail of success. This the Association has done through a committee by raising in small amounts — not to the prejudice of the larger sums we need for the actual foundation of our proposed establishment — a sum sufficient for the prosecution of our work. Besides the two hundred dollars given last year we have within a month re- ceived from them the further sum of nearly two thousand dollars contributed by more than ninety individuals, with few exceptions ladies. This is most encouraging, for not only does it relieve us of an anxiety which has hampered every action, but it shows how wide spread and how sincere is the interest taken in our plans by the educated and patriotic women of Boston. Armed with this encouragement we have already obtained from nearly every one of the original subscribers an extension of the time to which their subscriptions were limited and are ready now to redouble our endeavor to secure for Boston an establishment which we contend will outvie every other in solid interest for the whole people. We have further been fortified in our conclusion to begin with the Marine Aquarium at City Point the series of exhibits we hope finally to establish, by finding how much wider an interest is felt in this proposed department than in either of the others ; and while we do not for an instant propose to slacken our endeavors until the whole of the amount first stated as necessary for the foundation of all three of the proposed divisions is obtained, we think it better for the moment to concentrate our entire attention upon the Marine Aquarium ; and we have the pleasure of exhibit- ing to-night for the first time the architects’ plans for the pro- posed building which, it will be seen, permit of the erection of one portion at a time (the first portion containing the entire fa£ade and so to all effects a complete building), and which yet provides in the end for all the space which is likely to be required or could well be gained upon the site to be occupied. One of the architects who is present has kindly consented to explain some of its details. 448 [May 4, Annual Meeting-.] Work upon the Marine Park is rapidly going forward. The boundaries of the salt water ponds of the outer grounds assigned to us can now be seen and the grading of the entire portion we are to occupy will, we are told, be finished by the end of the present season. The plans of the building are already so far advanced that the moment the needed funds are in our treasury the work of construction can begin, and it is hoped that within a year thereafter the beginning at least of a collection of living animals may be opened to the public. To such an opening the Directors look forward with eager anticipation. Report of the Acting Secretary and Librarian, Samuel Hen shaw. Membership. During the past year four Honorary, twenty-three Corporate, and nineteen Garden Members have been elected by the Council. Nine members have died, one has resigned, and the names of eleven have been dropped for non-payment of dues. The roll of the Society includes the names of 19 Honorary, 138 Correspond- ing, 336 Corporate and 21 Garden members, a total (less names counted twice) of 501. Among those whom death has taken, mention should be made of Dr. D. Humphreys Storer, a former vice-president and an original member of the Society, Mr. Edward Burgess and Mr. Samuel Dexter, formerly secretaries, Mr. Charles W. Scudder, treasurer at the time of his death, Drs. T. Sterry Hunt and John Amory Jeffries, formerly members of the Council, and Dr. John W. Randall a member since Nov. 2, 1831. Dr. J. C. Jay, the conchologist, a corresponding member, has also died. Meetings. Fourteen meetings have been held. With a total attendance of 893, the average, more than 63 to a meeting, is larger than that recorded for any year with the exception of 1873-74, the year when the plan of announcing the meetings by a postal card Plate XII. 448 [May 4, Annual Meeting.] Work upon the Marine Park is rapidly going forward. The boundaries of the salt water ponds of the outer grounds assigned to us can now be seen and the grading of the entire portion we are to occupy will, we are told, be finished by the end of the present season. The plans of the building are already so far advanced that the moment the needed funds are in our treasury the work of construction can begin, and it is hoped that within a year thereafter the beginning at least of a collection of living animals may be opened to the public. To such an opening the Directors look forward with eager anticipation. Report of the Acting Secretary and Librarian, Samuel Hen shaw. Membership. During the past year four Honorary, twenty-three Corporate, and nineteen Garden Members have been elected by the Council. Nine members have died, one has resigned, and the names of eleven have been dropped for non-payment of dues. The roll of the Society includes the names of 19 Honorary, 138 Correspond- ing, 336 Corporate and 21 Garden members, a total (less names counted twice) of 501. Among those whom death has taken, mention should be made of Dr. D. Humphreys Storer, a former vice-president and an original member of the Society, Mr. Edward Burgess and Mr. Samuel Dexter, formerly secretaries, Mr. Charles W. Scudder, treasurer at the time of his death, Drs. T. Sterry Hunt and John Amory Jeffries, formerly members of the Council, and Dr. John W. Randall a member since Nov. 2, 1831. Dr. J. C. Jay, the conchologist, a corresponding member, has also died. Meetings. Fourteen meetings have been held. With a total attendance of 893, the average, more than 63 to a meeting, is larger than that recorded for any year with the exception of 1873-74, the year when the plan of announcing the meetings by a postal card PROPOSED MARINE AQUARIUM AT CITY POINT. 449 [Annual Meeting. 1892. J to each member was adopted ; in that year the average was 64. This year the largest attendance at any one meeting was 121, the smallest 28. Thirty-six communications have been made by twenty-five persons. Library. The additions to the library are as follows : — 8vo. 4to. Folio. Total Volumes 203 74 277 Parts 1,366 472 2 1,840 Pamphlets 248 19 267 Maps 21 21 Total, 2,405 The growth of the library is very constant ; the average for the past ten years has been a little over 2400. A careful count of the library shows the following result: 19,917 volumes, 1,199 incomplete (including current) volumes, 9,258 pamphlets, a total of 30,369. New exchanges have been arranged with the American Journal of Psychology, the Geological Society of America, Illinois Geological Survey, Texas Geolog- ical Survey, and Marine Biological Laboratory. The number of scientific societies and periodicals at home and abroad with which the Society now exchange its publications is 365. Eight hundred and eighty-seven books have been borrowed from the library by ninety-three persons. These figures of course do not fully indicate the usefulness of the library as they do not show the number of books used within the library, nor the whole number of persons enjoying its privileges. Nothing has been done in the way of binding while the need of this work constantly increases. Publications Part 2 of the twenty-fifth volume of the Proceedings was is- sued during the summer. Since then three signatures have been printed and three others are in type. Of the new volume of Oc- casional Papers, containing Prof. W. O. Crosby’s Geology of PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. 29 SEPT. 1892. VOL. XXV. Annual Meeting.] 450 [May 4, the Boston Basin, 80 pages have been printed. This volume will consist of five separate parts or monographs and it is hoped that the plan of publishing the parts separately will be adopted as it is probable that the sale of the earlier parts will provide a consider- able portion of the means required for the publication of the later ones. Besides the regular publications a guide to the geological col- lection, also by Professor Crosby, is printing. The expense of this publication has been provided for outside the resources of the Society. Walker Prizes. Last December the President appointed a committee consisting of Mr. T. T. Bouve, chairman, Dr. Alexander Agassiz, and Prof. James Hall to recommend the names of one or more persons worthy of the fourth award of the Grand Honorary Prize. On April 20 the committee unanimously reported the name of Prof. James D. Dana and recommended that in view of the distin- guished services of Professor Dana, the maximum sum of one thousand dollars be awarded. The recommendation of the com- mittee was adopted by the Council. On April 22 the President wrote Professor Dana as follows : My Dear Sir : A Grand Honorary Prize, placed at the disposal of the Boston Society of Natural History, was instituted by the late Dr. William J. Walker, “for such investigation or discovery as may seem to deserve it, provided such investigation or discovery shall have been made known or published in the United States at least one year previous to the time of award.” The Council has unanimously awarded the maximum prize of one thousand dollars to you. At the same meeting in which the award was made, the Coun- cil desired me to convey to you its sincere congratulations that your scientific activity, covering a period of more than half a century, is still fruitful in valuable results. At a time of life when many students would seek release from labor, you are seek- ing for new problems to investigate, and you maintain to-day an untiring interest in the first subjects which commanded your at- tention. You have made three broad departments of natural history your own. Your published work in these three depart- ments contain the record of discoveries which have enriched American science. 451 [Annual Meeting. All the members of the Council unite in expressing the wish that, in good health, you may be long spared to continue your investi- gations. I have the honor to be, ray dear sir, Yours faithfully, [Signed . ] GEORGE LINCOLN GOOD ALE, Boston, Mass. April 22, 1892. President. To this letter President Goodale received the following reply: My Dear Sir : Your communication announcing the award of the Grand Walker Prize to me by the committee of the Boston Society of Natural History has been received and read. After a long life of work it is a great satisfaction to have words of approbation from those that are highly esteemed for their scien- tific learning and judgment and especially to have such words made emphatic b}r so large a gift. The allusion to my labors in natural history leads my mind back to expedition days in the thirties and recalls the fact that our scientific corps in the Wilkes Exploring Expedition was half Bostonian. And now, when the 50th anniversary of the return of the Expedition (June 10), after a four years’ cruise, is but a few weeks off, Boston science sends me the kind greeting. Please assure the committee and the Society that I warmly appreciate the honor conferred by the award and thank them for their words of commendation. Faithfully yours, [Signed.] JAMES D. DANA. New Haven, April 27, 1892. The award of the Annual prize for 1892 will be announced later by the Committee. Annual Meeting.] 452 [May oo co CO C3 CN O CO O iO CO JO £>PP a c3 s 3 £ H J3 'd O to c 00 a ci * PQ o « .2 ^ t3 , _ 0) es 9 03 . co © jd o >. 02 w O E- ffl -3 ^ cs a c 02 O f= 2? £ PP 2 «4H C S o r s it a C3 o O » g"2 « « £ P-l S3 O _ ©3 ^3 ^ 00 CO >3 PP M - - >3 >. 2P pp - ©1 5* n a ri H OO lO rH C5 CO lO CO (M O Q OO © O O ■*# o cm co Ol ©" ic j ©3 - H 1L< ^ © ‘C S Oh _ . © t3 a> a > a C3 a 5 03 02 , a © S <1 . 2 ^ S g S 'S S J s S g o • . e 'a a o W O W <1 O «a X> A oj k_, 03 • h-J r=i H Ph a O v ^ ^ ^ « H H - 453 [Annual Meeting. 1S92.J Mr. W. A. Jeffries for the Auditing Committee reported that all monies received and paid by the Treasurer were properly vouched for and that the securities were found correct as called for. Mr. Warren Uphain for the Committee on the annual Walker Prizes announced the award of a first prize of one hundred dollars to the author of the essay “On Pleistocene changes of level in eastern North America,” and a second prize of fifty dollars to the author of the essay on “The subglacial origin of certain eskers.” The envelopes containing the names of the authors were opened and Baron Gerard de Geer of Stockholm and Prof. W. M. Davis of Cambridge were announced to be the successful competitors for the prizes for 1892. The Society then proceeded to ballot for officers for 1892-93. Messrs. Jackson and Jack were appointed a committee to col- lect and count the votes. OFFICERS FOR 1892-93. A * indicates election at this meeting. PRESIDENT, * WILLIAM H. NILES. VICE-PRESIDENTS , * B. JOY JEFFRIES. * SAMUEL WELLS. * CHARLES S. MINOT. CURATOR, * ALPHEUS HYATT. SECRETARY, * SAMUEL HENSHAW. TREASURER, * EDWARD T. BOUVE. LIBRARIAN, * SAMUEL HENSHAW. De Geer.] 454 [May xS, COUNCILLORS FOR THREE YEARS, ♦Edward T. Bouve. * Henry Brooks. * William A. Jeffries. * Miss Susannah Minns. ♦John Ritchie, Jr. * Alfred P. Rockwell. * Charles S. Sargent. * Warren Upham. COUNCILLORS FOR TWO YEARS, S. L. Abbot. Henry P. Bowditch. * William S. Bryant. William M. Davis. William G. Earlow. Edward G. Gardiner. Henry W. Haynes. Mrs. Ellen H. Richards. COUNCILLORS FOR ONE YEAR, George H. Barton. William Brewster. Miss Cora H. Clarke Robert T. Jackson. * Nathaniel T. Kidder. Edward S. Morse. William T. Sedgwick. Nathaniel S. S haler. Thomas T. Bouve. John Cummings. councillors ex-officiis, George L. Goodale F. W. Putnam. Samuel H. Scudder. May 18, 1892. President W. H. Niles in the chair. Sixty-two persons present. The following papers were read : — ON PLEISTOCENE CHANGES OF LEVEL IN EASTERN NORTH AMERICA. BY BARON GERARD DE GEER, of the Geological Survey of Sweden . (Walker Prize Essay, 1892.) One of the most important principles upon which geology is founded is the theory of continental changes of level. The main points of this theory seem, in several cases, to have been well es- tablished by American geologists. Thus it lias been pointed out, that to account for sandstone several thousand feet in thickness, and other deposits in shallow water, it is necessary to assume that the sea-bottom was sinking at the same rate that the sediment 1892.] 455 [De Geer. was accumulating. Again, as the continents in certain instances for long periods of time have not lost in height, and this notwith- standing their immense denudation, they must have been gradu- ally rising. It is also very generally admitted, that many of the abundant alternations of strata deposited during different bathymetrical conditions, as well as the breaks between them, were caused by the oscillations of the earth’s crust. In many in- stances, however, it can not be decided whether the change of level was really due to movements of the land, or whether it was only the surface of the sea that rose and fell. Since the eminent Austrian geologist, E. Suess, in his grand work u Antlitz der Erde ” has in a very ingenious way tried to refer most of the oscillations to the latter cause, denying the rising of the conti- nents altogether, and since his views have been adopted by many geologists, it seems particularly desirable to get more positive facts for the final settlement of the question. For the present at least it is hard to get such facts concern- ing the older formations, as they are very often eroded away to a greater or less extent and concealed by younger deposits. It is thus in most cases impossible to determine the original extent of a certain layer and especially of the sea in which it was formed. Consequently we cannot determine with sufficient accuracy in what way the corresponding geoid-surface has been deformed. In regard to the Pliocene and Pleistocene formations it is of course less difficult, but in many parts of the world it seems as if the old shore-lines, which once marked the limit of these forma- tions, were not very well developed or easily recognized. It may sometimes be due to the fact that when the shores are low and consist of loose marine deposits, it is often very difficult to distin- guish the new from the old formations, and also to ascertain the depth of the last submergence. The beach is also easily effaced, partly perhaps through wind-blown sand. In the glaciated regions, however, the conditions are often dif- ferent and more favorable for the formation of enduring shore- lines, as the land is there generally covered with till and angular, stony debris, forming an excellent material for recording the action of the waves. Most of the old shores are described as situated in the glaciated regions, though this may perhaps depend upon another and deeper cause. Although a great many marine shore lines, shell deposits, and De Geer.] 45(5 I'M nv iS, sediments of Pleistocene age have been leveled in Europe and in America, it is nevertheless very hard to find any method for determining their limits with great accuracy. As far as I can see, that described below is the most suitable and perhaps the only possible method for this purpose. I have tested it in the northern part of Europe during the last ten years and by way of comparison in the eastern parts of North America during the autumn of 1891. In this paper I shall especially de- scribe and discuss the results of the last named investigations, but as these point to a very close analogy with the corresponding phe- nomena in northern Europe, it seems appropriate to give first a general view of the latter. Investigations in Europe. During the summer of 1882 I spent three months in Spitzbergen studying the glacial deposits and the raised beaches. Though these were very instructive for the study of the origin of shore- lines in general, the conditions were not favorable for an accu- rate determination of the uppermost marine limit, the land being rather mountainous, precipitous, and destitute of till. Since that time I have used every opportunity to discover and determine the marine limit in Sweden. The method I have used is the following : On every occasion I start with the most recent fossils in marine deposits ; with the aid of the topographic map I select a drift-covered hill of sufficient height with moderate slope and with a situation as open as possible to the ancient water-body and as near as possible to a point previously leveled. Above the water-laid clay and sand there is in most cases a belt of gravel, and still higher, where sediment is almost wanting, there are more or less conspicuous marks of erosion and water- wash up to a definite horizontal limit. In favorable localities this can be determined with an accuracy of from a few feet to less than one foot. Later on I will give a more detailed account of the methods I have employed for these determinations. I will only emphasize here that while geologists have too often measured the highest conspicuous shore-lines which happened to be devel- oped in a certain locality, I have used such figures only when nothing else was available. On the other hand I have always tried to choose hill-slopes so uniform that evidently the till above 45V [De Geer. 1S92.J the measured limit, had it also been submerged, must necessarily have shown traces of water-action in addition to the assorted, washed, and rolled material below. Up to the present time I have thus leveled the marine limit at about seventy different points in the southern and central parts of Sweden and in a few places in southern Norway. For north- ern Sweden T have three or four approximate but important deter- minations by Flogbom, Svenonius, and Munthe. For the other parts of the Scandinavian region of uplift the uppermost marine limit is not yet determined, but there are in geological literature a great number of measurements of the height of raised beaches and marine sediments, and from these I have tried to ascertain the highest available minimum-figures for different tracts in the re- gion. While they are only preliminary, they nevertheless point very clearly to the same laws for the upheaval of land that I found to prevail in Sweden and it seems allowable to use them for the present, of course with due reservation, as the principal conclu- sions drawn from them will probably not be essentially changed by future more accurate determinations. To get a general view of the warping of land since the forma- tion of the marine limit I have used the graphic method of Mr. G. K. Gilbert (see his admirable work on Lake Bonneville) and have connected with lines of equal deformation, or as I have called them isobases , such points of the limit as were uplifted to the same height. Among the results of the investigation the following may be mentioned as being of especial interest for comparison with the conditions in North America. All the observations evidently relate to one single system of upheaval, with the maximum uplift in the central part of the Scandinavian peninsula, along a line east of the watershed, or nearly where the ice-sheet of the last glaciation reached its great- est thickness. Here the land must have been upheaved somewhat more than a thousand feet (more than 300 meters) , and around this center the isobases are grouped in concentric circles, showing a tolerably regular decrease in height in every direction toward the peripheral parts of the region, until the line for zero is reached, outside of which no sign whatever of upheaval is to be found. The considerable height at which the uppermost marine marks are found, and the places where they occur, in the central parts De Geer.j 458 [May iS, of the land, show at once that no local attraction of the land ice could have been sufficient to raise the water to any such amount, had the ice been many times as thick and extensive as it probably was even at its maximum. Such an explanation seems less possi- ble, as there could be very little room for any attracting land ice when the sea covered the parts of the land mentioned above. But as no local changes of the sea level can account for the phe- nomenon, so it is also impossible to explain it either by the general oscillations of the sea, perhaps from the one hemisphere to the other, produced by changes ip the situation of the center of grav- ity of the earth — according to the assumption of Adhemar and Croll — or by oscillations to and from the equator caused by changes in the rotation of the earth, as has been supposed by Swedenborg and Suess. If this theory were true, all the shore- lines would slope in a single direction, but