219 



economically useful ; it has also a popular and a systematic name ; but to 

 utilitarian and Linntean alike, the form and substance seems the main 

 thing, not the life. ' Great Pan is dead,' the botanist is as prosaic and un- 

 seeing as the woodcutter, in fact, essentially is one ; at best with finer tools, 

 and like him does his best work away from the wild wood altogether. 

 But as the ages of fetishism, of Hellenic anthropomorphism passed away, 

 so now the formal and utilitarian and analytic spirit is passing also in its 

 turn. Science is entering a new and brighter Hellas; the Dryad, living 

 and breathing, moving and sensitive is again within her tree ; nay, better, 

 the plant is herself the living Dryad, her beauty radiant in the sun." 



PAPERS READ. 



GEOLOGY. 



On the ixdl-ratiox of certain tertiary rocks in northeastern Arkan- 

 sas. By R. Ellsworth Call 

 In northeastern Arkansas, west of the St. Francis river, stretching from 

 the Missouri line to the Mississippi river at Helena, is Crowley's Ridge, 

 the only pronounced topographic feature in the region. The width of 

 this particular ridge varies from six or seven miles to a half mile, the 

 northern portion being the widest. The general geological features of 

 Crowley's Ridge have been elsewhere given* and need not be rehearsed at 

 this time. It will be sufficient to say that the ridge is the remains of a 

 plateau to the westward of which once flowed the Mississippi river which 

 cut out the great valley now occupied by the White and Black rivers and 

 other streams of the region. Later its channel was changed to the east- 

 ward by the penetration of the previous barrier near Cape Girardeau, in 

 Missouri ; it still occupies a portion of that ancient valley across which it 

 has several times shifted its course. It has resulted from these great 

 changes that the eastern valley has been dug deeper and wider than was 

 the ancient channel on the west. Crowley's Ridge, therefore, stands as a 

 residual product of erosion. 



■:•■ Fide Geological Survey of Arkansas, report for 1889, Vol. II, "The Geology of Crow- 

 ley's Ridge," by R. Ellsworth Call. 



