292 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERT. 



these metamorphic masses. You continued to find outlayers of the upper 

 carboniferous limestone through the region to the "West. Crossing the 

 Rocky Mountains and going toward Salt Lake, tertiary is again found. The 

 ranges west of Salt Lake were all capped with this carboniferous limestone, 

 All the coal deposits of the south-west were of tertiary origin, and he strongly 

 suspected that that brought by Captain Stansbury was tertiary also. There 

 was positively tertiary coal in the plateau between the first range and the Salt 

 Lake. 



DRIFT PHENOMENA. 



At the Providence meeting of the American Association, President Hitch- 

 cock gave an account of the manner in which he was first led to the observ- 

 ance of glacial marks, and the localities in which he had since found them, 

 from Monroe to Shelburne and from Becket to "Westfield, on the tributaries of 

 the Connecticut. He was first led to notice them by seeing east and west 

 scratches in the side of a gorge, while on the summits on either side were 

 the north and south stria? of the drift. He had found also what he was com- 

 pelled to call moraines. He had scarcely explored the Hoosac range at all 

 with this object in view, but it did seem to him that he had too many cases 

 to be the result of imagination. 



Mr. Daniels said that in "Wisconsin he had found one case of drift-striae 

 which declined 40 degrees from the meridian, though the variation was gen- 

 erally from 20 to 25. 



Mr. Redfield said that the drift-strias seemed to him to be divided into two 

 systems, one measuring S.S.E. and the other S.S.W. These two systems 

 sometimes occurred together, and seemed to be. owing to the two currents, 

 as there were now two currents in the ocean. So far from being led down 

 into the valleys, there was a case in New Jersey where stria? rose up over a 

 high hill, where there was a valley on both sides. 



Mr. Leslie cited a more striking similar instance in Pennsylvania, where 

 the valley on one side was 2,000 feet deep. He had seen in "Wales Y-shaped 

 valleys, with the point turned upward, which could never be owing to 

 glaciers. 



Mr. Lee had noticed similar grooves north of the Catskill Mountain-House, 

 2,700 feet above the sea. 



Dr. Stevens alluded to a block of granite found in the very act of digging 

 a groove in limestone in "Western New York. The boulder was considerably 

 rounded. 



President Hitchcock said that the difference between drift and modified 

 drift was as distinct as between the Silurian and cretaceous formations. 



GEOLOGICAL MEMORANDA. 



Relative Levels of the Red Sea and Mediterranean. The French engineers, 

 at the beginning of the present century, had come to the conclusion that the 

 Red Sea was about thirty feet above the Mediterranean, but the observations 