as they in fact slope as well to the south as to the west, north, and east, it is evi- dent that the phenomenon must be explained by a real rising of the land. Moreover the region of upheaval is practically about the same as that of the last glaciation ; especially is it worthy of notice, that the maximum of both seems to have occupied about the same place. Still more remarkable is the coincidence of the uplifted area with the Scandinavian azoic region, or what Suess has called “the Baltic shield.” This comprises Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the Kola peninsula, or a well defined tract where the old rocks are laid bare by erosion and the surrounding lands thickly covered with younger sediment. The limit of the Baltic shield, where it has been directly observed, and perhaps everywhere, is marked by great faults. Now the isobase for zero, or the boun- dary for the uplifted area, seems all the way a little outside of the above named limit and follows very conspicuously its convexities and concavities. Likewise all the other isobases point to a close connection between the upheaval and the geological and to a cer- tain extent the topographical structure of the land. Thus it is commonly found that higher tracts have been raised more than lower ; and the basins of the great Swedish lakes, Wener and prob- ably also Wetter, have been less uplifted than their surround- ings, which might indicate that they were originally more de- pressed and very probably formed by unequal subsidence. The coincidence between the areas of erosion, glaciation, and 459 [De Geer. 1S92.J upheaval may be thus explained : as in continental areas in general, this old tract of erosion has probably in the main been one of upheaval, while the contrary was the case with the surrounding regions, where the sediment was accumulating to a very consider- able extent. During the Ice age, among other high lands, the Baltic shield received an ice-sheet equal in weight to more than a thousand feet in thickness of the rocks which had been eroded away during previous periods. As Jamieson long since suggested, it is very probable that the crust of the earth must yield and subsidence of land take place beneath this added load. There- fore it is reasonable that the movements in the crust should be chiefly dependent upon its geological structure. When the ice-load disappeared, the land partly re-emerged, until a balance was reached, which seems to have happened before the original height was attained, a part of the change having become permanent. If the ice-load was the essential cause of the submergence, a still larger subsidence must be supposed to have followed after the earlier and greater glaciation. It is true that very few traces of unquestionable interglacial marine deposits have been found, and that these are all along the boundary of the late glacial region of upheaval, or in southern Denmark and along the Baltic coast of Germany ; but this is just what would be expected. Then, as Dana first pointed out with reference to the fiords as submerged river-vallevs, the land had probably in the beginning of glacial time a much greater elevation than at present. Thus it is quite possible, that during the great glaciation a considerable subsidence from the highest elevation occurred, followed during interglacial time by a partial re-elevation of the land ; while the early marine deposits during the late glacial subsidence might have been a second time so deeply depressed below the sea-level that they have not since been uplifted sufficiently to appear above it. According to this explanation, it is easy to conceive why the interglacial marine deposits are accessible just in the tracts which were least affected by the late glacial subsidence. I take this opportunity to remark that in my opinion the marine sediments which Murchison, Verneuil, and Keyserling1 found at Dvvina and Petschora in northern Russia, and which have been 1 Murchison, Verneuil, und Keyserling, Geologie des europaischen Russlauds; bearbeitet von G. Leonhard. Stuttgart, 1848, pp. 348-351. De Geer.j 460 [May 18, lately traced over large areas by Tschernyschew1, are probably of interglacial age, though they are not covered by till, as are those occurring at the border of the last glaciation. But as their fauna contains such boreal and southern species as Oyprina islandica and Oardium edule , it is not probable that they could be contemporary with the arctic fauna of the late glacial subsidence in Scandinavia. On the other hand, it is difficult to believe that the considerable oscillation of land in northern Russia could have taken place so lately as in postglacial time. Hence there is some reason to infer that the deposits in question belong to the interglacial period, and it is my opinion that, like the undoubtedly intergla- cial deposits before-mentioned, they are still accessible above the sea-level only outside of the region which was affected by the late glacial submergence. Before leaving the changes of level in Scandinavia I must add a few words about the latest oscillation, though this is not yet quite so well known, and can only to a certain extent be compared with the conditions in America. After the late glacial upheaval in Scandinavia had proceeded so far as to isolate the Baltic basin from the sea, thus forming a lake with a true fresh- water fauna, characterized by Ancylus Jluviatilis Linne, and after this lake, following the general unequal movement of the region, had been partly emptied, then, as I have succeeded in showing, a new subsidence of land occurred, by which the out- lets of the Ancylus lake were changed to sounds, and a marine though scanty fauna migrated into the Baltic. The deposits formed along the Baltic, as well as along the western coasts of the land during this last subsidence, are now partly uplifted, less in the peripheral and more in the central part of the region, but nowhere more than 200-300 feet above the sea level. They contain a true post-glacial fauna, with many southern forms which are never found in the late glacial beds. Between these two marine deposits, peat bogs, river channels, and other traces of erosion are observed in many jdaces in southern Sweden, showing conclusively that at least this part of the land was uplifted be- tween the two subsidences. Several of these peat bogs and river channels continue below the level of the sea, and such signs of Th. Tschernyschew, Travaux ex6cut6s au Timane en 1890; Petersburg, 1891, pp. 27, 52. IS92.] 461 [De Geer. submergence are also found at the southern shore of the Baltic and around the North Sea. It is not yet possible to say anything with certainty about the nature of this last oscillation ; but while there seem to be some dif- ficulties in such an explanation, it may be possible that we have to deal here only with oscillations in the situation of the pivot point of the crust-movement or the isobase for zero. Professor N. S. Shaler has suggested,1 that while the continents are as a rule ris- ing and the sea-floors sinking, yet it may happen that the pivot point, when it lies somewhat at the inside of the shore, will take part in the sinking of the sea-bottom, and then it will seem as if the continent were sinking, though in fact it may very well be rising in the interior. If it should turn out that this ingenious explanation could be applied to the Scandinavian oscillations of land, then the whole phenomenon would be more easily under- stood ; according to this theory, in the center of the region after the removal of the ice-load a constant rising of the land oc- curred, and at the same time probably a sinking of the sur- rounding sea-bottom, in which latter movement some portions of the land for a time took part during the post-glacial subsidence. After that, the portions mentioned began again to participate in the great continental upheaval, which seems to be still going on though probably at a much reduced rate. Investigations in North America. Observations. The very interesting and valuable investigations of Gilbert, Up- ham, and Spencer have shown that the shore-lines along the great lakes in the interior of eastern North America have been unequally uplifted more toward the north than toward the south, and this seems to be quite in accordance with the generally adopted opinion in regard to the marine deposits along the Atlan- tic coast. This opinion seems to have been founded principally upon the different heights to which marine shells could be traced in different tracts, this kind of evidence being the most indis- putable, though on the other hand affording only minimum fig- ures. Concerning other proofs, as shore-lines, terraces, deltas, 1 Recent changes of level on the coast of Maine. Mem. Bost. soc. nat. hist., v. 2, p. 337, 1874. t)e Geer.] 462 [May iS, and sediments of supposed late glacial age and marine origin, the opinions of different authors have been much more divergent. As examples of this diversity of opinion the following figures may be quoted ; a few only refer to shell localities. In his Manual of Geology J. D. Dana mentions for the highest marine deposits : — South of New York, seldom over 10-15 feet. At Brooklyn, Long Island 100 In southern New England 30-35 “ In Maine not more than 200 At Lake Champlain 468 At Montreal, above Lake St. Peter 470 In Barrow’s Straits 1,000 In N. S. Shafer’s paper on Recent changes of level in Maine (1874) we find for New York City Deer Isle in Maine at least Belfast “ about Between Milbridge and Machiasport at least At Labrador “ “ On the Greenland coast “ “ a few feet. 200 “ 250 “ 100 “ 1,000 “ 2,000 “ The same author in later papers assumes for Nantucket Island (1889) at least 300 feet. Cape Ann (1890) 130-150 “ Mount Desert (1889) 1,300-1,500 “ W. Upham mentions in the appendix to Wright’s work on the Ice Age in North America (1889) for Boston and northeast to Cape Ann, probably not more than 10-25 feet. Maine (Stone) about 225 “ Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island wanting. Bay Chaleur (Chalmers) not more than 200 feet. Opposite Saguenay (Chalmers) 375 “ Montreal (J. W. Dawson) 520 About 130 miles W. S. W. from Montreal (J. W. Dawson) 440 “ J. W. Spencer in a paper on post-pleistocene subsidence vs. glacial dams (1891) claims as marine and as belonging to the same submergence all the beaches and terraces along the great lakes, as : — 403 [De Geen .S92.J On summit east of Grand Traverse Bay, Mich. (Rominger) 1,682 feet. W. from Collingwood at the Niagara escarp- ment 1,200-1,425 “ At Dog Lake (H. Y. Hind) 1,425 “ In Potter County, western Penn., a low gravel- ridge1 2,660 “ At the upper Potomac, terraces with rounded boulders (I.C. White) Nachvak in Labrador (R. Bell) In Vermont (Hitchcock) 1,675 1,500-2,000 2,300 From erratics on the top of Mount Washington, 6,300 feet, and on Mount Ktaadn, 4,400 feet, the author concludes that the subsidence extended so far and was greater there than in Labrador.2 F. J. H. Merrill gives in his post-glacial history of the Hudson River valley 3 the heights of several delta deposits and plains which he considers marine : — At New York 80 feet. Mouth of Croton River 100 “ Peekskill 120 “ West Point 180 “ Fishkill 210 “ Schenectady 340 “ As some of the above figures seem difficult to reconcile, and as the marine origin of several of the deposits seems also questionable, I have thought it useful to make another series of observations, and have employed the same methods which I used in Scandi- navia. Perth Amboy. During a short visit made in company with Professor Smock to Perth Amboy, southwest of New York city, just where the great terminal moraine reaches its southernmost point in this 1 Considered a kame by H. Carvill Lewis. 2 It may be mentioned here that the silt and terrace deposits, 3,000 feet above sea level, which Spencer mentions from Norway as proof of an analogous great submer- gence, are certainly not of marine origin, and are most probably analogous to the “parallel roads” in Scotland. They are known in many localities in the higher valleys of Norway and Sweden, but there is not one Scandinavian geologist who considers them as marine ; the well marked marine area is much lower. 3 Amer. journ. science, Ser. 3, Vol. XLI, June, 1891, p. 462. De Geer. I [May 1 8, 464 tract, I could not find on the surface of the moraine any traces of marine erosion above the well developed terrace at the present sea-level. New Haven. At New Haven I had an opportunity, during an excursion with Prof. J. D. Dana, to see the lowest of the late glacial river-ter- races or Hood-plains so admirably described by him, with their remarkably well preserved kettle holes but without any traces of former shore-lines. At the same time I visited the present sea- shore at West Haven in company with Mr. II. Lundbohm. The even hood-plain descends with a continuous slope to the very edge of the actual shore-terrace or to a level about 17 feet above highwater mark. On the surface of this terrace there lies exposed in the cliff an earthy bed one or two feet in thickness, containing shells of oysters and Venus mercenaria which no doubt formed an Indian kitchenmidding and show that since its formation the terrace has been cut back. The foot of the cliff lies about three feet above what I assumed to be the ordinary highwater mark and evidently represents the actual storm-level. These facts seein to be in accordance with the assumption that this coast is slowly sinking, and I failed to find any proofs that since the Ice age the land was ever more deeply submerged than it is now. As the original land surface here is cut away by the recent wave-action, this locality does not prove anything for* levels lower than 17 feet. Thus, though it cannot be denied that there might have been, as Professor Dana has suggested, 1 a subsi- dence about 10 or 15 feet below the present level, it appears that even this slight amount cannot be allowed until a series of measurements in different localities gives closely correspond- ing values for the extreme marine limits. Martha’s Vineyard. On Martha’s Vineyard, where I had the advantage of Prof. N. S. Shaler’s guidance, I could only confirm his observation that no raised beaches of any kind were to be seen. Where the terminal moraine touches the flats of Tertiary clays, the topo- 1 On southern New England during the melting of the great glacier. Amer. journ. science, Ser. 3, Vol. X, Dec., 1875, p. 434. De Geer. I 464 [May 1 8, tract, I could not find on the surface of the moraine any traces of marine erosion above the well developed terrace at the present sea-level. New Haven. At New Haven I had an opportunity, during an excursion with Prof. J. D. Dana, to see the lowest of the late gdacial river-ter- races or Hood-plains so admirably described by him, with their remarkably well preserved kettle holes but without any traces of former shore-lines. At the same time I visited the present sea- shore at West Haven in company with Mr. H. Lundbolim. The even flood-plain descends with a continuous slope to the very edge of the actual shore-terrace or to a level about 17 feet above highwater mark. On the surface of this terrace there lies exposed in the cliff an earthy bed one or two feet in thickness, containing shells of oysters and Venus mercenaria which no doubt formed an Indian kitchenmidding and show that since its formation the terrace has been cut back. The foot of the cliff lies about three feet above what I assumed to be the ordinary highwater mark and evidently represents the actual storm-level. These facts seem to be in accordance with the assumption that this coast is slowly sinking, and 1 failed to find any proofs that since the Ice age the land was ever more deeply submerged than it is now. As the original land surface here is cut away by the recent wave-action, this locality does not prove anything for* levels lower than 17 feet. Thus, though it cannot be denied that there might have been, as Professor Dana has suggested, 1 a subsi- dence about 10 or 15 feet below the present level, it appears that even this slight amount cannot be allowed until a series of measurements in different localities gives closely correspond- ing values for the extreme marine limits. Martha’s Vineyard. On Martha’s Vineyard, where I had the advantage of Prof. N. S. Shaler’s guidance, I could only confirm his observation that no raised beaches of any kind were to be seen. Where the terminal moraine touches the flats of Tertiary clays, the topo- 1 On southern New England during the melting of the great glacier. Amer. journ. science, Ser. 3, Vol. X, Dec., 1875, p. 434. Pirn Boat. Soc. Nat. Hist. Vol. XXV. Plato XTII. i892.] 465 [De Geer. graphical features are sometimes at a distance terrace-like, but no true marine terraces either cut or built could be observed. So complete indeed is the preservation of the topography from marine erosion that Professor Shaler, who has thoroughly inves- tigated the island, has come to the conclusion, that if this tract has been submerged it must have been uplifted quite suddenly. But it seems unnecessary to make use of this explanation ; for while I have not seen many of the kames in this locality, 1 should imagine that it would be easier to account for their ridge- like, winding shape, if we assume that they, like the ordinary osars, originated between walls of land-ice or possibly in some cases of river-ice and snow. If they had been deposited in the sea it would appear that the shape should have been more like a delta or a built terrace. As to the submerged valleys on the southern side of the island, these might also be most readily ex- plained by supra-marine erosion of glacial rivers ; for if they were formed below the sea-level, by bottom-currents, coining from the mouths of sub-glacial rivers, we might expect them to be broadest and deepest at their beginning, whereas on the con- trary they regularly increase in size as they depart from the terminal moraine. Moreover it seems scarcely probable that such currents could have kept together for more than live miles, and it is specially difficult to account for the fact that all the small tributaries come in at great angles. Furthermore, I may remark that all the glacial rivers that I have observed in Spitz- bergen pour out their muddy waters as a thin layer on the sur- face of the sea, even in the interior of the fiords, where the sea- water is, probably much less salt than on the open glacial coast of Martha’s Vineyard. Both at Vineyard Haven, Martha’s Vineyard, and at Wood’s Holl on the mainland the actual shore-terrace is very w^ell marked and the beach, is covered with numerous residuary boulders, while the cliffs often consist of unwashed till, which has evidently never been submerged. Boston. In the neighborhood of Boston I made excursions in company with Mr. Warren Upham and examined especially the surfaces of several drumlins without being able to see any traces of marine proceedings b. s. N. h, VOL. xxv. 30 Sept. 1892. £>e]Geer.] 466 [May iS, action above the foot of the hills, some 10 or 20 feet above the marshes. At the marsh level north of Powderhorn Hill in Chelsea we visited a claypit showing to a depth of more than 10 feet a fine laminated clay with occasional drifted boulders, probably of marine deposition. One day in company with Prof. W. O. Crosby and Mr. Lund- bohm I studied several terrace-like benches on the sides of sev- eral drnmlins which had been previously observed by Professor Crosby ; but as we found that they had sometimes a considerable slope, perhaps 1 :10 or 1 :20,and were not developed in the great- est degree on the sea side, we agreed that they could not be of marine origin. Though the marine terraces cut in the drumlins along the ac- tual shore are very sharply marked, their cliffs 100 feet high and their bases covered with residuary boulders, it might seem possi- ble that terraces cut in such a loose material would not be pre- served from slipping down for any long period. Nevertheless the presence of benches on the drumlins at Boston, as well as the very conspicuous cut-terraces in drumlins at the late glacial Iro- quois beach on the south side of Lake Ontario, makes it very probable that if the land at Boston had really been submerged to a great depth, the limit of the marine erosion at least, and per- haps several lower levels also, would have been recorded on the drumlins by shore-lines easily distinguishable in many places, though perhaps somewhat downfallen. I am therefore quite of Mr. Upham’s opinion that the subsidence at Boston was slight. In full accordance with this is Professor Crosby’s statement, that while the till in the Boston basin consists in great part of fine, clayey material, the wide-spread modified drift above the marsh- level contains nothing but gravel and sand, thus indicating that above this level there was no large water body where the finer sediment could be deposited. Mount Desert Island. I am very much indebted to Professor Shaler for his kindness in accompanying me to Mount Desert and in introducing me to the interesting geology of that island. During our two days’ ex- cursion I had several opportunities to observe that, as Professor Shaler’s map shows, the glacial, probably marine sediment, and 467 [De Geer. the gravel and sand as well as the clay, were to be seen only on the lower parts of the island, probably up to about 200 feet. The first point where I saw anything like the marine limit was two miles northeast of Somes Sound, just east of the trivium on the western slope of McFarland’s Mountain. Up to an apparently horizontal line the soil was covered with residuary boulders, but just above it unmodified till was exposed at the side of the road. The approximate height of the shore-line was according to the an- eroid c.1 204 feet (62 m.), and according to angles measured to the surrounding mountains c. 216 (66 m.) drz 12 feet. East of Somes Sound, in the pass between Brown’s and Sar- gent’s Mountains, at the height of between 330 and 200 feet no traces of marine action upon the till were seen, though the south- ern slope must have faced the open Atlantic, if this ever reached so far ; but as soon as we came down to the 200 foot contour line, well washed and assorted material occurred abundantly as a gravel- bar east of Haddock’s Lower Pond. I had not time to fix the ac- tual limit at this locality, but the approximate height of the bar was according to the aneroid c. 190 feet (58 m.). The curious rock