80 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. ix. 



Let it be granted that the Malay origin of Algonquins, Maya- 

 Quiches and Mbaya Abipones, with Sahaptins, is established, 

 and a foundation is laid for a history of aboriginal America. 

 Javanese, Moluccan and Tagala traditions may be found to check 

 and supplement those of the Algonquins, Sahaptins and Maya- 

 Quiches ; and, as the geologist settles the relative ages of his 

 formations by their fossil remains, so words may enable us, in 

 similar grammatical strata, to fix the various periods of Malay 

 migration to this continent. I reserve the consideration of the 

 Turanian American languages for another occasion. 



ON SOME POINTS IN LITHOLOGY. ^ 



By Prop. James D. Dana. 

 (^From the American Journal of Science ^ 



4. Containing Quartz or not. — Since quartz is the most uni- 

 versal of the materials of rocks, its presence is least entitled to 

 be made a basis for distinctions among them. In sedimentary 

 deposits, the original of many of the crystalline kinds, it is a 

 very common ingredient owing to their mode of origin, and its 

 more or less abundance is a matter of no great geological impor- 

 tance. Sufficient reasons exist, therefore, for the course pur- 

 sued by recent writers on lithology in making the presence or 

 not of quartz even in crystalline rocks a basis only for a sub- 

 division under a kind of rock. Thus there is under dioryte, 

 quartz-dioryte\ under trachyte, quartz-trachyte; under felsyte 

 quartz-fehyte ; and so in other cases. 



Syenyte is defined by such authors as consisting chiefly of 

 orthoclase and hornblende. Now a rock made prominently of 

 these minerals often contains also quartz ; and the name for the 

 quartz-bearing kind, which a system of lithology using the above- 

 cited terms would seem to require, would be quartz-syenyte. 

 To call it " hornblende-irranite," as is often done, is at variance 

 with the system which uses the word quartz as an affix in other 

 cases. 



This term ''hornblende-granite," is at variance also with the 

 fundamental idea and nature of granite. Granite is eminently 



* Continued from page 48. 



