SKETCH OF WILLIAM C. RED FIELD. 119 



geological papers in the American Association, and took part in 

 the discussions of them. The phenomena of the drift period and 

 the signs of glacial action attracted his attention ; but, living in 

 the heart of the new red sandstone region of Connecticut, his 

 closest studies were directed to that formation, and the fruits of 

 them appear in several papers in the American Journal of Sci- 

 ence. In these papers he described the allied sandstones of New 

 Jersey as well as those of Connecticut, with their fossils, ripple 

 marks, and evidences of the fall of raindrops. His son, John H. 

 Red field, having, in a description of the fossil fishes of the Portland 

 quarry near Middletown, showed that their structural affinities 

 pointed to a higher position for the sandstone than had previ- 

 ously been assigned to it, he continued the study and published 

 descriptions of several new species of ichthyolites. The last paper 

 he read before the American Association was on the Geological 

 Age of the Sandstones of Connecticut and. New Jersey, and the 

 Contemporaneous Deposits of Virginia and North Carolina. He 

 proposed for them the name of the Newark group, and showed 

 that the ichthyolites contained in them pointed unerringly to the 

 Jurassic group. The collection of fossil fishes which he formed 

 in the course of this study, with special reference to a monograph 

 upon them, was regarded by Prof. Olmsted as having been prob- 

 ably unequaled in this country. 



Mr. Redfield was an active member of the American Associa- 

 tion of Naturalists and Geologists, and was the originator of its 

 enlargement into the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science " the first," Prof. Olmsted says, " to suggest the idea 

 of the American Association on its present plan." 



Prof. Olmsted gives a list of sixty- two scientific papers in 

 meteorology, physics of the globe, and geology, on steamboats, 

 etc., published by Mr. Redfield. Forty-five of these are to be 

 found in the first fifty volumes of the American Journal of Sci- 

 ence, and twenty-eight of them are registered in the catalogue of 

 the Astor Library. 



Seeking to determine what attracted insects to flowers whether the 

 color, shape, or odor M, Felix Plateau experimented with single dahlias 

 trained against the wall. He disguised the flowers in a variety of ways, 

 covering them all over with variously colored papers, leaving the yellow- 

 ish centers of tubular flowers, giving different shapes to the papers, cover- 

 ing with green leaves, and so going through the changes. It seemed all 

 the same to the insects: they found the flowers and enjoyed themselves 

 with them in their usual way. M. Plateau concludes that the attrac- 

 tions of the flowers are not in their form or color, but that the insects 

 are drawn to them by some other sense than that of sight, probably by 

 the smell. 