benches seen at many places on the slopes of the granite mountains seem to be very closely connected wdth the occurrence of vertical and horizontal joint lines in the rock ; we visited several of these on Jordan’s Hill, Sargent’s Mountain and The Cleft. Level benches are often formed by weathering where rocks are horizontally jointed, so that this important characteris- tic of marine action in other cases is in itself of no value here, unless other common shore features, as beaches with water worn pebbles and ordinary cut and built terraces of till, together with marine sediment, can be shown to exist. Furthermore in sev- eral places the joints and the benches were inclined from 5° to 20°, and nowhere exhibited the characteristic and very regular appear- ance of the rock cut marine terraces in Norway and Spitzbergen. On the open southern surface of Sargent’s Mountain we ob- served numerous small patches of till, often with well striated stones ; and numerous stones and much isolated debris occurred scattered over the surface in such a way that they must have been swept away very quickly by the waves from the Atlantic if they were ever submerged. ‘Abbreviation of circa (about), noting an approximate measurement. t>e Geer.] 468 [May 18, The remarkable overturned boulder which Professor Shaler de- scribes on the southern summit of Jordan’s Hill at an elevation of more than 300 feet does not seem in itself a sufficient proof of ice-shove from the sea and thus of submergence up to this level, as we cannot safely deny the possibility that it might have been overturned by the roots of a tree in a violent storm or even by the agency of man. At the road on the southeast side of The Cleft, it looks as if the rocks had been swept bare by the sea up to about 200 feet, but we could not stop to ascertain with the handlevel whether this had been the case. I stayed for a few days more to make further attempts in de- termining the marine limit. About one and a half miles soutli of Bar Harbor, at the southern end of the 280 foot hill, I found a cut terrace, above which I could find nothing but angular stones, while on a level a few feet lower waterworn gravel and pebbles were plentiful, as on the op of the roadhill. Here, as in other places on the island at a somewhat lower Level, the gravel overlapped the clay, having been brought into this position as shore drift during the successive up- heavals of the land. The height of the marine limit at this point as far as it could be ascertained was about 209 feet (c. 64 m.). About one mile southwest of Bar Harbor and one mile E.N.E. of the northern end of Eagle Lake, just above the covering of marine sediment, I found a little series of well developed beaches, of which the uppermost and largest, marked by a gravel pit, was situated according to the barometer at a height of about 210 feet (c. 64 m.) . Finally I returned to the above mentioned point N. E. of Somes Sound, where I first observed the marine limit, and made a more careful investigation. I followed the shore-line with a handlevel for nearly half a mile north of the road, finding the fol- lowing differences, the absolute height being measured with a barometer : — («) Farthest to the north of the road 210 feet (63.5 m.). (6) Midway between (a) and (d) 211 “ (64.1 “ ,). (c) Nearer the road 213 “ (64.4 “ ). (d) Just north of road 213 “ (64.5 “ ). (e) South of road 209 “ (63.4 “ ). Fine unwashed till occurs in open situation immediately above this shore-line as well as north of the road. iSg2.] 469 [De Geer. As to places in other tracts where I have made determinations of the marine limit, I must for the present confine myself to a mere statement of the heights obtained, but I hope that I shall be able to add a more complete description of the different localities. Determinations of the Late Glacial Marine Limit. With With Probable Localities. handlevel. Feet. Meter. barometer. height. Feet. Meter. Feet. Meter. 1. Perth Amboy, N. Y. — — — — 0 0 2. New Haven, Conn. <17 <5.2 — — c. 10? c. 3? 3. Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. — — — 0 0 4. Boston, Mass. — — c. 10-20 c. 3-6 5. Mount Desert Island, Maine ) ( a ) N. E. of Somes Sound. — — 204 62 | (a) “ — — 208 64 V c. 210 c. 64 6. (6) S. W. of Bar Harbor. — — 210 64 | 7. (c) S. of Bar Harbor. — — 209 64 J 8. Stockton, Maiue. — — 274 84 c. 280 c. 86 9. Bucksport, Maine, at Port Knox, 305 93.0 298 91 305 93 10. St. John, N. B. («) western point. 11. “ “ “ (6) eastern “ z — 267 271 82 \ 83/ c. 269 c. 82 12. Digby, N. S. >35 >10.7 — — c. 40 c. 12 13. Annapolis, N. S. 42 12.7 46 14 42 12.7 14. Wolfville, N. S. 15. Moncton, N. B. (Berry Mill <49 <15 — — c. 50? c. 15? Station, I.R., being 208 ft.) — — 325? 99? c. 325? c. 99? 16. Bathurst, N. B. — — 196 60 c. 196 c. 60 17. Dalhousie, N. B. 175 53.4 175 54 175 53.4 18. Dalhousie Junction, N. B. 19. Riviere du Loup, Quebec (the — — 174 53 c. 174 c. 53 station I. R., 322.5 ft.) 373 113.9 — — 373 113.9 20. Montreal, Quebec (a leveled point being 565 ft.) — 625 190 c. 625 c.190 21. St. Albans, Vt. (the station being 390 ft.) 658 200.5 656 200 658 200.5 22. Alburgh, N. Y. (Moira station, C. V. R. being 357 feet) — — 662 202 c. 662 c. 202 23. Ottawa, near Kingsmeer Lake, Quebec (Hull st’n C.P.R. 185 ft.) — — 705 215 c. 705 c. 215 Unless the contrary is stated all the above heights refer to high- water mark, and the uplifted shore-lines were probably formed at least at or rather above ordinary highwater. As the high tide might have been somewhat lower in the Bay of Fundy when the De Geer.] 470 [May iS, submergence formed a narrow strait across the Chignecto Isthmus the figures for the localities at St. John and in Nova Scotia are perhaps some 5 feet too high. If, as is probable, the levelings based upon railway altitudes refer to mean tide, they also must be lowered about 5 feet. The levelings were all made with Swedish handlevels con- structed by Wrede and Elfving, which contain a mirror held vertically by an adjustable weight and sheltered from the wind by a little wooden case. By aid of a scale angles can also be measured and I have often made good use of them as a check and also for plane table work. The barometrical measurements were made with two aneroids from Naudet in Paris, and each is based upon a series of 10 to 25 observations by means of which the changes in pressure during the day are graphically constructed, and from the differ- ences thus obtained the height is reckoned with due correc- tions for temperature. Though I have often in this way got remarkably good results, it is very desirable that these measure- ments should be checked by the spirit level, as figures should not be considered conclusive which have not an accuracy within three feet or about one meter. Conclusions. All the observations on the height of the marine limit have been put down on the accompanying general map, and with aid of interpolation isobases have been drawn through equally uplifted points with an interval of 200 feet (60 m.). Concerning the extension of the isobases into the interior of the continent, where the marine limit could not be directly de- termined, I have tried to use interpolation in the following manner. As has been stated, it is probable that the geoid-sur- face, which in the submerged regions is marked by the marine limit, is situated in the tract northeast of Lake Ontario at a height some- whatless than 75% of the older high-water level recorded by the Iroquois beach. From the figures given by Professor Spencer1 we find that this beach is situated at about 36% of the Ridgeway beach at the three localities where both occur near each other. 1 High level shores in the region of the Great Lakes and their deformation. Amer, jonri"-. ofsci,, March, 1891, 1892.] 471 [De Geer Consequently the geoicl of the marine limit should be found at 27% of the latter beach, if the deformation of both had been proportionate. To see to what degree this has been the case for the different beaches, I have also reckoned in percentages the proportion be- tween Forest, Ridgeway, and Maumee beaches, and from the figures thus obtained as far as we can judge from the material at present available the differential uplift of the highest or the Maumee beach was somewhat greater than that of the Ridgeway beach, the same being the case with the Ridgeway beach in com- parison with the Forest beach, but the lowest one, or the Iroquois beach, seems to have a proportionately steeper slope than the Forest bead) and to be in this respect more proportionate to the Ridgeway beach. As this has been explored for the greatest distance and seems to be the easiest of identification, I have thought it advisable to use it for this preliminary interpolation, without attempting to make any correction for the divergence from the proportion of 27% which may occur in the southern part of the region. Thus of the figures on the map indicating the interpolated height of the marine limit all those along the Iroquois beach repre- sent 75% of its height, and those along the Ridgeway beach 27 % of its height.1 Concerning the westernmost part of the glaciated area we owe accurate information about the gradient of the warped beaches to Mr. Warren Upham’s excellent investigation of Lake Agassiz. However, until the deserted beaches around Lake Michigan and Lake Superior are more fully explored and the damming ice-border is continuously traced between the different basins, it is difficult to form any opinion about the absolute amount of the upheaval of the land since the formation of the marine limit. In the mean time we must content ourselves with the follow- ingfacts. As Prof. J. E. Todd and Mr. TJpham have stated, the deserted shores of Lake Dakota, situated close to the southwest of Lake Agassiz, show no or only a slight unequal deformation. As 1 This method of interpolation can of course be accurate only when the change of level has been successive and regular, as may perhaps to some extent have been the case with the sea, but probably much less with the ice-dammed lakes. Still the present state of our knowledge does not seem to allow any more satisfactory method, and this may be sufficient for the present purpose. De Geer.] 472 [May iS, the longer axis of this lake trends in nearly the same direction as the greatest warping of Lake Agassiz, it seems probable that the limit for this warping and at the same time for the upheaved area lies just between Lake Agassiz and Lake Dakota or through Lake Traverse. It is by no means certain that the limit for the uplifted region or the iso base for zero remained at the same place when the marine limit in the St. Lawrence valley was formed ; but we may assume it for this part of the continent, since we can- not. at present, expect to get more than a general idea of the direction of the isobases and their maximum gradient. To judge from the probable thickness and direction of the receding ice-border, it appears that the formation of the highest or Herman beach of Lake Agassiz was probably antecedent to the geoid surface which is traced in this paper. Moreover it is quite possible that the ice had not receded from the St. Lawrence valley before Lake Agassiz received the northward outflow. Yet to be quite sure of maximum figures for the gradient, I have used the measurements of the highest or Herman beach, though they may be too high. As to the probable position of the marine limit in the other northern portions of the area very little can be added. Some ex- plorers, believing that every kind of drift is deposited in the sea, have not paid due attention to the determination of the limit for the real marine deposits ; others seem to have estimated only the height of beaches accidentally discovered and their most reliable observations are made with a barometer often at a long distance from any known level or base-barometer. From Murray’s paper on the glaciation of Newfoundland1 it seems that marine deposits are found on that island at a height of about 200 feet. According to R. Bell2 distinct beaches are seen at Nachvak in Labrador at an estimated height of 1,500 feet ; but I have not found more precise measurements for these tracts. Even if this measurement should be over-estimated, these beaches may be among the highest in all the uplifted area. But the low levels at which marine deposits are found in the relatively well exjflored southern and western parts of Greenland, make it im- probable that the extraordinary high levels, reported as occurring 1 Proc. and trails. Roy. soc. Can., 1883, I, pp. 55-76. 2 Rept. geol. sprv. Can., 1885, p. 8 DD; and Bull. geol. soc. Amer., 1889, 1, p, 308. 1892.] 473 [De Geer. along Smith Sound, should belong to the same system of up- heaval as that of the Canadian region. East of the middle of Hudson Bay between the coast and Clearwater Lake, A. P. Low has found sediments and terraces probably of marine origin up to about 675 feet above sea level.1 Southwest of James’ Bay, on the Kenogami River, a tributary of the Albany, Bell2 has found marine fossils about 450 feet, and west of Hudson Bay at Churchill River about 350 feet above the sea level. As is easily seen from the above statements, the observations at present available do not allow the drawing of even approximate isobases over a large portion of the area ; but from the part suffi- ciently studied, it seems possible to form a general idea concern- ing the nature of the changes of level ; these point to a remark- able analogy to the conditions in Scandinavia. Thus the greatest subsidence has taken place in Labrador — probably near the watershed — where the ice accumulation had its center. But as the ice in the northern part of this land, according to Bell, had a northward movement, it will probably be found that . the amount of subsidence also decreases to that side, about as it did in all other directions in which the ice covering thinned out. The conformity between ice-load and subsidence seems to have been still greater here than in Scandinavia, and in this respect it will be very interesting to see what will result from a continued investigation of the warped beaches in the lake basin with its marked ice lobes. It can already be seen that the isobases in the peninsula southeast of the St. Lawrence River, which we will here for brevity’s sake call the Atlantic peninsula, follow very closely the extension of the last glaciation. Especially is it note worthy that the amount of subsidence was small along the Gulf of St. Lawrence in connection with the fact, stated by Chalmers, that the ice thinned out in that direction. Nova Scotia, which probably only in its western portion and to a small amount participated in the subsidence of the mainland, seems from this fact not to have been wholly ice-covered during the last glaciation, and the local glaciers might not have been thick enough to produce any noticeable changes of level. 1 Rep. on expl. in James’ Bay and country east of Hudson Bay. Geol. and nat. hist. surv. Can., Ann.rept., 1887, III, p. 59 J. 2 Geol. and nat. hist. surv. Can., Ann. rept., 1886, II, pp. 34, 38 G. De Geer.] 474 [May 18, The gradient of the deformed geoid surface wus evidently steepest on the Atlantic side of the continent, where the slope of the ice-sheet must also have been greatest ; it is here generally 1 : 1,400, with the exception of the St. Lawrence valley, where its direction is oblique to its general trend against the Atlantic and its amount is not larger than about 1 : 4,900. The steep gradient will probably be found also at the coast of Labrador, which in many respects is analogous with the high, fiord-cut coast of Norway in Scandinavia. In the interior of the American continent, where the ice spread out over a large area, the isobases are far more distant and show a smaller gradient just as in Scandinavia. Thus the mean gradient from Georgian Bay toward the southwest to the limit of the area seems about 1 : 3,400, being much steeper at the border of the azoic region and smaller at the outside. The connection between the subsidence and the geological structure of the earth’s crust is perhaps not quite so striking as in Scandinavia. Still it seems probable that the Canadian azoic or Archaean region has changed its level more than the surrounding tracts, though this is not yet sufficiently proved in regard to Hudson Bay. The general conformity between the ice covering and the old azoic plateau makes it difficult in the present state of our knowledge in many cases to discern between the influence of these two circumstances. Thus it may be re- marked that the above mentioned convexity of the isobases around the Atlantic peninsula may also have some connection with the Atlantic mountain ranges, and that the most uplifted part lies near the Adirondacks, consequently at quite a distance west of the iceshed at Quebec. The fact that Newfoundland, which at least during the last extension of the glaciers may have been only locally glaciated, also shared in the submergence may in some degree be accounted for by its geological structure. All the above statements concerning the late glacial upheaval are based upon the height to which the marine deposits are up- lifted, but as we generally cannot tell whether this rising of the land has been continuous or partly counteracted bv subsidence, it would be more correct to speak of it as the final result of the changes of level since the maximum of the late glacial submer- gence. Along certain parts of the Atlantic coast many facts were ob- tS92.] 475 [De Geer. served long since which show that these tracts in very modern times have been and perhaps still are sinking, and it is of in- terest that these signs of subsidence are found along the Atlantic coast plain outside of the glacial region of uplifting as well as somewhat within its boundary, just as has been the case in Scandinavia. Thus submarine peat-bogs are known in New Jersey and Nantucket Island as well as at the northeastern end of the Bay of Fundy and at the mouth of Bay Chaleur. These last localities show that if the rising of land is still going on in the interior, the isobase for zero, or, to use Shaler’s expression, the pivot point between the continental upheaval and the oceanic subsidence, has moved at least more, than fifty miles toward the land side. The amount of this subsidence is not yet known, but at the Bay of Fundy it must have been at least 40 feet and at Nantucket probably 10 feet. Even the numerous small buried gla- cial river valleys at the southern shores of Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and Long Island afford evidence of a slight submergence. The same is the case, as Merrill has pointed out, with the Hudson River estuary, which must have subsided somewhat since the channel was cut out of the glacial clays in the valley. Another question is whether the deep submarine river valley southeast of New York harbor, so well described by Professor Dana, belongs to so late a period. The fact that its upper end down to a depth of about 100 feet has been entirely filled up at the outside of Sandy Hook seems to indicate that the Hudson River leveled the adjacent part of the pre-existing channel during the maximum of the post-glacial elevation, having its mouth here for a considerable time. The other analogous sub- marine channel described by Dana from the north side of Long Island may perhaps afford a possibility of determining their age. Having crossed Long Island Sound in an oblique direction, it becomes during the last 10 miles more and more shallow, end- ing abruptly at Long Island against the terminal moraine. Here it may be possible to ascertain with a few borings, whether the channel, as it appears, has been overridden by the moraines of the last glaciation, and perhaps also whether it is younger than those of the first glaciation. Though the abrupt ending of this last channel is very, likely due to the terminal moraine, which, to judge from Dana’s obser- De Geer.] 476 May iS, vations, lias not quite filled it up, yet there appears to be no continuation of it on the other side of Long Island, even beyond the glacial deltas. This curious fiord-like shoaling of the submarine channel, be- fore it reaches the edge of the continental plateau, is repeated by the submerged river channels described by A. Lindenkohl from the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays. This phenomenon might perhaps be explained according to T. F. Jamieson’s suggestion for certain fiords, as a consequence of the unequal and intense subsidence of an iceloaded con- tinent. But concerning these channels, as well as the one described by Chalmers in the St. John River estuary and the large channels reported by Spencer from St. Lawrence Bay and several other places, we must allow that at present we know very little indeed of their history and precise age, with perhaps the general excep- tion that they may point to a high elevation in early glacial time. In this connection it is of interest that in America as well as in Europe the interglacial marine deposits at present accessible above the sea level are found only near the margin and at the outside of the region which during the last glaciation has been exposed to subsidence. I refer here to the interesting fossiliferous deposits described by Shaler, Upham, and others from Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Long Island, and Boston. The question whether the Columbia formation belongs to the same subsidence cannot safely be discussed, before its marine origin is conclusively shown by fossils, boundary shore-lines, or other indisputable evidence. The same is true of the lower beds of sand and clay about 50 feet thick which Lyell in the report of his first voyage to North America describes from Beauport near Quebec. The clay with boulders, which he observed resting upon these beds and covered by fossiliferous, late glacial deposits, is as I could myself ascertain a true till, probably belonging to the last glaciation. Though the situation of these possibly interglacial deposits is open to the St. Lawrence estuary, their marine origin is very questionable, since no fossils have been found. But if it is difficult to get any idea of the interglacial geoid deformations from the marine deposits, it is still more so with 1392.] 