MISCELLANY. 



381 



of the valley is everywhere well filled with 

 alluvion, and the swamps west have firm 

 bottoms throughout the valley. Below Ba- 

 ton Rouge, where the river tends to the 

 southeast, the swamps on the east are bog- 

 gy and not well filled with deposits, and the 

 large spaces covered by Lakes Maurepas 

 and Pontehartrain are left unfilled. 



" If the Mississippi had been a river of 

 clear water (instead of being sedimentary), 

 traversing a valley not alluvial, it would 

 probably occupy the western side of its val- 

 ley like other streams flowing toward the 

 equator ; but, as it is, it levees or embanks 

 itself to the eastward by an excess of de- 

 posits west. It hugs the bluffs on the east 

 side, down to the last one at Baton Rouge, 

 for the reason that it could not be forced 

 any farther eastward ; but immediately be- 

 low the last bluff, the excess of deposits west 

 crowded the river-channel eastward still 

 farther ; the general direction thence to the 

 present mouth being southeast. The mouth 

 of the river having now reached very deep 

 water in the Gulf of Mexico, and having ad- 

 vanced a little beyond the filling up of the 

 gulf west, and beyond the southern limit of 

 the western highlands, the tendency is to 

 flow westward by the Southwest Pass, which 

 is now the largest channel, conveying about 

 one-third of the whole river to the sea." 



Glacial Phenomena. Prof. A. R. Grote 

 recently delivered a lecture on "The Ice 

 Age " before the Catholic Institute of Buffalo. 

 He first called attention to the evidences of 

 glacial action in the limestone rock under- 

 lying the surface deposit of sand, gravel, 

 and clay, in that region. Another evidence 

 of glacial action is the presence of erratic 

 blocks ; these too are found in the vicinity 

 of Buffalo. In Europe the largest of these 

 erratie blocks have been traced to their 

 original site. Near Zurich, in Switzerland, 

 there is a block estimated to weigh nearly 

 5,000 tons. Another block, of nearly equal 

 weight, may be seen at Neufchatel. By 

 comparing their grain, structure, and form, 

 it has been ascertained that they came from 

 the Alps, and indeed the very ledge of rock 

 of -which they were once a part has been 

 determined. To reach their present loca- 

 tion they must have traversed what are now 

 bodies of water, as the Lake of Geneva. 



Such blocks, of all sizes, being held fast 

 in the ice at the bottom of the glacier, act 

 as chisels on the rock beneath, producing 

 scratches. And, as a river accumulates 

 piles of sticks and rubbish along its banks, 

 so does the glacier accumulate piles of 

 stone3 and clay, known as moraines. Me- 

 dial moraines are found where two glacial 

 streams unite, just as a sand-bar marks the 

 junction of two rivers. These medial mo- 

 raines are extensions of lateral moraines 

 which are found at the sides of the glacier. 

 Terminal moraines are found at its mouth. 

 Over the south-western portion of the State 

 of New York, bowlders have been found 

 which have come from the Lake Superior 

 region, some of them containing copper-ore. 

 Bowlders of transportation have also been 

 found on the summit of Mount Washington, 

 which is more than 6,200 feet high, showing 

 that the glacier must have at onetime over- 

 topped this summit. The direction of the 

 scratches shows that the general course of 

 the ice-mass was from north to south. 

 There was a glacier of the Connecticut, the 

 Hudson, and the Alleghany Valleys. The 

 ice occupied the place of the water-courses, 

 and underneath it streams flowed to the sea. 



Lieutenant Cameron's Explorations. 



Lieutenant Cameron has returned safely to 

 England from his memorable journey of ex- 

 ploration in Central Africa. He explored 

 the head-waters of the Congo, an immense 

 river-system, one of the feeders of which is 

 the Lualaba, which drains Lake Tanganyika 

 into the Congo, and which Livingstone sup- 

 posed to be a tributary of the Nile. The 

 Congo and its tributaries constitute one of 

 the grandest systems of internal water-com- 

 munication in the world. As to the wealth 

 of the newly-explored country, Cameron de- 

 scribes it as enormous. From its mineral 

 resources and agricultural capabilities it 

 seems destined to become one of the grana- 

 ries of the world, a centre of civilization, and 

 the scene of iron manufactures when other 

 parts of the world have been exhausted. 



Antiseptic Properties of Thymol. The 



following notes of experiments made by L. 

 Lewin to determine the antiseptic and anti- 

 fermentative properties of thymol we trans- 

 late from Gaea. This substance, thymol, ob- 



