POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



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stokes, Anson Phelps. Joint-Metallism. Third 

 edition, enlarged. New York : G. P. Putnam's 

 Sous. Pp. 240. $1. 



Venezuela, United States of. Statistical An- 

 nuary to July 1, 1889. Pp. 9, with Map. 



Wilkes, Gilbert. Some Practical Hints in Dy- 

 namo Design. University of Wisconsin. Pp. 14. 



Winchell. Geological and Natural History 

 Survey of Minnesota for 1893. Minneapolis. Pp. 

 210. 



Woodward, R. S. Smithsonian Gaographical 

 Tables. Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 182. 



Yeo, John. Steam and the Marine Steam En- 



fine. New York : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 196. 

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Meeting of the Geological Society in 

 Baltimore. The seventh annual meeting of 

 tbe Geological Society of America was held 

 a; the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 

 Md., December 27th to the '29th. About 

 sixty fellows of the society were present, and 

 fifty papers were read. Prof. T. C. Cham- 

 berlin, in his address as the retiring presi- 

 dent, spoke of his observations during the 

 past summer on the glaciers and ice sheet of 

 Greenland, especially of Inglefield Gulf and 

 of Bowdoin Bay, a fiord extending from that 

 gulf northward to Lieutenant Peary's winter 

 station. A series of very instructive lantern 

 views of these glaciers was exhibited after 

 this address. The surface of Inglefield Gulf, 

 at its far northern latitude of 78, lying 

 twelve hundred and fifty miles north of the 

 southern end of Greenland and only about 

 eight hundred and fifty miles from the pole, 

 was mostly frozen during all last summer ; and 

 it was with much difficulty that the stanch 

 steamer Falcon, bearing this Peary Relief 

 Expedition, cut its way through the ice pack 

 in August to reach Bowdoin Bay. Because 

 the sun's rays there fall so slantingly, their 

 effect to promote the flow of the glaciers is 

 very slight, the maximum rate of the glacial 

 currents being found to be only two and a 

 half feet a day in midsummer; but the re- 

 flection of the solar heat from the ground at 

 the ice margin causes the ends of the valley 

 glaciers and the border of the great inland 

 ice sheet to have a very steep slope, or even 

 in many places a precipitous and sometimes 

 overhanging front. In these ice cliffs, rising 

 abruptly one hundred to two hundred feet or 

 more, the lower half of the ice incloses ranch 

 englacial drift and is very distinctly lami- 

 nated, having obtained a nearly horizontal or 



often steeply inclined stratification through 

 the shearing effect of its motion in the upper 

 and central parts being faster than below. 

 As the bowlders and smaller rock fragments 

 are carried onward in the ice, they are thus 

 subjected to much wearing upon each other. 

 At some localities this englacial drift is being 

 amassed beneath the ice border in low, round- 

 ed hillocks, nearly like the druralins or oval 

 hills of till so well developed about Boston, 

 in central New York, and in some other dis- 

 tricts of the northern United States and 

 Canada, which have long puzzled glacialists 

 to explain how they could be formed. Other 

 glacial papers were presented at this meeting 

 by Prof. G. Frederick Wright, on his obser- 

 vations last summer in a second expedition 

 to Newfoundland, Labrador, and Greenland ; 

 by Prof. C. H. Hitchcock, on deposits re- 

 garded as deltas of a glacial or ice-dammed 

 lake in the basin of Lake Memphremagog, 

 the old water level having been about four 

 hundred feet above that of to-day ; by H. F. 

 Reid, on the secular recessions and readvances 

 of the present glaciers of the Alps and other 

 regions ; by Warren Upham, on the question 

 whether the ice sheets of the Glacial period 

 were formed chiefly by snowfall upon all 

 their area or advanced far beyond their zone 

 of predominant snow accumulation, and a 

 second paper on the climatic conditions 

 shown by North American interglacial de- 

 posits ; and two papers by Prof. H. L. Fair- 

 child, on the lakes held by the barrier of the 

 waning ice sheet in the valleys of the Finger 

 Lakes, the Genesee River, and other streams 

 in central New York. Prof. Fairchild, from 

 observations made principally during the 

 past year, maps and names fifteen or more 

 of these lakes. They range from ten to 

 thirty miles in length and from two to five 

 miles in width, with outlets across the south- 

 ern watershed to the head- streams of the 

 Susquehanna. In the long and deep valleys 

 now occupied by Canandaigua, Keuka, Sen- 

 eca, and Cayuga Lakes, the former glacial 

 lakes stood four hundred to seven hundred 

 feet above the present lake levels, as shown 

 by the old deltas and shore lines. Papers 

 on the crystalline rocks of Archaean or pre- 

 Cambrian age were presented by C. W. Hall, 

 F. . Adams, J. F. Kemp, C. H. Smyth, Jr., 

 W. S. Bayley, and others. The folded struc- 

 ture of the Appalachian mountain belt was 