477 ,[i>avis. respect to the scanty remnants of lake sediments. As compared with these the buried river channels seem to be easier to trace, though of course affording less accurate information. In this connection and as possibly pertaining to the general in- terglacial hydrography of the Great Lake basin, I may perhaps mention the common occurrence of waterworn pebbles in the drumlins west of Syracuse as these may very likely be derived from buried shore-lines belonging to the same interglacial lake as the interesting deposits east of Toronto. Finally I will emphasize, that the purpose of this paper is much less to give an ultimate solution of the different complex problems connected with the continental changes of level, than to show a way by which, I think, such a solution can be reached with as little loss of time as possible. From the details already determined in North America as well as in Europe, it is ovident that the changes of level are closely connected with the local structure of the earth’s crust and with the local extension of the glaciations ; and thus it is conclu- sively shown that no changes whatever in the level of the sea can account for the phenomenon. Notwithstanding all doubts as to the possibility of vertical up- lifts of the great continental portions of the earth’s crust, we may already be fully justified to use about this with a new meaning the well known words of Galilei : “ Yet it does move.” THE SUBGLACIAL ORIGIN OF CERTAIN ESKERS. BY WILLIAM MORRIS DAVIS. (Walker Prize Essay, 1892.) CONTENTS. 1. The relation of climate to the forms of the waste of the land on its way to the sea. page 478 2 Glacial deposits in general. . 480 3. Marginal washed glacial deposits. . 4&1 4. Method of investigation here adopted. . 482 5. The problem of this essay. 483 6. The Auburndale district. 484 7. The sand plateaus. .... 484 Davis.] 478 [ May 18, 8. Conditions of deposition of sand plateaus. . page 486 9. Their origin as deltas, marginal to the decaying ice-sheet. ....... 488 10. The feeding eskers. ..... 489 11 . Rapid deposition of eskers and sand plateaus. . 490 12. Their local and spasmodic growth. . . . 491 13. Conclusion as to their joint origin. . . . 492 14. Origin of eskers in superglacial channels. . 492 15. Origin in subglacial channels. . . . 493 16. Analogy with Alaskan glacial streams. . . 494 17. Height of eskers. ...... 496 18. Boulders in sand plateaus. .... 496 19. Changes in eskers since deposition. . . 496 20. Review and conclusions. . . . . 498 1 . THE RELATION OF CLIMATE TO THE FORMS OF THE WASTE OF THE LAND ON ITS WAY TO THE SEA. During the present century of geological progress, it has come to be generally recognized that the forms of the land are for the most part the product of erosion upon forms once much larger than now, and that the waste that they have yielded has been borne to the sea. There is, however, another group of land forms to which attention should be directed ; that is, the forms which are produced by the waste of the land on its way to the sea. Soil ♦ sheets, talus slopes and cones, alluvial fans, flood plains and del- tas belong under this heading, when erosion is controlled by ordi- nary processes under a sufficient rainfall ; but all these forms receive a peculiar interest fi-om their especial relation to climate. In an arid climate the slopes and the low ground become cov- ered with detrital material, because there is so little water to carry away the products of weathering. The accumulation is not the re- sult of the faster weathering of the rocks but of slower transpor- tation ol weathered detritus. The ratio of supply to transportation of waste is increased, and hence the lowlands become encumbered with waste from the mountains. The loitering waste may accu- mulate to a considerable depth, obliterating the forms produced at an earlier time by constructional processes or under different climatic conditions. The action of the wind is increased in such cases when the water fails, and unlike water action, it may lead 4*79 [DaviS. .S92.] to transportation up-hill, as in the formation of dunes or in the wider distribution of dust by means of whirlwinds. On the other hand, in a climate characterized by cold and by a sufficient precipitation of snow for the production of extended ice-sheets, the waste of the land is again distributed in a peculiar way over the surface on its way to the sea. Although hidden from observation while the ice-sheet is present, these peculiar forms of land waste become very noticeable when climatic change melts the ice-sheet away and discloses the surface over which it was creeping. In this case the local accumulation of land waste in specialized topographic forms appears to result chiefly from the application of the glacial forces all over the land surfaces, so that the waste is not concentrated along the narrow drainage lines characteristic of transportation by water, but is dragged or carried or washed broadly across the country. As before, the accumulated waste frequently conceals the topographic forms pro- duced before the advent of the special climate under considera- tion; and curiously enough, some of the forms of accumulation again involve at least a local transportation up-hill, as in drum- lins or in a smaller way in the scattered boulders that are left at a higher level than their sources. It is important to notice that the climatic oscillations from warm to cold or from moist to dry are relatively rapid, occurring within a brief part of an entire geographical cycle or period of time during which a land mass is worn down from its early con- structional forms to the base-leveled monotony of old age. The forms assumed by the waste of the land on its way to the sea in an arid climate are for the most part remarkably simple and regular. The waste has a steeper slope of coarser material near its source of supply on the mountain sides, then a gentler slope lying at less and less angle of descent, until in the middle of enclosed basins or near the sea at a distance from the moun- tain foot, the surface becomes almost level. The forms accumu- lated under and at the margin of ice-sheets in a cold climate are, on the other hand, extremely varied, and it is to one of these that this essay is devoted. I do not propose to discuss here the evidence of glacial action. The conclusion that New England with a large part of northeastern North America was not long ago invaded by an ice-sheet is accepted as well demonstrated, and at- tention is given only to a special product of its action. t)avis.] 480 [May 18, 2. GLACTAL DEPOSITS IN GENERAL. Let us consider especially the forms taken by the land waste when dropped near the margin of the ice. The type of these forms is seen in the terminal moraine. It consists chiefly of dragged, carried or washed material, which accumulates near the margin of the ice, where the activity of transportation weakens. In its best development, a terminal moraine is continuous over long distances and the formation of its entire extension marks a definitely limited chapter in geological time. It is confluent backwards with the sheet of till or ground moraine that has been dragged and washed a less distance forward from its source. It is continuous forwards with an overwasli of gravel, sand, and clay, distributed as evenly as the foreground will allow, by the waters escaping from the ice. The distinctness and size of the moraine are functions of many variable factors, the chief of which are the supply of detritus, the activity of its carriage by move- ment of the ice or by glacial streams, the duration of glacial action, and the precision of the balance between supply and melt- ing, by which the margin of the ice-sheet is held steadily on a single line. A steady balance, however, is seldom maintained during any long lapse of time. The ice margin generally oscillates back and forwards. The deposits formed during the forward ad- vance are not preserved intact ; they are more or less completely obliterated by the subsequent dragging and grinding of the ice over them. Those formed during the final retreat of the ice are preserved with no more change than is determined by the later sub-aerial processes of destruction. As a rule, the surface of the uppermost glacial deposits in New England has suffered so little from the action of general denuding agencies that we must conclude that the disappearance of the ice-sheet from over New England occurred at a comparatively recent date. During the early . stages of the retreat of the ice front, it is pos- sible that a considerable forward movement of the ice ma}^ have been maintained ; but when the melting had advanced so far as to reduce the thickness of the sheet below the measure required for motion over our rugged hills, the ice must then have become stagnant — as suggested by Chamberlin — lying quiet on the land till it melted away. Under such conditions the deposit at the margin of the decaying sheet would consist only of materials con- [892.] 481 [Davis. tained on or in the ice and delivered as it melted away, 'thus forming the loose scattered upper till, well studied byUpham; but where glacial streams flowed from the ice out upon the open front country, there may there have concentrated upon a small sur- face the material that their waters had gathered from a much larger area on or under the ice. Such streams may have been larger than their modern representatives, partly because of the addition of ice-water to the ordinary local and immediate supply by rain- fall ; but much more because of the constraint then exercised on drainage, whereby various river basins buried under the ice were forced to discharge their waters over passes into basins from which they are now well divided ; and also because of the temporary quality of glacial drainage, whereby streams flowed now here, now there, leaving on both lines the marks of their great activity. In many cases, active streams may have run over courses where no stream at all now flows. It follows from all this that the locus of washed deposits near the margin of the decaying and stagnant ice-sheet might often be independent of existing streams of the present time, as well as of pre-glacial streams ; and it is perhaps in this way that the apparently fortuitous distribution of glacial gravels is best accounted for. 3. MARGINAL WASHED GLACIAL DEPOSITS. Gravel and sand washed from the ice appear to have been formed sometimes on land, sometimes in standing water. On land the escaping streams would form an over wash of bedded gravels, on which the distributing and variable channels would frequently wander from place to place, building up a surface of gentle forward inclination at a profile of equilibrium. These de- posits would be broad if formed on a level country ; but would follow down the valleys in a country of strong relief. On the other hand, when the ice margin was fronted with standing water, the streams that entered it would build deltas, with lobate rim, steep plunging front beneath the water level, and nearly level upper surface slightly above water level and ascending gently to the point of chief supply at the edge of the ice. Deposits of these kinds are well known in Greenland and Alaska. Un- like the typical terminal moraine, the over-washed and delta PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. 31 SEPT. 189‘2. Davis. J 482 [May iS, deposits would be for tbe most part local in time and place. The drainage from the ice would flow now here, now there, frequently changing by outburst to a new channel and leaving its former course nearly dry. The passages among the half separated ice masses at the margin of the decaying sheet would become more or less clogged with sand and gravels ; with fine sands where the currents were gentle ; with coarser materials along the paths of active streams ; and if we may interpret the accounts of the Arctic voyagers, such streams as rise from be- neath the ice and enter a marginal pond or lake, might be con- strained to build their deposits on an ascending slope. The impetuous character of some of the streams described in the Greenland ice would warrant our supposing that stones of a con- siderable size might thus be carried from lower to higher situa- tions. Streams flowing on the surface of the ice might in many cases melt and wear out channels, in which gravels could accu- mulate ; and these would later be dropped on the ground as the enclosing ice walls disappeared ; but in such case it might be ex- pected that the deposit would be somewhat scattered on one side and the other of the original channel. 4. METHOD OF INVESTIGATION HERE ADOPTED. Thus far this sketch follows essentially deductive lines. This plan of presentation was chosen advisably, for a double reason. It is much easier to appreciate the force of what follows, if the general knowledge of the subject treated is summarized before the special subject under investigation is entered upon. It is furthermore essential that the investigator should not go unin- ormed into the field, but should equip himself as fully as pos- sible with a knowledge of what has been learned bearing on tbe subject of his studies. It must take new form in his understand- ing of it ; it must be carefully discussed, the facts of observation and their interpretation being sharply distinguished ; but if the field study is to be of the highest profit, as little as possible of what has already been done well by others should be uncon- sciously done over again. The sum of knowledge on the question in hand should be reviewed and revised ; but time should not be lost in its rediscovery. While the general sketch presented above is, on these pages, entirely antecedent to what follows, it should not be inferred that such was its relation to the study of sand plateaus and their feeding eskers in the field. The two divisions of the study advanced to- gether, and one part was continually employed to check the other. In this way it is thought that a fuller understanding of both was secured than if field work had been pursued, as some would advise, before a general knowledge of the studies of others was gained. The reasons for such advice appear to be based on a fear that if the conclusions and theories of others are present to the mind while field study is going on, the observer may warp his facts into line with preconceived opinions, and fail to discover the mistakes of his predecessors as well as to appreciate the real meaning of the new facts of his own observation. I believe that a sufficient counter to this objection is to be found in careful training. If the danger that truly exists is kept in mind and clearly realized, and the mind is required to take a serious and judicial attitude, avoiding hasty conclusions and testing every hypothesis, then the advantage of the double method of investiga- tion is certainly greater than its disadvantage. Indeed, those who are too poorly trained to be trusted with it had best not under- take independent study at all. 5. THE PROBLEM OF THIS ESSAY. The special subject indicated by the title of this essay is one of those smaller problems of glacial geology to which a considerable attention has been directed by observers of the minuter forms of drift deposits for some years past. Although a relatively tri- fling matter in itself, it is one of those details whose right under- standing contributes a valued share to the correct interpretation of the processes of the glacial period as a whole. Some have advocated that the long ridges of gravel, variously called kames, serpentine kames, Indian ridges, osars and eskers — the latter being the name now adopted by Chamberlin and others — were formed in channels underneath the ice during the latter stages of the disappearance of the ice-sheet ; others believe them to have been deposited in channels on the surface of the ice, from which they have settled down to the ground as the ice afterwards melted away. There are difficulties attending either view. If formed in subglacial channels it must be admitted that the gravels Davis. J 484 [May 1 8, and stones of which the ridges are chiefly composed were some- times washed up-hill along a moderate slope, as the northern end of the shorter eskers is often lower than their southern end. If formed on the ice, it is difficult to understand how their simplic- ity of linear form could be preserved ; for as the ice melted away on either side and underneath they would be more likely to slide off to one side or the other in irregular deposits than to remain in simple linear form. I believe that it is possible to discriminate in some cases be- tween these rival suggestions ; but it is not intended to overdraw conclusions and state that all eskers must be formed in the same way as were those that have come under my observation. The method or argument leading to the adopted conclusion in the cases studied consists essentially in a parallel development of observation and generalization ; until at last the correlated facts demand so specialized and complicated an explanation that only one theory can in any probability supply it. 6. THE AUBURNDALE DISTRICT. During the construction of the circuit line of the Boston and Albany Railroad, a deep cut was made in a little plateau of gravel and sand between the stations of Woodland and Waban, about a mile south of Auburndale. A little further west a cut was made through a sharp-ridged esker, exposing its loose stony structure. A few years before, extensive excavations had been made in a neighboring sand plateau towards Newton Lower Falls to gain material for filling in the Boston Back Bay. All these artificial sections, combining with a strongly expressed topo- graphy, give the Auburndale district a high value in the study of glacial geology. 7. THE SAND PLATEAUS. The deposits of the district are easily divided into three series as indicated both by form and structure. These are the sand plateaus1, the gravel ridges or eskers, and the sand mounds or I have previously called these “ sand-plains” in an essay published in the Bulletin of the Geological society of America, but am now tempted to follow a suggestion of Mr. Upham and name them “sand plateaus” in order to give emphasis to their ele- vation above the adjacent meadows. 1892.] 485 [Davis. kames. The plateaus of sand and gravel possess an even surface, occasionally broken by depressions from twenty to forty feet deep and of variable area up to several acres.- The entire plateau area may be from ten to forty acres ; while plateaus of the same kind that have been under my observation in other localities have a much larger surface. The sections that have been made in these masses disclose a well-bedded series of sands and gravels, the sands predominating. For the greater part, the sands lie in sloping strata, descending from that side of the plateau whose elevation is a little greater than the rest, and which is therefore called the head. The dip of the bedding is from 15° to 20° except at the top and bottom of the section ; it agrees closely with the inclination of the plateau front opposite the head, where the outline is scal- loped in a lobate form. The materials of the plateau are distinctly coarser near its head than towards its lobnte front ; and each layer of sand, traced from its upper end and along its descent, be- comes distinctly finer and finer. Over the sloping sand beds lies a series of gravels, generally nearly horizontal and often coarsely cross-bedded ; single members of these beds may be oc- casionally seen turning downwards to join the sloping beds of sand. The bottom layers of the plateau conform to the foundation sur- face. During the past season of field study, I have had opportunity of revisiting these sections and others similar to them with a num- ber of geologists from different parts of the country. None of these visitors felt any hesitation in confirming my conclusions that the plateaus as a whole are washed deposits formed in a body of standing water, wThose level agreed closely with that of the lobate rim of the plateau front ; and that the growth of the de- ' posit was from the coarser higher part, here called the head, towards the slightly lower lobate front. The undisturbed attitude of the sand and gravel beds shows clearly enough that they have not been overridden by any glacial sheet since they were laid down ; although, as if to give strength to this rule, a trifling exception to it should be noticed. A small section in the head of one of the plateaus, used as a gravel pit opposite Lee’s Hotel in Auburndale, exhibits unmis- takable signs of distortion in its well-marked bedding. The beds are both folded and faulted by small amounts, as if by a strong but gradual push from the head towards the front ; the whole movement amounting to perhaps four or five feet. Davis.] 486 [May 18, The cobbles and pebbles that characterize the head portion of the plateaus consist for the greater part of crystalline rocks, but slates and occasional conglomerates are also found. These are always fairly well rounded, although but few of them can be called well water- worn. None have been found showing unmis- takable glacial striations. Large boulders, up to eight or ten feet in diameter, are found at various levels in the mass of the plateau ; many of these now lie at the bottom of the excavations, being too large for removal. Like the smaller stones they exhibit much variety of composition, coming both from the crystalline highlands on the north and northwest, and from the lowland of bedded rocks, followed by the Charles .River. After examining the sections by which the internal structure is revealed, the observer should return to the margin of the plateau at its head, and inquire how the materials of which the mass is composed could be brought to their present position. All the stones and sand that have come from the stratified rocks of the Charles River lowland must have been raised at least a hundred feet before they could reach the plateau surface ; and all the crystalline rocks have been carried across a distance of at least two or three miles now occupied by an open lowland. In order not to give too ready acceptance to the theory of the glacial origin of the plateau, the following reasons may be advanced for rejecting other explanations as entirely insufficient and discordant with manifest facts. 