GEOLOGY.— HISTORY. 293 



This cyclic action raised the radical question whether atmospheric 

 circulation and precipitation were not fundamentally concerned in 

 giving shape to the primitive continents and oceanic basins, which 

 later in turn seemed to so much influence climate, a cyclic relation 

 of cause and effect. The middle portion of the year was given to 

 studies along this line. These led to the conviction that the primi- 

 tive conformation of the earth's exterior was the joint product of (1) 

 diastrophic agencies that acted on the earth nucleus and on its suc- 

 cessive accretions as they were added, modifying the spheroidal form 

 determined by rotation and gravity; (2) atmospheric agencies that 

 determined the localization of the planetesimal dust that settled 

 slowly through it; and (3) hydrospheric action whose localization 

 was largely predetermined by the previous action of the diastrophic 

 and atmospheric agencies, both of which were more primitive in time 

 and more fundamental in nature. These studies seemed to throw 

 new light on the forms and meanings of the great features of the 

 earth's surface. 



The agencies that necessarily come into a study of this kind are 

 so complex and obscure in their interactions on one another and in 

 their cyclical reactions on themselves that conclusions are inevitably' 

 tentative and may well be held in reserve for working trial by the 

 naturalistic method while more concrete studies are pursued, to which, 

 however, they furnish suggestive stimulus and a measurably new 

 basis. 



The work recently in hand has been the revision and organization 

 of climatic data previously collected for a paper on the climates of 

 the Paleozoic era, and soon to be offered for publication. 



HISTORY. 



Osgood, Herbert L., Columbia University, New York, N, Y. Grant No. 

 853, allotted December 13, 1912, Completion of an institutional history 

 of the American colonies daring the period of the French wars. (For pre- 

 vious report see Year Book No. 11.) $1,200 



During the past year work on my history of the American colonies 

 during the eighteenth century has been steadily progressing. I have 

 pubhshed nothing on the period, for the reason that I am treating it 

 as a whole and nothing will be ready for publication until practically 

 the entire work is finished. I have written during the past year 

 about twentj'- chapters on the period between 1690 and 1715. JNIany 

 of these are nearly in completed shape, others are less perfect. 



Dr. Mereness has been doing satisfactory work during the year, 

 most of the time in New York on printed material which I had not 

 used. Since April he has taken notes at Albany on a large part of 

 the minutes of the Executive Council of New York and at Hart- 