8. CONDITIONS OF DEPOSITION OF SAND PLATEAUS. The only agents of transportation that need be considered at all are the wind, rivers, the sea, and ice. Leaving the latter out of account for the moment, the first may be excluded by the coarseness of the materials constituting the plateau ; it cannot possibly be regarded as a dune. An origin by either river or sea action will require that, at the time of construction, the deposit must have stretched continuously from its source in the crystalline highlands on the north across the Auburndale lowland to its present position ; and hence that the lowland must have been ex- cavated after the plateau was built. There is nothing inherently impossible in this, as far as the general proposition is concerned ; but it is embarrassed by certain local objections that soon drive it out of consideration, In the first place, the supply of so much iSqs.J 487 [Davis. sand and gravel would require an amount of denudation and transportation since the glacial epoch — for the whole plateau, it must be remembered, has certainly not been overridden by the ice — that is entirely inconsistent with what has been measured else- where. In the second place, as the plateau has a delta front, indicated both by its form and by its structure, it implies a standing body of water whether its materials were brought into that water body by river currents or marine currents ; and the existence of an open water level at the height of the plateau surface, or about a hun- dred feet above present sea-level, long enough for the building of so extensive a delta as would be required to stretch across the Charles River lowlands at Auburndale, is not consistent with the absence in other localities of a well-marked shore line at the same elevation. In the third place, the requirement of the original extension of the plateau across the lowland and the subsequent excavation of the lowland after the plateau was built, is incon- sistent with the form of the head of the plateau. A little north- west of the “big signboard” near Newton Lower Falls, there is a series of gravel mounds or kames and kettles along the head of the plateau, whose form is so manifestly of constructional and not of erosive origin that no one can believe that the plateau ever had any appreciable extension over them. They mark its original limit. Moreover, in the case of the larger plateau, which lies just east of Newton Lower Falls, there is a considerable marshy area on its northern slope, not open like a valley, but enclosed by drift hills on all sides, although recently artificially drained for purposes of cultivation. Like the kettles among the kames, this marshy depression forbids the extension of the plateau across the lowland, and confirms the conclusion that its original margin coincided practically with the present margin. It may be added that the interpretation of the head of the plateau as an original constructional form is confirmed by discovering a form of quite another kind on the western slope of the plateau, a quarter of a mile southeast of Newton Lower Falls ; here is a long concave margin, unmistakably produced by a swing or meander of the Charles River, before its channel had been sunk so low in the valley gravels as it now lies. This smoothly curved excavation in the side of the plateau is of especial value in illustrating Low clearly the marks of erosion on the plateau may be recognized, and hence in confirming the conclusion. Davis. J 488 [May 18, stated above that its margin at other points retains a con- structional form. Neither wind nor water alone proving sufficient to account for the deposition of the plateau, the agency of ice may be consid- ered. It is, however, expressly stated that the reason for this consideration does not lie in its necessity. I should strongly disapprove of concluding that an ice-sheet had once existed in southern New England simply because sand plateaus cannot be otherwise explained. It would in such case be safer to let the problem remain open and search for more facts. But in the case in hand, the conviction that an ice-sheet once spread over our country was established on excellent evidence before any special study was made of the sand plateaus ; its agency is indeed more admissible than that of the sea, whose presence in postglacial times at a height of a hundred feet above its present level in the region around Boston is not yet demonstrated. 9. ORIGIN OF SAND PLATEAUS AS DELTAS, MARGINAL TO THE DE- CAYING ICE- SHEET. During the dwindling away of the New England ice-sheet, we may discover conditions of a simple character that supply all the processes necessary for the building of a sand plateau. We have obstruction of drainage by the lingering remnants of the decay- ing ice-sheet ; we have constrained streams, escaping from the surface or bottom of the ice, and bearing stones, sand, and gravel from place to place. When such streams flowed from the ice into standing water, whether it was an arm of the sea or a local pond, sand deltas would be built, resembling in every particular, as far as I can draw the comparison, the sand plateaus of the Auburndale district. They would be coarse near the head and finer near the front ; their margin would consist of concave curves along the head, where it was built next to the decaying ice ; their thus layers would descend forwards, one overlying another and building outwards from their source at a rapid rate towards the front, the head rising slightly higher as the front grew further forward, and the upper surface thus receiving a series of coarser cross-bedded gravels, such as characterize the stony delta surface of active streams ; the free front of the delta would grow where the branching or distributing streams flowed for tbe time, and >893.] 489 [D avis as they shifted from place to place, a convex lobate outline would be developed. The size of the delta would depend on the activity of the feeding stream from the ice, and on the dura- tion of the special conditions of its action. So complete a cor- respondence leaves no room for doubt. W e may therefore turn from this well-established foundation to the next step in the investigation : namely, the explanation of the gravel ridges or eskers so often extending backward from the head of the delta plateau. 10. THE FEEDING ESKERS. The occasional sections of the eskers .show that they consist of essentially the same materials as those found in the plateaus. The stones are similarly somewhat rounded but not well water-worn ; they are sometimes poorly stratified, but more commonly lie in much disorder ; although whether it should be asserted that they are absolutely unstratified is to me an open question. The distinc- tion between bad or imperfect stratification and an entire lack of stratification is difficult to draw. A frequent and characteristic feature of their structure is the occurrence of “openwork gravels,” as I have been accustomed to call them. The spaces between the pebbles are often left empty, although the layers adjoining contain plenty of fine material. The same structure has been seen in the gravel beds near the heads of certain sand plateaus. This I interpret as indicating hasty action, of whatever kind ; and I am disposed to regard it as an important link in the evidence leading to the explanation of the origin of eskers, as will appear hereafter. In several cases, it is possible to follow along an esker from its first appearance until it joins a sand plateau ; and I have met only one observer, a foreigner, experienced in glacial studies, who could avoid the conclusion that the esker and the sand pla- teau thus associated were formed contemporaneously. Perhaps it is pertinent to add that this observer was committed to the idea that eskers are formed in channels on the surface of the ice-sheet, and that he was frank enough to admit that, if the contempora- neous origin of the esker and the sand plateau were granted, the surface origin of the esker could not be maintained. I mention this the more freely because this well-known investigator has given what appear to me good reasons for thinking that some eskers are formed in surface channels ; but it does not appear Davis.] 490 [May 18, that that is sufficient reason for believing that all eskers are of the same origin. As the esker is followed toward the sand plateau with which it becomes confluent, it commonly becomes broader and more irreg- ular in form ; and at the same time, its sides are somewhat pitted with smail hollows ; it sometimes gives out branches, excellently shown in the feeding esker of the Newtonville sand plateau, two miles east of Auburndale ; and at the same time, the adjacent low- land surface becomes more or less encumbered with sand mounds or kames. I interpret all these changes to mean that, in walking along the esker from its head to its junction with the sand pla- teau, we are advancing from the more solid and continuous mass of the ice towards its decayed margin, where it is dissected by numerous channels ; and that while the main stream flowing from the ice followed the course now marked by the chief esker, the side streams are indicated by its branches, and various sluggish currents are implied by the sand heaps or kames which filled the irregular spaces among the melted ice. All this is so generally recognized that we may turn at once to the more special question on which general agreement is not yet reached. Is the esker the deposit of a superglacial or of a subglacial stream ? The general absence of disturbance in the sands and gravels at the head of a sand plateau indicates that the ice-sheet, when the delta grew at its margin, was essentially stagnant. The curva- ture of the esker ridge and the inequality of jits crest line are inconsistent ivith a forward movement of the ice over it. The kames tell the same story, for at the front of an active glacier we should not expect to find the ice margin consisting of sepa- rated ice masses. The kettles in the sand plain confirm the con- clusion ; for they indicate ice blocks, whose presence held their space free from the sand which grew up around them, and whose subsequent melting left the kettles empty. If any motion was retained in the ice -sheet near the margin, it must have been very slow and sufficient only for the slight pushing of the beds seen at the cut by Lee’s Hotel. 11. RAPID DEPOSITION OF ESKERS AND SAND PLATEAUS. When one first views the extended surface of a large sand plateau or delta, it is assumed that a considerable lapse of time, 189a.] 491 [Davis. must have been required for its deposition. But if that had been the case, the margin of the stagnant ice must have been melted by a significant amount while the delta was growing, and thus have opened a space at the head of the delta to be filled up with gravel as fast as the ice melted back. No deposits that can be interpreted as formed in such a manner have been found, if we except certain small slanting layers, insignificant when compared to the mass of the plateau. Although two well-exposed sections at the head of a sand plateau have been attentively examined, they do not indicate a recession of the ice of more than ten or twenty feet, while the forward growth of the plateau extended over several hundred feet. It may be that the ice melting was very slow ; but it appears more probable that the delta growth was relatively rapid, the product of gushing streams heavily laden with sand and gravel. This view is borne out by the structure of the open-work gravels above mentioned in the eskers and in the coarser beds near the head of the plateau. 12. LOCAL AND SPASMODIC GROWTH OF ESKERS AND SAND PLATEAUS. A new question now arises. If the forward delta growth was * so much more rapid than the backward melting of the ice, why was not the whole country covered with sand plateaus? At Auburndale the sand plateau grew forward at least twenty times faster than the ice melted backward. The ice has melted back- ward all across New England. Hence unless some other factor is to be considered, the sand plateau should extend about six thousand miles southward. This is of course simply a reductio ad absurdum , in order to emphasize the conclusion that the rapid growth of the sand delta was a brief, spasmodic, temporary affair, e merely a local short-lived episode in the deliberate recession of the ice. The sand plateau therefore marks the transient out- let of a glacial stream, well charged with gravel and sand, and here flowing from the ice into a body of standing water. It might perhaps be suggested that the stream had a permanent outlet along the Auburndale esker, and that it was only at times charged with detritus in sufficient quantities to build a sand plateau ; but this assumption would be contrary to the uniform experience of Arctic observers. Holst of Sweden, when in Greenland, and Davis.] 492 [May i8, Russell in his recent observations on Alaska make frequent men- tion of the prevailingly overloaded character of the streams that are discharged from the ice. 13. CONCLUSION AS TO THE JOINT ORIGIN OF ESKERS AND SAND PLATEAUS. In view of all these circumstances, it must be concluded that the Auburndale sand plateau and the esker were built by the same glacial stream during a comparatively short time ; and that both before and after the building of these deposits, the stream found some other escape than along the Auburndale esker. Had the stream run here at an earlier time, the sand plateau would have had its head further south in the then position of the ice front ; had the stream continued to run here after the plain had reached the present size, the plain must have grown larger and the beds at its head, exposed in the railroad cut, must have given some indications of backward extension, following the backward melting of the ice front. I see no other conclusion than the one presented, that the sand plateau was built during a brief time of discharge of a sand-laden stream, which before and after that time found other avenues of escape. 14. ORIGIN OF ESKERS IN SUPERGLACIAL CHANNELS. If the stream that fed the sand plateau had lain in a channel on the surface of the ice, it must have been open to the sky and hence it must have had a descending slope to the level of the standing water at the ice margin. Here a difficulty arises in supplying such a stream with the fragments of slate and con- glomerate that come from the floor of the Charles River lowland close by. It may be admitted that after a forward carriage of some distance, the drift gathered at the bottom of an ice-sheet may sometimes be raised to a considerable height towards its sur- face ; but it is difficult to understand how this can be done in so short a distance as here lies between the source of these stones and their present resting place. But leaving this difficulty aside, let us turn to another question. After the brief activity of the superglacial stream , during which the esker and the sand plateau were both essentially completed , the stream turns elsewhere, and leaves both esker and sand plain to their fate. The special ques- 1892.] 493 [Davis. tion then arises, how could an esker thus left perched up in a channel on the ice be transferred to the surface of the ground below without interrupting its continuity? How could the con- tinuous sharp-ridged, single-crested esker at Auburndale, or its fellow at Newtonville, have been transferred from the ice to the ground? If the ice had melted away, we should expect that part beneath the esker gravels to have remained longest ; and from having lain in a channel when forming it must have come to rest on a ridge of ice. From such a ridge it would fall, part on one side, part on the other ; and its continuity would be completely lost. The only alternative to this suggestion is one made by Upham, to the effect that the percolating stream in the ice channel beneath the esker gravels would melt the ice on which it crept, and thus gradually lower the gravels to the ground without interrupting their continuity. Admitting that this is a possible process, it seems to me quite inconsistent with the open-work structure so common in the esker gravel. If the esker had been subjected to a gradual settlement, and had been traversed by currents of suf- ficient volume to melt the ice beneath, the open-work structure must have been filled up with sand and clay. More than this, such a process of gradual settlement must have greatly disturbed the bedded parts of the esker, much more than they are now found to be disturbed. For while slips and settlings are com- mon enough, they do not indicate a gradual settlement of one part after another, but settlement in larger masses, as will be re- ferred to later. Questions of this kind must often be settled as much by an agreement of various probabilities as by more strict method of demonstration ; and in this case, it seems to me to strain the probability severely to exjfiain the deposition of the Auburndale esker by the melting of the ice beneath it, or by any process that involves its gradual settlement from an ice foundation down to the ground. 15. ORIGIN OF ESKERS IN SUBGLACIAL CHANNELS. The alternative is that the esker was formed by a tumultuous subglacial stream where it entered a body of standing water ; a delta growing at the point of escape, and the stream rising from 494 Davis, j [May 18, beneath the ice to flow over the delta as the accumulation of sand and gravel increased. It is manifest that a clear and fresh sec- tion of the junction of an esker with a sand plateau would do much to settle this debated question ; and I have looked far and wide for so desirable an exposure ; but at present, it is not to be found. In its absence we are left largely to inference. The only objections that have been urged against the subglacial course of the streams that built feeding eskers and sand deltas in front of them is. first, that they must have flowed up-hill from beneath the ice to the delta level, and while thus flowing against gravity they must have carried up not only sand and gravel, but stones even a foot or more in diameter; and, second, that the surface of the esker is not covered with so many boulders as it is thought should be deposited there if the ice once lay above it. In answer to the second of these objections, I have supposed that the melting of the ice chiefly on the upper surface would release most of the drift that it contained, and that the greater part of the stones and gravel would be washed away to the mar- gin before and during the growth of the sand plateau ; for it is not necessary to suppose that the ice margin retained any great thickness at that time. The subsequent melting of the re- maining ice cover over the esker need not of necessity provide a sufficient supply of upper till to cover the surface of the esker. There is undeniably, however, some force in this argument. The up-hill transportation of the cobbles and gravel with the sand of the plateau along the subglacial esker channel to the level of the delta surface does not appear to me to present notable difficulties in its explanation. While the delta was growing at Auburndale, the back country was mostly covered with ice. The water flowing from the surface down the crevasses on the high- land area several miles north would afford a strong head to urge a plunging current under the ice mass still lying in the lowland ; and as such a current emerged at one place and another, it may easily have borne stones as well as sand along with it. 16. ANALOGY WITH ALASKAN GLACIAL STREAMS. Russell’s account of the streams issuing forth from the Malas- pina glacier in Alaska, bearing sand, gravel and stones, gushing upwards at the outlet like a fountain and building a stony flood- 1892.] 495 [Davis. plain on their further free course towards the sea, abundantly warrants our belief in the occurrence of similar streams during the decay of the New England ice-sheet. Bursting forth now here, now there, along the ice margin, a subglacial stream would bring a large supply of crystalline rocks gathered from the high- lands and a smaller supply of bedded rocks from the lowlands and spread them all out in front of the ice. If the discharge were on an open country, the decrease of velocity of the stream below the point of escape would require the deposition of a large part of its load, and thus it would become a building stream, like those that characterize the ice front of Greenland and Alaska. If it emerged from the ice into a body of standing water, the detritus would at first accumulate close to the point of escape, growing higher and higher till the water surface was reached, and thus forcing the stream to mount over the obstruction that it had formed ; as the delta then increased forward, the channel of the subglacial stream would be worn and melted to a larger size, and with increase of size and continually varying current and load the channel would become more or less clogged. The channel would become enlarged chiefly where the stronger current flowed, and thus a cumulative process would determine the formation of a tunnel or subglacial tube for the escape of the rushing stream. Most of the detritus brought by the stream would be carried forward, but the coarser parts would be left to fill the growing tunnel. Here we find reason for the natural selection of finer material for the frontal delta, and of coarser gravel and stone for the esker ridge, the two commingling at the head of the delta where both forms are joined. Bearing in mind that a large area of back country may now and then have delivered its drainage by a subglacial course, or an inverted siphon, it need not excite surprise that stones of considerable size up to a foot or more in diameter should be carried across from the lowlands and up to the delta level, there to be spurted forth with the lighter gravel and sands. The smaller of the stones thus delivered on the delta top might be dragged over the surface beds towards the front, but as a rule they would remain near the head where the coarser materials are now found. This is well shown in the cut on the circuit railroad. Davis.] 496 [May 18, 17. HEIGHT OF ESKERS. It is noteworthy that the height reached by the esker ridge is frequently less, but seldom greater than that of the delta surface. No reason appears for this relation if the ridge was formed in a superglacial channel, while it is a not unnatural result of conditions attending a subglacial origin. If the esker gravels accumulated m a channel on the ice surface, no reason can be assigned for their taking a definite relation of height after they had subsequently settled down to the ground. If the gravels accumulated in a subglacial channel, it is most natural for them to have built a ridge up to the level of the plateau, because their waters would rise to that height if the roof of the channel were high enough, particularly near the outlet ; it is not to be expected that the ridge should rise to a higher level except at a distance back from ice front, where the subglacial tunnel might rise and fall over rolling ground, and thus form a ridge of gravel above the plateau level. This may be clearer if it is remembered that a subglacial stream, flowing below the level of the standing water into which it discharges, is acting under a 14 negative gravity,” and is therefore attempting to cut away the roof as well as the floor of its tunnel. 18. BOULDERS IN SAND PLATEAUS. Brief mention may be made of the large boulders that are found at various levels in the sand plateau. These sometimes still bear the glacial striations that we may suppose once were on nearly all the now water- worn stones of the esker and delta head. The boulders could not have been washed to their present posi- tion. They must have been floated by ice rafts or bergs ; not over the delta surface, which it must be remembered rose a little above water level, but from some free margin of the ice front, across the open part of the pond or arm of the sea in which the delta grew. The ice standing here or there, or dropping its load on the way across the water, the boulders would lie in an acci- dental relation to the sands. 19. CHANGES IN ESKERS SINCE DEPOSITION It is important to emphasize the conclusion that when the delta had reached some indefinite size, the feeding stream was diverted 497 [Davis. 1893.] to another outlet, leaving both esker and plateau to their fate. It must not be supposed that the stream continued after the delta had ceased growing. Once made, the structure stood un- altered except by insignificant action to the present time. The ice withdrew slowly by melting ; the steep delta head then prob- ably fell back into the unoccupied space, thus assuming its present slope and perhaps producing some of the disordered structure obscurely seen in the cut of the Circuit railroad ; but of this little can be said until additional excavations reveal the head structure more completely. At the same time, the support that was given to the sharp-ridged esker was gradually withdrawn on either side, and the gravels were allowed to settle to a slope of equilibrium. If the water body had already drained away, the slipping down on the esker side would proceed more rapidly ; but if the water still held its surface at the delta level, the settlement of the esker side might progress somewhat slowly. In the eastern part of the Circuit cut, evidence of this is afforded in the relations of the frontal beds of the sand plain to a buried esker which they over- lie. The esker appears to be a feeder of the Newton Lower Falls plateau; the sands belong to the Woodland plateau. It is mani- fest from the relation of the esker gravels to the plateau sands that the former had not completed their lateral settling until some at least of the sand beds had been laid upon them ; for the two are confused on the buried slope of the esker. This must mean that the esker preserved its steep side for the considerable time required for the ice front to melt back from the larger New- ton Lower Falls plateau to its later position along the head of the smaller Woodland plateau; and that during this time the water level was maintained at the plateau height, as the two pla- teaus stand at the same level. It may be supposed that the water level in front of the decaying ice was generally not main- tained so long as here indicated ; and in evidence of this earlier withdrawal, I may refer to the frequent notching of the feeding esker close to the point of junction with the plateau head. This has been remarked upon by several observers, although no pub- lished record of it exists as far as I know. It may be best explained as a result of the discharge of the water body in which the delta was built, and not long after it was completed ; or before the ice front had melted far back from its head.1 As the water 1 This was suggested to me by Baron G. de Geer, of Sweden. PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. 32 SEPT. 1892. Davis. 498 [May iS, was drained away from one side of the esker, the water standing at a higher level on the other side might flow over the ridge and cut a notch in it. Little emphasis need be attached to this explanation until more facts are secured bearing upon it. It is manifest that as the ice walls melted away and left the sides of the esker unsupported, there must have been more or less slipping from summit to base. This would always occur in such a manner as to widen the base and narrow the summit of the ridge. In case the esker had lain in a channel on the surface of the ice, and was afterwards brought down to the ground by the melting of the ice by water current percolating beneath the gravels, an additional relation of disturbance to form should occur. It appears more likely that the middle line of the esker would in that case be the more frequent course of the trickling stream be- neath it, and hence that as the gravel settled down there should be signs of falling in from the upper margin towards the medial line. In this case, the faults and dislocations in the gravel would have their downthrow towards the axis of the esker until the whole deposit had reached the ground ; afterwards as the ice walls melted away the faults or slips would fall towards the margin. In the other case, they would fall only towards either margin. Whether this deductive test between the two conditions of esker formations is a complete one or not, I shall not attempt to say ; but there is no question that the sections of eskers that I have seen accord much more favorably with the latter than with he former. The best excavation showing the structure of an esker ridge now open to observation is southeast of Newtonville station about half a mile distant ; and here the signs of an out- ward settlement and dislocation have been repeatedly observed during the deepening of the cut in the past four years ; but no in- dications of inward slipping have appeared. 20. REVIEW AND CONCLUSIONS. In conclusion, before reviewing the line of argument here pre- sented, I desire to repeat the title of the essay — the subglacial origin of certain eskers — in order to assure the reader that I do not desire to exclude in the least the open possibility of the superglacial origin of other eskers. However it may be else- 1S92.] 499 [Crosby. where, the eskers of Auburnclale and Xewtonville seem to accord better with the former than with the latter hypothesis. The argument here employed is in brief as follows : — 1. The eskers and sand plateaus of Auburndale and Newton- ville were formed by running water just inside and outside of the ice margin in the closing stage of the last glacial epoch. 2. The ice-sheet was a stagnant, decayingmass at the time of their formation, as is shown by the ragged outline of its margin. 3. Eskers and sand plateaus are genetically connected ; the term, feeding esker, is fully warranted by the relation of the two in position, structure, and composition. 4. The sand plateaus were made rapidly ; this is proved by the absence of disordered beds at their heads, where space would have been opened by the backward melting of the ice had the forward growth of the plateau been slow. The eskers were also made rapidly, as is shown by their “ open-work gravels.” 5. The diversion of the feeding streams to other outlets left the plateaus and the eskers without further energetic action as the ice melted away from them. 6. The present form and structure of the eskers are more ac- cordant with the supposition of a subglacial origin than of a superglacial origin ; but it is not intended to imply that other eskers of more irregular form and different structure could not have been deposited in superglacial channels. Harvard College . March , 1892. GEOLOGY OF HINGHAM, MASS. BY W. O. CROSBY. f Abstract . ] INTRODUCTION. The town of Hingham is divided into two distinct and very un- equal geological areas. The sedimentary rocks and interbedded 1 This paper was read before the Society on May 20, 1891, and will be published in full in volume IY of the Occasional Papers ; but in view of the unexpected delay in is- suing that volume, it is deemed expedient to insert this abstract in the Proceedings at this time. The abstract, unlike the complete monograph, is limited to the hard rocks, and especially to that part of the geology of Hingham illustrated by the accompany- ing maps (Pis. XI Y, XY, and XYI). Crosby. J j 500 [May iS, lavas are limited almost wholly to the northwest corner of the town, extending but little south of the railroad and having only a slight areal development east of the harbor, while over the re- mainder of the town, embracing more than five sixths of the total area, the numerous ledges comprise only granitic rocks (gran- ite, diorite, and felsite) and intersecting dikes of diabase. The granitic area of Hingham is similar to and continuous with that of Cohasset and Nantasket on the east, and Weymouth and Braintree on the west, the entire South Shore district being a unit in this respect. But the sedimentary and volcanic rocks, bordering the granite on the north and forming the immediate shore of Boston Harbor, are far less uniform in character and structure, and by their diversity warrant the division of the South Shore into several distinct areas, which agree approximately with the political divisions, the geology of North Hingham contrasting with that of Weymouth on the west and still more with that of the Nantasket area on the east. The promontory of Rocky Neck, northeast of Planter’s Hill, at the mouth of Weir River Bay, is, however, essentially a part of the Nantasket area, the true or nat- ural boundary between the Hingham and Nantasket areas being, approximately, the eastern shore of Hingham Harbor. In comparing the geological structure of Hingham with that of Nantasket, it is found that plication to a large extent takes the place of faulting, the sedimentary and volcanic rocks being in- volved in deep and almost isoclinal folds ; and while Nantasket shows repeated alternations of beds of conglomerate with flows of both basic and acidic lavas (melaphyr and porphyrite) , the por- phyrite, so far as known, is wholly wanting in Hingham, and the melaphyr is limited to one flow or bed of great thickness ; and the principal problem of the Nantasket area — the identification of the successive flows of lava — is really not presented to the student of Hingham geology. On the other hand, while the sedimentary rocks of the Nantasket area are almost exclusively conglomerate, the Hingham series embraces many beds of sand- stone and brownish slate, and a great volume of gray slate ; and the special feature of the geology of Hingham, the feature in which it excels not only Nantasket but the entire Boston Basin, is the extended series of alternating beds of conglomerate, sand- stone, and slate which it presents in three different sections, and the seemingly clear exhibition of the relations of this conglomer- 1893.] 501 [Crosby. ate series to the great slate series. It appears probable that, in a general way, the Hingham ledges supplement the Xantasket ledges, the basal beds of conglomerate having a remarkably fine development in the latter, while the former afford continuous exposures of the upper beds of conglomerate and the overlying slate. THE GRANITIC ROCKS. The relations of the diorite to the true granite indicate that it is in every case clearly the older rock. It is everywhere inter- sected by numerous, irregular, branching dikes of granite ; and the granite ledges are rarely quite free from angular inclusions of diorite. Although the relations of the diorite to the granite are so intimate that its outlines do not admit of accurate definition, it has been found to occur abundantly only in a limited, irregular, and interrupted east- west belt near the northern edge of the granite, the best exposures being on or near Hull Street, Weir River Lane, Kilby and East Streets, and on Fort Hill and the adjacent ledges. The diorite nowhere exhibits a distinct flow- structure ; but it is usually quite massive, finely crystalline, and dark-colored. Occasionally, however, it is coarser, with the hornblende either very clearly and prominently developed, or mainly wanting, giving a light-colored, feldspathic variety. Epi- dote is, as usual, the most conspicuous secondary mineral, oc- curring chiefly as narrow and irregular segregations and veinlets, especially along the joint-cracks. By far the greater part of the granite of Hingham belongs to the sparingly hornblendic, usually coarsely and distinctly crystal- line. gray to pink or red variety of the South Shore district. The hornblendic element is very generally replaced partially, some- times wholly, by mica (chiefly biotite) . Irregular dikes of the more finely crystalline or micro-crystalline granite, and of felsite, are frequently observed cutting through the coarser granites and also the diorite. The felsite of Hingham is not wholly intrusive or in the form of dikes. The gray felsite on the north side of Beal Street, at the western end of the granite (PI. XY) is quite probably part of a surface flow ; and the beautiful red felsite occurring so plentifully in the form of boulders, in the vicinity of Thaxter and Lincoln Streets, is unquestionably effusive. The Beal Street felsite encloses Crosby. J 502 [May 18, many more or less distinct fragments of a similar or darker felsite and an occasional fragment of granite. The breccia-structure thus resulting is so marked in a portion of the rock that it was at first mistaken for conglomerate ; and the isolated elliptical area on this part of the map marked as conglomerate is really felsite. The red felsite occurs in an area which is covered almost continuously by salt marshes and drumlins ; and it presents only two obscure outcrops. There can be little doubt, however, that it forms a narrow east-west belt along the northern edge of the granite, extending east under Broad Cove and west beneath Squirrel Hill. Although there is no opportunity to study this interesting rock in situ , its effusive or volcanic nature is abundantly proved by its composition and structural features. It exhibits throughout a distinct but not conspicuous banding or flow-structure and en- closes many angular fragments of the same ora very similar felsite. Although the rock thus bears some resemblnnce to a breccia, it is essentiall}7 identical in structure with some recent obsidians ; and it is undoubtedly an ancient, devitrified obsidian. Among the arguments against its sedimentary origin are the facts, that the fragments are all of the same kind of rock ; that they are never assorted or show in any way the action of water ; and that the fel- site is chemically intact, still retaining in every part the full pro- portion of alkali required for an acidic feldspar, which would be very unusual in a clastic rock. The fact that the fragments or so-called pebbles show a gradation in distinctness from those that are very sharply defined to those that are perfectly blended with the enclosing felsite, is only what should be expected when frag- ments of glass (obsidian) are enveloped in melted glass. GENERAL STRUCTURE OF NORTHERN HINGHAM. The eastern shore of Hingham Harbor is not only the natural boundary line between the geological districts of Nantasket and northern Hingham, but it probably marks the position of one of the great transverse faults of the South Shore ; and it certainly corresponds, as already explained, to a very important contrast in geological structure. The key to the structure of the vol- canic and sedimentary rocks of Hingham is the oblong area of granite and felsite lying north of the railroad and Beal Street. The general position of this mass i$ unquestionably anticlinal. 503 [Crosby. 189*.] This is most obvious at the western extremity (Pl.X V), where the melaphyr and the sedimentary strata curve around the granite and dip away from it on both sides. Southward from this point, between Beal Street and Beal’s Cove, the structure is mono- clinal, and the ledges afford a nearly continuous section across the entire conglomerate series and a considerable thickness of the overlying slate, the latter undoubtedly marking the position of a synclinal axis ; but the south side of the syncline is probably cut off by the boundary fault, for we seem to pass abruptly from the slate to the granite. In the vicinity of Hockley Lane (PI. XIV), a transverse fault appears to separate this normal succession of the strata from an inverted succession which extends thence eastward to Main Street or beyond. The melaphyr is now on the south side, over- lying the conglomerate ; and these stratified rocks, although oc- cupying a synclinal position between the granite on the north ancl south, are, we must suppose, bounded on both sides by important dislocations and terminated on the east by the great fault along the east side of Hingham Harbor. Northwest from the western extremity of the granite axis, a very steep, narrow, and broken monocline separates the granite from the great trough holding the main body of slate (Pis. XV, XVI). This faulted monocline is marked by a secondhand of melaphyr, which broadens toward the northeast, forming the large quadrangular area of this rock east of Huit’s Cove (PI. XVI) . This is the largest exposure of melaphyr in Hingham ; and, although it appears to be bounded on all sides by downthrow faults, the quaquaversal dips of the bordering strata show that, in a lesser degree, it is essentially similar in its structural relations to the granitic area. On the west side, the upper bed of conglomerate and the slate are seen to dip away from the melaphyr. On the north, the downthrow of the sedimentary rocks is sufficient to conceal the conglomerate, and the slate lies with conformable strike against the melaphyr. On the south, the narrow mono- cline separating this body of melaphyr from the granite broadens somewhat, until it reaches the fault at the northwest end of Squirrel Hill, where it changes, perhaps abruptly, to a broad, shallow syncline of melaphyr and conglomerate on the south, separated by a strike fault from a gentle, southerly monocline of conglomerate and sandstone on the north. These features profit Crosby.J 504 [May iS ably extend east under Broad Cove and Otis Hill ; and the monocline can be clearly traced still farther in the three sedi- mentary islands of Hingham Harbor and in the ledges of Melville Garden. Westward from the Garden, however, this monocline of east-west strike and southerly dip changes grad- ually but rapidly to a north-south strike and westerly dip, plung- ing down against the great mass of melaphyr already described. It is obvious from this sketch of the stratigraphy that, while folds of various types are the dominant form of displacement and give character to the area, the flexures are profoundly modified by longitudinal and transverse faults. The correct interpreta- tion of these main structure lines is evidently essential to the de- termination of the stratigraphic elements or the normal succession of the strata. Of the four sections accompanying the maps, three are approximately complete, viz: (1) the section south of the granite axis, through the Village (PI. XIV) ; (2) the section from Beal Street to Beal’s Cove (PI. XV) ; and (3) the section from Melville Garden west toward Huit’s Cove (PI. XVI). They agree in their main features, and especially in showing repeated alternations of coarse and fine sediments. But a more careful comparison re\^eals the fact that they cannot be exactly cor- related or synchronized ; and we are obliged to recognize even in this limited area, important lateral changes in the character or thickness of individual strata, sand stoneat one point being represented by conglomerate or shale at another, and so on. The following table of the strata of Hingham is compiled from the first and second sections referred to above. The individual beds are subject to constant variations in thickness ; and since the outcrops are unfavorable to exact measurement, the numbers are simply more or less satisfactory approximations. Some of the beds attain the maximum thickness in the one section and some in the other, and hence the totals do not correspond to the actual sections. i8q2.J 505 [Crosby. GENERALIZED VERTICAL SECTION OF THE ROCKS OF HINGHAM. Gray slate 500 to 1000 feet. Sandstone and conglomerate, alternating 200 300 “ Red slate 50 “ 75 t 4 Conglomerate 75 “ 100 Red slate 20 “ 30 Conglomerate 40 “ 50 Red slate 20 40 “ - Conglomerate 30 “ 50 “ Gray and red slate 90 “ 130 “ Conglomerate, sandstone and slate, alternating 100 11 170 “ Gray slate 40 “ 60 “ Fine conglomerate and sandstone, alternating 120 “ 200 Melaphvr 120 “ 240 Conglomerate, thickness undetermined. Granite (diorite, granite, and felsite). Dikes of diabase intersecting the bedded rocks, owing chiefly, it is probable, to the less continuous outcrops, but partly, no doubt, to the fewer faults, are much less conspicuous in Hing- ham than in Nantasket. They probably agree with the Nantasket dikes in dating from the plication and faulting of the strata. The most important distinction is that between the great masses of coarsely crystalline diabase scores or hundreds of feet in breadth and very irregular in outline, and the ordinary, narrow, wall-like dikes of finely crystalline diabase. The latter, at least, belong chiefly to the east-west systems of Xantasket. Xo clear intersec- tions have been observed ; and no dikes which could be referred with certainty to the youngest or north-south system of Nantasket. STRATIGRAPHIC DETAILS. The actual observations are, to a very large extent, recorded on the maps, which, it will be noted, not only show, in the colors, the probable distribution and relations of the rocks, but also, by appropriate characters printed in black, the position and extent of every outcrop, with the dip and strike of the bedded rocks, etc. By this device, the verbal descriptions are greatly abbreviated; and the combination of fact and theory — the interpretation in each case being, as it were, superimposed upon the facts them- selves— enables the reader to judge more readily as to how well the one fits the other. A few only of the more interesting points in Cro*by.] 506 [May i8, the geological structure of the several areas may he noticed here,., referring to the forthcoming Occasional Paper, for full descrip- tions of the ledges. THE VILLAGE AREA. In the Village Area (PI. XIV) the most continuous exposures are in the vicinity of Hersey Street, the section here being almost unbroken for about 800 feet and showing several alternations of conglomerate, sandstone, and red and gray slates, all dipping steadily S. 70°. The most of the beds in the Hersey Street section can be traced east by satisfactory outcrops, and with a marked change of strike, to Lafayette Avenue and Elm Street; and the structure is rendered much more complicated and interesting by the appearance in the midst of the sedimentary rocks of a consider- able body of granite enclosing a large dike of diabase. The facts lend no support whatever to the view that the granite is intrusive in the conglomerate and slate ; but- they point very clearly to the conclusion expressed on the map, viz., that the granite is bounded by compensating faults and marks a local uplift. In the absence of outcrops, it is impossible to determine how and where the Village belt of strata terminates on the east. It is probable, how- ever, that it crosses Main Street, passes beneath the sand plain occupied by the cemetery, and ends in the Home Meadows, against the great boundary fault between the Hingham and Xantasket areas. West of Hersey Street the strata are sharply flexed to the north, and then resume their normal east-west strike in a group of ledges which show a large body of melaphyr above the conglom- erate series. The section at this point, as the map shows, overlaps and supplements that on Hersey Street, the two together afford- ing a nearly complete section of the conglomerate series. The contact between the melaphyr and conglomerate is clearly ex- posed both east and west of the railroad, and strongly supports the view that the melaphyr is contemporaneous. It is plain that the conglomerate, although now underlying the melaphyr, was deposited over it, for it fills cracks in the melaphyr and is partly composed of debris derived from that rock. The conglomerate south of the melaphyr, near Hockley Lane, appears to rest in an approximately horizontal position and unconformably upon an un- even surface of granite, with bosses of granite projecting through 507 [Crosby; lS92.j the conglomerate. This conglomerate is largely composed of the debris of the granite ; but, although newer than the granite, its relations to that rock indicate that it is probably the oldest conglomerate in the Hingham area, belonging in its normal posi- tion below the melaphyr. In the section accompanying the map of the Village area this basal CQnglomerate appears on the extreme right. Apart from this, the Village area is a long, narrow block of strata faulted down between walls of granite, the drop on the north being so much greater than that on the south as, in con- junction with a horizontal or plicating stress, to overturn the beds. Or it may be otherwise described as an inverted syncline deeply folded down in the granite and the northern half carried away by the fault which elevated the granitic axis on the north. THE BEAL’S COVE AREA. This area (PI. XV) has been already described as affording, between the granite on Beal Street and Beal’s Cove, the most complete and normal section of the Hingham strata. The west- ern extremity of the granite axis is well defined. The granite is overlain at this point, as already noted, by patches of effusive felsite, including the mass wrongly marked as an outlier of con- glomerate. One proof that not only this felsite but also that farther east, in the vicinity of Thaxter and Lincoln Streets, is part of a surface flow or truly effusive is found in the fact, that it occurs only near the junction of the granite and the bedded rocks, which, it is so very evident, were deposited upon the granite. Tn other words, we find the felsite upon what we know to have been the ancient surface of the granite, and wherever erosion has cut below this surface the effusive felsite is wholly wanting and we observe only narrow and irregular dikes of intrusive felsite. The unusual breadth of the melaphyr south of Beal Street is probably due to a strike fault, as indicated by the enclosed mass of conglomerate. The contact of the melaphyr and overlying conglomerate shows conclusively that the conglomerate was de- posited over the melaphyr and that the latter is effusive, prob- ably a submarine flow. Crossing the alternating beds of conglom- erate, sandstone, and slate southward, we come, on the north shore of Beal’s Cove, to evidences that the conglomerate series changes gradually and conformably iuto the great overlying slate Crosby.] 508 [May ig, series ; and the latter is exposed continuously for a thickness of fully 500 feet. Between the granite north of Beal Street, which still holds its normal relations to the bedded rocks deposited upon it, and the granite against which they end, as the result of faulting, on the south, we have then a steep monocline and one complete section of the Hingham strata. From the Home Meadows to Beal’s Cove there was originally, or would have been but for the faulting, one continuous syncline. This is broken transversely by the Hockley Lane fault. The western half remains an open syncline; but the greater part of its southern slope is carried away by a strike fault, which brings up the underlying granite in that direction. The eastern half, owing to the stronger compression, becomes an inverted isocline, with the axial plane dipping to the south ; and its northern side is partly carried away and partly concealed by a strike fault, bringing up the granite axis, which these strata once covered, and which is obviously a dominant or controlling factor in the structure of the bordering strata. Although the map appeared to afford at the time of its con- struction the best interpretation of the scattering outcrops around the western extremity of the granite axis, it is now regarded as more probable that all the beds curve regularly around the axis and that the structure of the beds on both sides of the axis is monoclinal, the northwestern monocline being complicated by strike faults, repeating the band of melaphyr. This second belt of melaphyr is a direct prolongation of the great body of melaphyr lying east of Huit’s Cove, and cannot be regarded as intrusive. The general interpretation of the geological structure here pro- posed makes it unnecessary to suppose that any of the Hingham strata extend far into Weymouth, and tends to emphasize the im- portance of Weymouth Back River as a geological boundary ; and we may reasonably assume that this valley follows a fault comparable in magnitude and structural importance with that along the east side of Hingham Harbor, separating .areas which are strongly contrasted in their geologic features. CROW POINT AND HUIT’S COVE AREA. This area (PI. XVI) is divided into two quite distinct parts by the great dike extending west from Downer Avenue to the eastern angle of the Huit’s Cove melaphyr. The southern part is, as we I8Q2.] 509 [Crosby. have seen, a steep monocline in its southwestern extension ; but east of Huit’s Cove Lane an entirely different type of structure prevails, the dips of both the melaphyr and sedimentary rocks being every- where low and indicating a broad southerly monocline of con- glomerate and sandstone, bordered on the south by an equally broad and shallow syncline of melaphyr and overlying conglom- erate. The extension of these melaphyr belts eastward to the shore appears to be justified by the numerous boulders of very similar melaphyr on Button Island. The curving monocline north of the great dike is continued eastward in Ragged, Sarah, and Langlee Islands. The Chores of these islets are almost continuous exposures, and the attitude of the strata — conglomerate and sandstone — is exceedingly constant, the strike being nearly due east-west and the dip south 35°-40°. Ragged Island is separated from the other two by a transverse fault which downthrows to the east, causing a horizontal dis- placement of about 100 feet. This fault is repeated between Rasped Island and Melville Garden, with a shift of about 150 ©o feet. In correlating the islands with the ledges in the Garden, it is necessary to regard the outer part of Walton’s Cove as equiva- lent to the gap existing between both Ragged and Sarah Islands and the ledges parallel with their southern shores. Although there are no reversed dips, a general view of the section from Melville Garden west across the alternating strata suggests that the main band of slate marks a synclinal axis, and the section was constructed in accordance with that idea. A re- cent review and comparison of all the facts have satisfied me, however, that a monoclinal structure is more probable. This sec- tion bears a general resemblance to the Village and Beal’s Cove sections ; but the precise correlation of the beds is a puzzling prob- lem. The only reasonably safe clue is afforded by the main bed of slate, which, it appears, should be correlated with the thick bed of red and gray slate in the Village section. That the contacts between the melaphyr east of Huit’s Cove and the sedimentary rocks bounding it on the west and north are lines of profound displacement is unquestionable, unless we are prepared to regard the melaphyr as intrusive in the slate and conglomerate, that is, as forming a vast dike or laccolite ; a view which, it may be stated once more, finds no support whatever in the petrographic characters of the melaphyr, nor in any facts Crosby.] 510 [May 18, now exposed to our observation. The slate forming the, shores of Unit’s Cove and extending around the northern end of the melaphyr must be, in its normal position, separated from the melaphyr by more than a thousand feet in thickness of the con- glomerate series. During the three years since the map of this district was drawn, the discovery of additional outcrops of slate along the east shore of Huit’s Cove has led me to a somewhat dif- ferent view of the relations of the slate to the associated conglom- erate from that expressed on the map, the conglomerate ap- pearing now as a limited bed in the slate. A more accurate map of this interesting shore will accompany the complete mono- graph in the Occasional Papers. A portion of the conglomerate on this shore is very coarse and irregular ; and on account of its relations to the slate, the composition of the conglomerate pos- sesses unusual interest. The conglomerate is overlain by fully a thousand feet of slate, and is also clearly underlain by slate. It is evident that in the absence of fossils in the slate, the key to its geological age is to be sought in this intercalated conglomerate. We are able to prove by the conglomerate that the slate is newer than the most, at least, of the granites and felsites, as well as some of the melaphyrs and porphyrites. The pebbles of the con- glomerate also prove the existence in this region of an older slate formation, and of special interest in this connection are the un- doubted pebbles of limestone. The limestone is dull gray, finely crystalline, and evidently impure, but not visibly fossiliferous. AGE OF THE HINGHAM STRATA. The principal facts bearing upon this problem have been pre- sented in the preceding pages and it remains now simply to mar- shal the scanty evidence and note its collective value. Paleon- tological evidence is, at present, wholly wanting ; although we may reasonably entertain the hope that fossils will yet be found in the slates or sandstones of Hingham. The lithological evi- dence, although it might be said to point to the correlation of the Hingham slates with those of ^Weymouth and Braintree, is cer- tainly very unreliable in a case like this ; and, furthermore, it is entirely at variance with the plain indications of stratigraphy. But the stratigraphic evidence, again, is far from direct or satis- factory, since the deposits of Hingham are completely isolated by 1892.] [Crosby. Si i the drift formations and the sea, — cut off, alike from the strati- fied rocks of Nantasket on the east and those of Weymouth and the Blue Hills on the west. Notwithstanding these diffi- culties, however, we have two clues which are satisfactory so far as they go, although they are, unfortunately, not of such a nature as to lead to a definite determination of the geological horizon. These are (1) the relations to the older eruptives — the granitic rocks ; (2) the composition of the conglomerate. The Paradoxides beds of Braintree and the Blue Hills, which Walcott now regards as of Middle Cambrian age, are clearly intersected by, and therefore older than, the different varieties of granite and felsite of that district. We have no reason to doubt that these granitic rocks are the same for the entire South Shore, from Scituate and Cohasset westward ; and therefore it fol- lows that the conglomerates of Nantasket and Ilingham, which are so largely composed of the debris of these eruptives and are seen in several sections to rest directly upon them, must repre- sent a horizon above the Paradoxides beds. The conglomerate series is overlain conformably by the great slate series of Hing- ham, with some interstratification or blending of the two series. We are thus obliged to recognize in the Boston Basin a thousand feet or more of argillaceous strata above the Paradoxides or Mid- dle Cambrian zone and separated from it by a corresponding or greater thickness of coarse sediments and lavas — the conglomer- ate series, with a probable unconformity at the base of the lat- ter. This unconformity between the Paradoxides beds and the conglomerate series is not only proved by the extensive erosion of the granitic rocks, but we also find in the conglomerate, at Huit’s Cove and elsewhere, pebbles of slate similar to that of the Paradoxides beds. Of special interest in this connection, as already explained, are the pebbles of limestone in the conglom- erate of Huit’s Cove. Limestone is a rare rock in Eastern Mas- sachusetts ; and the only beds now known that can be regarded as a probable source of these pebbles are the limited and impure layers in the Cambrian slates atNahant and Weymouth, and pos- sibly at Stoneham and other points outside of the Boston Basin. It is apparent from the foregoing that, although we may fairly regard the stratified rocks of Hingham as forming one conform- able series from the lowest conglomerate to the highest slate, and although this series, which is quite certainly 2000 and probably, Crosby. J 512 [May i,8 , including the Nantasket beds, 3000 feet in thickness, is newer than the Middle Cambrian beds and separated from them by an impor- tant unconformity, we are still wholly at sea as regards the precise horizon of the Hingham and Nantasket strata. We may, con- sistently with the facts so far examined, refer them to any horizon between the Middle Cambrian and the top of the Carboniferous. The ancient aspect of these rocks, however, and other consider- ations, seem to require us to assign them, provisionally, to a lowr rather than a high position in the Paleozoic system ; and it is, per- haps, not impossible that they are as lowT as the Upper Cambrian. Dr. J. S. Kingsley gave the results of his studies on the anatomy of Arnphiuma means. Prof. W. O. Crosby read a paper entitled uOn some evi- dences of Tertiary deposits in the Boston Basin.” INDEX TO VOLUME XXV. The names of genera and species described as new are italicized. Abaratha helias, 81. Abisara echerius, 68. Aeerates viridi flora, 149. Acherontia, 100. Achillea millefolium, 161. multiflora, 147, 148, 170. Acmaea testudinalis, 308. Acraea dohertyi,Jig., 61. Acronycta, 107. Acrothele, 210, Actias luna, 103. Adenocaulon bicolor, 147. Adoxa moschatellina, 147, 169. Aglia, 100. tau, 100, 101, 105, 106, 111, 112. Agnostus, 211. Agrimonia eupatoria, 160. Agropyrum caninum, 153. dasystachvum, 147. glaucum, 149, 153. repens, 167. tenerum, 149, 153. Agrostis alba, 151. scabra, 151. Allium reticulatum, 149. schoenoprasum, 147. Allotinus major, 70. obscurus, 70. Amarantus albus, 163. blitoides, 149, 164. retroflexus, 163. Amathusia phidippus, 58. Amblypodia acetes, 74. apidanus, 75. araxes, 74. aronya, 74. Ambonychia, 208. Ambrosia artemisiaefolia. 161. psilostachya, 149, 161. trifida, 160. Ammophila longifolia, 151, 154. Amorpha, 153. microphylla, 146. Ampelophaga mvron, 108. Ampyx, 210, 211. Anachis avara, 307. Ancvlus fluviatilis, 460. Andromeda polifolia, 145. Andropogon furcatus, 150, 151. scoparius, 151. Androsace occidentalis, 149. septentrionalis, 147. Anemone multifida, 147. patens, 148. Angulus tener, 308. Anisopteryx pometaria, 88. Anisorhvnchus, 380. Anisota' 98, 103, 104, 106. senatoria, 103. stigma, 93, 103. Annual Meeting, May 7, 1890, 1 ; May 6, 1891, 269 ; May 4, 1892, 425. Annual Report of Curator, 1, 269, 425. Annual Report of Secretary, 19, 297, 448. Annual Report of Treasurer, 25, 302, 452. Anomia glabra, 307. Anona squann sa, 249. Anthemis cotula, 161. Aplecta, 94. Aplopappus, 153. spinulosus, 149. Apocynum androsaemifolium, 162. Aporia, 94. Appalachians, drainage of, 418. Appias ithome, 76. lycaste, 77. panda, 76. panda nigerrima,Jig., 76. sulphurea, 76. zarinda, 76. Aquila chrysaetus, 268. Aquilegia brevistyla, 147. Arabis lyrata, 157. Archaeology, 49, 242, 247. Arctia, 108. virgo, 98, 113. Arctium lappa, 162. Arenaria groenlandica, 389. Argynnis, 94. aphrodite, 98, 113. Arionellus, 216. Arnica chamissonis, 147. Artacepunctistriga,%., 88. Artemisia, 156. biennis, 161. can a, 146. canadensis, 161. dracunculoides, 161. frigida, 146. glauca, 149. ludoviciana, 149, 161. Arundo donax, 152. PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXV. 33 OCT. 1892. 514 Asaphus, 210, 2I1„ platycephalus, 202, 208. Asclepias cornuti, 102. speciosa, 149, 162. Asiatic Lepidoptera, 52. Asplenium viride, 890. Astarte undata, 307. Aster angustus, 147. modestus, 147. Astictopterus subfasciatus, 78. Astragalus, 153. aboriginum, 148. adsurgens, 148. caryocarpus, 148. flexuosus, 148. gracilis, 148. hypoglottis, 148. Astyanax archippus, 96. Astyris lunata, 307. Atella egista, 62. Athyma eulimene, 68. Atrina affinis, 340. alta, 340. ampla, 340. arcuata, 340. assimilis, 340. brocchi, 340. eancellata, 340. earolinensis, 340. erumenila, 340. deltodes, 340. gouldi, 340. granulata, 340. hanleyi, 340. hinrichsiana, 340. inflata, 340. ingens, 340. lakesi, 340. lanceolata, 340. laticostatus, 340. ligeriensis, 340. lurida, 340. margaritacea, 340. morcana, 340. neptuni, 340. nigra, 336, 337, 339, 340. papyracea, 340. pectinata, 336, 340. phillipsi, 340. prisca, 340. rigida, 340. rostiformis, 340. seminuda, 336, 340. serrata. 340. strangei, 340. subviridis, 340. sulcifera, 340. transversa, 340. trigonata, 340. tuberculosa, 340. vexillum, 340. zelanica, 340. Atriplex argenteum, 149, 156, 165. nuttallii, 149, 156. patulum, 149, 155, 156, 165. Atrypa hemispherica, 208. Attacus. 100. Australian natural history museums, 310. Avena fatua, 166. pratensis, 149, 152. Avicula pinnaeformis, 338. Aviculopinna, 336, 338. americana, 338. consimilis, 339. d’orbigni, 339. membranacea, 338. peracuta, 338. spathula, 339. Badamia exclamationis, 78. Baeomyces placophyllus, 388. Balanus balanoides, 307. Baoris oceia, 79. sp., 79. Barbarea vulgaris, 157. Bathyurus, 210, 219. Baur, George. The Galapagos Islands, 317. Beckmannia erucaeformis, 149, 150. Bellerophon, 202, 20". bilobatus, 208. Beyrichia, 208, 210. Bibasis sena, 78. Bibliography of the geology and paleon- tology of the environs of Quebec, 221 ; of the geology of the Bernese Jura, 393. Bidens frondosa, 161. Bittium nigrum, 307. Bletogona erebia, 56. mycalesis, 56. Bombyx mori, 83, 84, 101. Boston, fossils of, 305. Boston basin, geological history of, 10. Botany, 140, 387. Boulder-clav, composition of, 115. Bouteloua oligostachya, 149, 152. Bouve, T. T. Kame ridges, kettle-holes, and other phenomena attendant upon the passing away of the great ice-sheet in Hingham, Mass., pi., 173. Brachyderes, 380. Brassica campestris, 158. nigra, 158. sinnpistrum, 158. Bromus kaltnii, 153. secalinus, 167. Brunella vulgaris, 163. Bryophila, 94. Bucania punctifrons, 208. Buccinum undatum, 307. Buda marina, 154. Buellia geographica, 389. oederi, 390. Burgess, Edward, list of the writings of, 362; resolution adopted upon the death of, 364; services of, to natural science, 358. By-laws, new, accepted by the Societv, 183. Calamagrostis canadensis, 151. longifolia, 151. 515 Calamagrostis stricta, 151. Callosamia promethea, 103. Caltha natans, 147. Calvin ene blumenbachii, 202, 205, 208. Cameiina sativa, 157. Campanula rotundifolia, 147. Cannabis sativa, 166. Capsella bursa-pastoris, 158. Cardamine pratensis, 147. Cardium edule, 460. Carex alpina, 147. arctata, 147. atrata, 147. canescens, 147. capillaris, 147. douglasii, 149. flava. 156. houghtonii, 147. lenticularis, 147. livida. 147. marcida, 149. novae-angliae, 147. obtusata, 147. rupestris, 147. saltuensis, 147. scirpoidea, 147. stenophylla, 149. vesicaria, 149. Carpinus caroliniana, 144. Castalius ilissus, 71. piepersii, 71. rhode, 71. roxus, 71. Castilleia parviflora, 149. Catocala, 95, 107. Catochrysops cnejus, 72. Strabo, 72. Catopsilia catilla, 75. crocale, 75. flava, 75. scvlla, 75. Catskill delta, 318. Central-American archaeology and eth- nology, 247. Cerambvrhynchus, 386. Cerastium viscosum, 159. vulgatum, 159. Ceratocampa, 100. Cerafomia, 100. Ceratosia tricolor, Jig., 88, 109. Ceraurus pleurexanthemus, 202, 208. Cerura, 88, 94, 95, 97, 106, 107. Cethosia myrina, 62. picta, 62. Chapra mathias, 79. Charaxes affinis, 68. wallacei, 68. Cheirurus, 210, 211. Chemism, 183. Chenopodium album, 164. boscianum, 164. capitatum, 147, 165. glaucum, 156, 165. hybrid um, 165. rubrum, 154, 165. urbicum, 164. Choaspes gomata, 78. Choerocampa lycetus, 99. Choerodes, 107. Chrysanthemum leucantliemum, 161. Chrysophellum acras-sapote, 249. Chrysopogon nutans, 151. Chrysopsis, 154. villosa, 149, 154. Cicuta virosa, 147. Citheronia, 104, 106. regalis, 103, 104. sepulcralis, 104. Claytonia chamissonis, 149. Cleophane, 94. Clerome chitone, 56, 61. Clidiophora trilineata, 308. Clisiocampa, 84. americana,^., 87, 108, Clostera, 107. Cnicus arvensis, 4 62. lanceolatus, 162. Cochituate lake, 228. Coladenia dan, 81. Colias eurydice, 69. Comandra livida, 147. pallida, 149. Conocephalites, 211, 216. Conularia trentonensis, 202, 208. Convolvulus sepium, 162. Copidryas gloveri, 108. Cornus alternifolia, 145. candissima, 145. circinata, 145. paniculata, 145. sericea, 145. Cossus ligniperda, 84. Crawford. J. Notes on Central-Amer- ican archaeology and. ethnology, 247. Crepidula convexa, 308. fornicata, 307. plana, 307. Crepis runcinata, 149, 156. Croesus septentrionalis, 95. Crosby, W. O. Composition of the till or bowlder-clay, 115 ; geological history of the Boston basin, 10; geology of Hingham, Mass., pis., 499. Cryptogams from New England moun- tains, 387. Ctenodonta dubia, 208. Cucullia, 94. Cupha erymanthis, 62. maeonides, 62. Cupitha purreea, 80. Curculionites, 384. Curetis celebensis, 74. Cyaniris Iambi, 70. puspa, 71 . sp., 70. Cyelocardia borealis, 308. Cycloloma platyphyllum, 149, 164. Cymopterus glomeratus, 149. Cynoglossum officinale, 162. Cynthia deione, 62. Cyphaspis, 210. Cyprina islandica, 308, 460. 516 Cyrestis strigata, 67, thyonneus, 67. Cyrtolites, 210. Cyrtopinna atropurpurea, 346. attenuata, 346. bicolor, 346. bullata, 346. cuneata, 346. euglypta, 346. fissa, 346. fumata, 346. incurva, 345. incurvata, 345, 346. lanceolata, 346. laqueata, 346. madida, 346. menkei, 345, 346. mutica, 345, 346. papyracea, 346. petrina. 346. regia, 346. renauxiana, 346. robinaldina, 346. rumphii, 345, 346. sanguinolenta, 346. semistriata, 346. similis, 346. stutchburi, 346. sublanceolata, 346. vespertina, 345, 346. virgata, 346. Dalmanites callicephalus, 208. Dana, James D., award of the Walker Grand Honorary Prize to, 421, 450. Danais cleona, 53. genutia, 57. ishma, 53. leucoglene, 53. melissa, 53. Danthonia intermedia, 147, 152. Darwinism and Lamarckianism, 42. Dasychira fascelina, 90. pudibunda, 89, 90. Dasylophia anguina, fig., 88, 97, 109. Datana integerrima, 97, 109. Davidson, H. E., gift of fishes, 278. Davis, W. M. The Catskill delta in the post-glacial Hudson estuary, figs., 318; drainage of the Pennsylvania Appalachians, 418 ; formation of the Galapagos Islands, 317 ; subglacial origin of certain eskers, 477. Davis, W. M., award of Walker prize to, 453. Deidamia inscriptum, 108. Delias rosenbergii, 75. zebuda, 75. Deudorix dioetas, 74. epijarbas, 74. manea, 74. Dexter, Samuel, obituary notice of, 364; resignation of, from the sec- retaryship, 316 ; resolution adopted upon the death of, 369. Deyeuxia canadensis, 151. Deyeuxia langsdorffii, 147. neglecta, 151. Diadema bolina, 67. fraterna, 67. Dicranura, 99. Dikelocephalus, 211, 216, 219. Diodon hystrix, 9. Dirca palustris, 145. Discina, 208. Disco phora bambusae, 60. celebensis, fig., 59. celinde, 59. ogina, 59. Distichlis maritima, 149, 152, 155. Doassansia epilobii, 388. Dolbear, A. E. On chemism or the or- ganization of matter, y?#., 183. Doleschallia polibete, 64. Draba incana, 147. nemorosa, 157. Drepana, 84. arcuata, 109. Drift, lakes enclosed by, 228. Drumlins in Massachusetts, number of, 421. Drymonia, 95. Dryocampa, 103, 104, 106. rubicunda, 103. Eacles, 84, 98, 104, 106. imperialis, 93, 103, 104, 105. Echinospermum deflexum, 149. floribundum, 149. lappula, 162. redowskii, 149, 162. virginicum, 162. Edema albifrons, 97. Elaeagnus argentea, 145. Elliptocephalus thompsoni, 217, 219. Elymnias hewitsoni, fig., 58. hicetas.J?#., 58. Elymus canadensis, 153. mollis, 147. sibiricus, 147. sitanion, 149. Encrinurus vigilans, 208. Endoceras proteiforme, 206, 208. Endromis, 102, 105. , Endropia, 107. Ensatella americana, 308. Entomology, 52, 82. Ephydra, 87. Epigaea repens, 170. Epilobium angustifolium, 160. Eragrostis major, 166. Erechthites hieracifolia, 160. Ergolis actisanes, 66, 67. alternus, 67. ariadne, 66. celebensis, fig., 64, 67, merione, 66. merionoideSyfig., 66. Erigeron canadensis, 160. glabellus, 149. hyssopifolius, 147. strigosus, 160. Erionota thrax, 81. 517 Eriophorum alpinum, 147. Eronia tritaea, 77. Erysimum asperum, 148, 149. cheiranthoides, 157. parviflorum, 148, 157. Eskers, subglacial origin of, 477. Euphorbia maculata, 166. Euphrasia officinalis, 147. Euploea eupalor, 54, 58. horsfieldii, 54. hyacinthus, 54. mniszechii, 54. viola, 54. westwoodii, 54. Euripus robustus, 67. E veres parrhasius, 72. Evolution, 42. Farlow, W. G. Notes on collections of cryptogams from the higher moun- tains of New England, 387. Festuca scabrella, 149, 153. Ficus elastica, 436. Foerste, Aug. F. The drainage of the Bernese Jura, pis., 392. Gaillardia aristata, 149, 154. Galapagos Islands, 317. Galeopsis tetrahit, 163. Galium boreale, 153. Gamelia, 92. Garman, Samuel. Dr. D. H. Storer’s work on the fishes, 354. Gaura coccinea, 149. Geer, Gerard de. The fossiliferous marine beds of Canada, 334; on Pleistocene changes of level in east- ern North America, 454. Geer, Gerard de, award of Walker prize to, 453. Gentiana affinis, 149, amarella, 147. Geographic limits of plants, 140. Geologv, 115, 173, 202, 228, 258, 304. 317, 318, 391. 392.421, 455, 477, 499. Geology of Quebec, bibliography of, 221. Geology of the Bernese Jura, bibliography of, 393. Gerard ia, 153. Gerydus maximus, fig., 68. symethus, 68. Geum, i53. album, 159. Gilia linearis, 149. Glacial period, antiquity of the last, 258; in Hingham, Mass., 173; phenom- ena of France and England, 391. Glaux maritima, 154. Globigerina rubra, 437. Glyceria distans, 152, 155. Glycyrrhiza lepidota, 148. Goniobasis taylori, 245. Goodale, G. L. Museums of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, 316; remarks on the life of Samuel Dexter, 364. Grindelia, 153. Grindelia squarrosa, 149, 156, 160. Gulick collection of shells, 4. Gutierrezia, 154. euthamiae, 149. Habenaria obtusata, 147. Habrostola, 94. Halenia deflexa, 147. Halesidota, 108. caryae, 98. Halpe beturia, 80. Hartwell, E. Adams. The Pearl Hill pot-hole,^., 421. Hasora badra. 78. Haynes, H. W. Palaeolithic implement from the valley of the Tuscarawas, Ohio, 49. Hearth, ancient, discovered in Little Mi- ami Valley, 268. Hebomoia glaucippe, 77. Hedysarum boreale, 147. Helianthus annuus, 149, 161. maximiliani, 149, 161. petiolaris, 149. rigidus, 161. Heliotropium curassavicum, 154. Hemileuca, 84, 102. maia, 92. yavapai, 92. Hesperia eulepis. 81. Hestia blanchardii, 53. Heterocampa, 97, 109. marthesia, 88, 94, 95. Hieracium umbellatum, 147. Hierochloe borealis, 151. Hingham, Mass., geology of, 499; kame ridges and kettle-holes in, 173. Hipporhinus, 382. Holland, W. J. Asiatic Lepidoptera, pis., 52. Holmes, O. W. Letter from, in com- memoration of Dr. D. H. Storer, 353. Hordeum jubatum, 153, 155, 167. Hyatt, Alvheus. Remarks on the Pin- nidae, 335. Hydrocephalus, 210. Hylastes squalidens, 376. Hylobiites cretaceus, 379. Hyperchiria, 84, 88, 102. io, 90, 91, 92, 97, 98, 102. varia, 90. Hypericum ellipticum, 147. Hvphantria, 108. textor, 98. Hypolycaena sipvlus, 73. Hyponomenta evonymella, 94. Ichthyosaurus, 111. Ichthyura, 107. inclusa, 109. Ideopsis vitrea, 53. Illaenus, 205, 210, 211. milleri, 202, 208. Ilvanassa obsoleta, 170. 307, 309. Implements, palaeolithic, from Ohio, 49. Iolaus any sis, 72. 518 Iraota johnsonicina,fig., 73. Ismene ilusca, 78. oedipodea, 78. Iva xanthiifolia, 149, 160. Jamides bochus, 72. Jeffries, J. A. Lamarckianism and Darwinism, 42. Juncus alpinus, 147. balticus, 149. stygius, 147. Jungermannia setiformis, 390. J unonia asterie, 63. atlites, 63. erigone, 63. wallacei, 63. Jura, Bernese, drainage of, 392; litera- ture of, 393. Kalmia glauca, 145. Kames in Hingham, Mass., 173. Kellia planulata, 308. Kettle -holes at Bolton, Vt., 304; at Hingham, Mass., 173. Koeleria cristata, 152. Lacosoma chirodota, 85. Lactuca ludoviciana, 149. Lacuna vincta, 308. Laevicardium mortoni, 307. Lagoa, 93. Lakes enclosed by modified drift, 228. Lamarckianism and Darwinism, 42. Lampides aelianus, 72. latimargus, 72. philetus, 72. Lanius excubitorides, 279. Lapar6cerus, 380. Laria rossii, 89, 90. Lasiocampa, 102. Lathyrus, 153. Latia dalli, 245. Led a arctica, 312. Ledum latifolium, 145. Leiocampa, 102. Leonurus cardiaca, 163. Lepachys columnaris, 149, 154. Lepidium intermedium, 158. sativum, 158. virginicum, 158. Lepidoptera of Celebes, 52. Lepidopterous larvae, external structure and phvlogeny of, 82. Leptaena, 202, 210, 216. sericea, 205, 208, 210. Leptobolus insignis, 205, 206. Leptocircus ennius, 78. Leptodesma, 339. Leptosia dione, 75. Lesquerella ludoviciana, 148, 149. Lethe arcuata, 54. arete, 54. europa, 54. Leucania, 94. Liatris, 153. panctata, 149, 154. Lilium philadelphicum, 151. Limenitis disippe, 96. libnites, 68. lymire, 68. lyncides, 67. lysanias, 67. Linaria vulgaris, 163. Lingula, 205, 208, 210. Linnaea borealis, 147. Linum perenne, 148. rigidum, 148. Liparis auriflua, 90. Liparus, 380. Lithasia antiqua, 245. Littorella lacustris, 148. Littorina litorea, 308. palliata, 308. rudis, 307, 308. L:'tuites undatus, 208. Lobelia dortmanna, 147. Lochmaeus, 97. manteo, fig., 89. Lonicera caerulea, 145. ciliata, 145. hirsuta, 145. involucrata, 145. oblongifolia, 145. Lophodonta, 95, 102. Lophodytes cucullatus, 279. Lophopteryx, 102. Lophostethus, 100. Lucina filosa, 307. Lunatia heros, 307. Luzula spadicea, 147. Lychnis githago, 159. Lycopus lucidus, 149. Lygodesmia juncea, 149, 162. Macoma fragilis, 307. Mactra solidissima, 307. Magnolia glauca, 170. Malva rotundifolia, 159. Malvastrum coccineum, 148. Mamillaria vivipara, 149. Manganese deposits of Quaco, genesis of, 253. Marcou, Jules. Geology of the en- virons of Quebec, with map and sections, 202. Matapa celsina, 78. Mayo, E. R., gift of shells and books by the heirs of, 268, 278. Meeting. See Table of contents. Megalops thrissoides, 9. Melampus bidentatus, 308. Melanitis gnophodes, 55. hylecoetes, fig., 55, 56. leda, 54. leucocvma, 58. obsoleta, 55. velutina, 55, 56. Melilotus alba, 159. Melitaea, 94. artemis, 94. harrisii, 98. Meloe, 372. 519 Members, Associate, elected: — Flagg, 42. Maynard, C. J., 42. Merrill, Selah, 42. Ramsay, Mrs. C. H., 42. Thompson, J. A., 42. Topliff, G. F., 42. Wilson, H. V., 42. Members, Corporate, elected : — Castle, W. W., 316. Conklin, E. G., 316. Hammerle, Miss Ida S., 421. Harley, L. R., 370. Herman, W. W., 316. Herrick, F. H., 316. Hollis, F. S., 421. Jack, J.G.,421. Jackson, Miss Jennie M., 421. Lowery, Mrs. L. F., 370. Mason, A. G., 387. Morrill, A. D., 316. Newhall, E. K., 370. Norton, E. E., 316. O’Grady, Miss M. I., 370. Parkhurst, Miss E. A., 316. Porter, J. F., 370. Ricker, E. W., 316. Sargent, C. S., 316. Sturgis, W. C., 316. Wainwright, Robert, 370. Watson, Mrs. T. A., 387. Watson, T. A,, 387. Members, Garden, elected:— Blatchford, Miss M. E. Brewster, William, 370. Castle, W. W., 304. Cheney, Mrs. E. D., 370. Cory, C. B., 370. Estabrook, Arthur F., 370. Forbes, J. M., 316. Freeman, Miss H. E., 316. Means, James, 304. Melvin, James C., 370. Minot, Laurence, 304. Peabody, F. H., 304. Phillips, Mrs. J. C., 304. Putnam, C. P., 316. Putnam, J. J., 316. Quincy, H. P.,304. Rogers, Mrs. W. B., 304. Scudder, Samuel H. Wiggles worth, Edward, 304. Williams, Harold, 304. Wolcott, Roger, 316. Members, Honorary, elected: — Agassiz, Alexander E. R., 387. Hall, James, 387. Lacaze-Duthiers, F61ix J. H., 387. Leuckart, Rudolph, 387. Menocephalus, 216. Mertensia paniculata, 147, 169. Messaras maeonides, 56. Metaptoma, 216. Microdonta, 95. Mineralogy, 253. Minot, Charles S. Reeent investiga- tions on the nervous system, 346; remarks on the life of Samuel Dexter, 366. Modiola modiolus, 308. plicatula, 307, 309. Mollugo verticillata, 160. Monarda, 153. Monolepis chenopodioides, 149, 156. Muhlenbergia glomerata, 151, 166. Mulinia lateralis, 307, 309. Murchisonia, 202. Musa paradisica, 249. sapientum, 249. Mya arenaria, 306, 307. Mycalesis blasius, 57. dexamenus, 57. dinon, 56, 57. janardana, 57. jopas, 57. medus, 57. megamede, 57. nautilus, 57. Myrmar, 372. Mytilus edulis, 308. Nacaduba aluta, 71. ancyra, 72. at rata, 71. Nadata, 95, 102. gibbosa, 109. Nampa image, 242. Natural History Gardens and Aquaria, 1 ; appeal in behalf of, 287; corres- pondence between the Council and the Park Commissioners, 27; re- port on, 284, 445. Naupactus, 381. Neonympha phocion, 106. Nepeta cataria, 163. Neptis antara, 68. daria, 68. leucothoe, 68. neriphus, 68. Neverita duplicata, 307. New Brunswick manganese deposits , 253. New England cryptogams, 387. Nodosaria soluta, 437. Nola cucullatella. 96. ovilla, 94, 95, 96. strigula, 95. North America, pleistocene changes of level in, 454. Obituary: — Burgess, Edward, 269. Davidson, H. E., 279. Dexter, Samuel, 335. Dillawav, C. K., 298. Hunt, Thomas Sterry, 387. Inches. H. B., 20. Jay, J. C., 448. Jeffries. John Amory, 392. Leidy, Joseph, 269. Minot, H. D., 298. 520 Obituary : — Munson, N. C., 20. Poey. P., 298. Randall, J. W., 448. Russell, Le B., 29. Scudder, Charles W., 369. Sharp, J. C., 298. Storer, David Humphreys, 269. Tobey, E. S., 298. Winchell, A., 298. Wolcott, J. H., 298. Obolella, 210. preciosa, 217, 219. Ocneria dispar, 90. Odostomia fusca, 308. Oedemasia, 102. concinna, 96, 105. Oenothera albicaulis, 146, 149, 160. biennis, 160. serrulata, 149. Officers for 1890-91, 26; for 1891 ’92, 303 ; for 1892-’93, 453. Olenellns thompsoni, 217, 219. Olenus, 211. Onosmodium carolinianum, 149. Opuntia fragilis, 149. missouriensis, 149. Orbiculina adunca, 437. Orbulina universa, 437. Orchis rotundifolia, 147. Orgyia, 87, 91, 108. antiqua, 90. ericae, 90. gulosa, 89. leucostigma,^., 86, 89. vetusta, 89. Ornithoptera hephaestus, 77. hippolytus, 77. Orthis, 202, 210. testudinaria, 205, 208. Orthocarpus, 153. luteus, 149. Orthoceras, 202. Ostrea virginiana, 170, 306, 307, 309. Ostrya virginica, 144. Otiorhynchites fossilis, 376. Otiorhynchus, 380. Oxalis acetosella, 147. corniculata, 159. Oxybaphus angustifolius, 149. hirsutus, 149, 163. nyctagineus, 149. Oxytropis, 153. lamberti, 148. monticola, 148. splendens, 148. Pachj'dictya, 208. Packard" A. S. Notes on points in the external structure and phylogeny of lepidopterous larvae, pis., 82. Padraona goloides, 80. niaesoides, 79. Palaeopinna, 337. Paleontology, 305, 335, 370. Paleontology of Quebec, bibliographv of, 221. Panicum capillare, 150, 166. crus-galli, 166. virgatum, 150, 151. Papilio, 114. adamantius, 77. again emnon, 77. ajax, 112. alcindor, 77. alphenor, 77. ascalaphus,77. blumei, 77. codrus, 78. cresphontes, 108, 112. gigon, 77. hecuba, 77. miletus, 78. pammon, 77. philenor, 113. polyphontes, 77. polyxenes, 112. rutulus, 108. telephus, 78. theseus, 77. troilus, 112. Paragerydus macassar ensis, Jig, , 70. Pareba fumigata, 61. molluccana, 61. pollonia, 62. Parnara sp ,,Jig., 79. Parnassia palustris, 147. Parorgvia, 86, 87, 108. clintoni, 89. leucophaea, 89. parallela, Jig., 85, 87, 89. Parthenos sylvia, 67. Pastinaca sativa, 160. Patula strigosa, 441. Pearl Hill pot-hole, j%., 421. Pecten irradians, 170, 306, 307, 315. tenuicostatus, 307. Pennaria inflata, 344. muricata, 344. nobilis, 344. pectinata, 344. rigida, 344. saccata, 344. seminuda, 344. Pentstemon, 153. acuminatus, 149. albidus, 149. gracilis, 149. Peripatus, 87, 94. Perophora melsheimerii, 85. Petalostemon, 153. villosus, 148. Petasites palmata, 147. sagittata, 147. Petricola pholadiformis, 308. Peucedanum foeniculaceum, 149. Phacelia franklinii, 147. Phalaris arundinacea, 151. Phegopteris calcarea, 169. Pheosia rimosa, 96, 102, 109. Phlox hoodii, 149. Phragmites communis, 152. Phyllobius, 381. Physalis grandiflora, 147. 521 Pieris eperia, 75. Pinguicula vulgaris, 147. Pinna, 336. abrupta, 344. aculeata, 345. aequilatera, 345. affinis, 344. angustana, 345. arata, 344. breweri, 344. costata, 342. depressa, 344. d'orbigni, 345. electrina, 344. fimbriatula, 344. flabellum, 344. flexicostata, 342. gallieni, 342. hanleyi, 345. hartmanni, 344. inaequicostata, 342. incurvata, 345. intumescens, 344. ivaniskiana, 339. maxima, 344. menkei, 346. miliaris, 344. minuta, 346. multisulcatus, 344. muricata, 344. nigrina, 339. nobilis, 345. pernula, 344. prisca, 338. quadrangularis, 342, 343. radiata, 346. restitua, 344. rotundata, 345. rudis, 343, 344. rugosa, 344. saccata, 340, 345. semicostata, 345. squamosa, 345. subcuneata, 344. tenuistriata, 346. tetragon a, 343. zebuensis, 344. Pinnidae, 335. Pithecops phoenix, 70. Planocephalus, 373. Plantago eriopoda, 149, 154. major, 147, 163. rugelii, 163. Plants, geographic limits of, 140. Plastingia tessellata, 81. Platysamia, 84. cecropia, 93, 98, 103. gloverii, 93. Pleistocene changes of level in America, 454. Plesioneura alysos, 81. Plusia gamma, 94. Poa alpina, 147. laxa, 147. nemoralis, 152. pratensis, 152. serotina, 152. Poa tenuifolia, 149, 152. Polanisia trachysperma, 148. Polydrosus, 381. Polygonum aviculare, 165. convolvulus, 162, 166. erectum, 165. hydropiper, 166. pennsylvanicum, 166. persicaria, 166. viviparum, 147. Polyommatus baeticus, 72. Polyzoa, 208. Portulacableracea, 159. Pot-hole at Bolton, Yt., 304; at Hingliam, Mass., 173. Potamogeton marinus, 156. Potentilla anserina, 159. effusa, 148. hi’fpiana, 148. norvegica, 159. pennsylvanica, 148, 154. Prasopora, 202. lycoperdon, 208. Precis intermedia, 63. iphita, 63. Primitia, 205, 207, 208, 210. Primula farino^a, 147. mistassinica, 147. Pseudamathusia ribbei, 59. Pseudergolis avesta, 63. Pseudohazis, 84, 102. eglanterina, 93. Psoralea, 153. argophvlla, 154. esculenta, 154. Pterinea trentonensis, 208. Pteronites aliiforme, 338. Pterophorus periscelidactylus, 88. Pterostoma, 95. Ptilophora, 95. Purpura lapillus, 307. Putnam, F. W. Ancient hearths discov- ered in the Little Miami Valley, 268. Pycnanthemum, 153. Pyrola rotundifolia, 147. Quebec, geology of the environs of, 202 ; bibliography of, 221. Ranunculus acris, 157. affinis, 147. aquatilis, 47. cymbalaria, 156. Rhinanthus crista-galli, 147. Rhinopalpa megalonice, 63. Rhododendron maximum, 170. Rhynchophora, tertiary, of North Amer- ica, 370. Ribes liudsonianum, 147. setosum, 156. Richards, R. H. The pot-hole at Bolton, Yt., 304. Riley, C. Y. The life-history of the digger-wasp, 370. Rosa acicularis, 148. arkansana, 148, 154, 160. 522 Rosa engelmanni, 147, 148. woodsii, 149. Rubus arcticus, 147. nutkanus, 147. Rudbeckia hirta, 161. Rumex acetosella, 165. crispus, 165. maritimus, 155. salicifolius, L55. Salicornia herbacea, 155. Salix balsamifera, 145. myrtilloides, 145. Salsola kali, 155, 165. Sarnia cynthia, 103. Saperdirhynchus, 386. Saponaria officinalis, 158. vaccaria, 158. Satarupa celebica, 81. Saturnia, 100. Schedonnardus texanus, 149. Schizura ipomeae,^#., 114. Scirpus caespitosus, 147. maritiiims, 155. % pungens, 156. Scolochloa festucacea, 147, 170. Scudder, Samuel H. The services of Edward Burgess to natural science, 358 ; the tertiary Rhynchophora of North America, 370. Seirarctia, 108. echo, 98, 113. Seiurus motacilla, 279. Senecio aureus, 147. canus, 149. integerrimus, 149. palustris, 156. Setaria glauca, 166. viridis, 166. Shaler, N. S. The antiquity of the last glacial period, 258 ; remarks on the life of Samuel Dexter, 365. Shepherdia argentea, 145. Silene noctiflora, 159. Sisymbrium incisum, 158. officinale, 158. Sisyrinchium, 153. Sithon orsolina, 72. Smerinthus, 100. excaecatus, 103. Smilacina, 153. Solanum nigrum, 163. triflorum, 149, 163. Sonchus asper, 162. oleraceus, 162. Spartina cynosuroides, 150. Spergularia media, 154. Speyeria idalia, 98, 113. Sphaerium idahoensis, 245. negosum, 245. Sphecius speciosus, 370. Sphingicampa, 98, 104, 106. bicolor, 103. Sphinx, 100. convolvuli, 98, 108. kalmiae, 103. Sphvrapicus varius, 279. Spilosoma virginica, 98, ll3. Spiranthes, 153. Spoi'obolus cuspidatus, 149, 151. heterolepis, 151. Stachys palustris, 163. Stellaria media, 159. Stipa spartea, 149, 151. vindula, 149, 151. Storer, David Humphreys, commemo- rative sketch of, 347. Streptopinna, 340. saccata, 339. Stricklandinia, 210. Strophomena, 202, 207. alternata, 208. Strophosomus, 381. Suaeda depressa, 149, 156, 165. Subularia aquatica, 148. Sulcatopinna flabelliformis, 342. flexicostata, 341. hartmanni, 342. inexpectans, 342. ludlovi, 342. maxvilliensis, 342. missouriensis, 342, 343. sancti-ludovici, 342. Swan, Thomas, gift of, 268. Svmbrenthia hippoclus, 63. Symphaedra adolias, 68. aeetes, 68. Tagelus gibbus, 307. Tagiades japetus, 81. trebellius, 81. Tajuria cyrillus, 72. mantra, 72. Tanacetum huronense, 147. vulgare, 161. Taractocera maevius, 80. Taraxacum officinale, 162. Tarucus clathratus,Jig ., 71. fasciatus, 71. Teachers’ School of Science, report on, 10,279,442. Telea, 84. poiyphemus, 103, 112, 113. Telicota augias, 79. subrubra, Jig., 79. Terias drona, 76. hecabe, 76. rahel, 76. tondana, 76. Tertiary Rhynchophora of North Amer- ica, 370. Teucrium canadense, 163. Thamnolia vermicularis, 389. Theca, 208. Thecla liparops, 98, 113. Theromnrpha, 111. Thlaspi arvense, 158. Thvlacites, 380. Till, composition of, 115. Tofieldia palustris, 147. Tottenia gemma, 308. Triarthrus becki, 205, 206, 207. Triforis nigrocinctus, 307. Triglochin maritima, 155. palustris, 155, 156. Trinucleus, 210, 211. concentricus, 202, 208. Trisetum subspicatum, 147. Tritia trivittata. 307. Troximon glaucurn, 149. Turbonillainterrupta, 308. Upham, Warren. The antiquity of the glacial period, 267 ; the Catskill delta, 335 ; geographic limits of species of plants in the basin of the Red River of the North, 140; recent fossils of the harbor and Back Bay, Boston, 305; Walden, Cochituate, and other lakes en- closed by modified drift, 228. Urapteryx sambucata, 107. Urosalpinx cinerea, 170, 307, 309. Urtica gracilis, 166. Utetheisa bella. 88. Utriculus canaliculatus, 307,308. Uvularia, 513. Vaccinium corymbosum, 145. pennsylvanicum, 145. Yanessa, 94. Venus mercenaria, 170, 306, 307, 309, 315, 464. Verbascum thapsus, 163. Yicia, 153. americana, 148. Walden lake, 228. Walker Grand Honorary Prize, award of, to J. D. Dana, 421, 450. Walker prize, 24, 301; award of, to Gerard de Geer, 453; to W. M. Davis, 453. Walker prize essay, 454, 477. Waterston, R. C., donation of, 319. White, J. C. Commemorative sketch of Dr. Storer, 347. Whittle, Charles L. Genesis of the manganese deposits of Quaco, N. B., 253. Woodsia glabella, 390. scopulina, 149. Wright, G. F. Additional notes con- cerning the Nampa image, 242; glacial phenomena of northern France and England, 391. Xanthium canadense, 161. Yoldia limulata, 308. Yoma sabina, 64. vasuki, 64. Yphthima asterope, 57. lory ma, 57. pandocus, 57. philomela, 57. Zannichellia palustris, 156. Zeucera aesculi, 84. Zizera lysizone, 71. Zoological Gardens. See Natural History Gardens. Zygadenus elegans, 156. ERRATUM. Page 266, 12th line from bottom, for 15,000 read 75,000. ST'S" Geology ofHingham Crow Point and Huit's Cove \ L XX >?/} - yv X JmX>7 X% * X 'X > ;X X ■" x \ 7 \\ b&V \ £. /w M‘Xv i X.~ 7" rn,1 a ,,xt-- t 'A^==Fir , 4tr* *A l X XX /,% t f v ./A X . I t t ru. •3 •jsaisny ‘hiiiasv ‘a % ' a ms rw