l4}82. 3 Trans. N. Y. Ac. Set. 



October 9, 1882. 



SECTION OF GEOLOGY. 



The President, Dr. J. S. Newberry, in the Chair. 



Forty-five persons present. 



The following specimens were exhibited; by Mr. W. L. Chamber- 

 LIN, apatite from Renfrew, Canada, and crystals of emerald enclos- 

 ing crystals of red rutile, from Hiddenite mine, N. C; by Mr. G. F. 

 KuNZ, "star mica" from St. Lawrence County, N. Y., and a crys- 

 tal of zircon, weighing twenty-eight Troy ounces, from Sebastopol, 

 Renfrew County, Ontario, Canada; by the President, a cast of a 

 trilobite {Asaphas gigas), from Illinois, which clearly exhibited the 

 legs, and is remarkable as being the first specimen in which any 

 locomotive organs have been discovered ; and by Mr. Douglass, a 

 beautifully carved pipe from San Salvador, found fourteen feet be- 

 low the surface, in old Indian workings, and which is regarded as 

 antedating the Spanish invasion. 



A paper was read by Mr. F. Cope Whitehouse, largely illus- 

 trated by magic lantern views, entitled : 



the caves of the island of staffa : ARE they not arti- 

 ficial .> 

 (This is embodied in a paper in the Popular Science Monthly, Decem- 

 ber, 1882.) 



DISCUSSION. 



Prof. E. H. Day remarked on the great interest of the subject, and 

 at the same time on the large amount of caution required in the in- 

 vestigation and acceptance of such views. Nature, having been the 

 undoubted author of so many caves, can very well afford to man the 

 credit of having made one here or there, and these perhaps amongst 

 them. But to establish this claim we need, either direct proofs of man's 

 handiwork, which, if beyond dispute, would be conclusive evi- 

 dence ; or else proof that geological action could not have produced 

 such results, a proposition that it would be impossible to solve beyond 

 greater or less probability. In the first line of proof. Prof. Day had 

 heard scarcely a word of direct evidence that would stand scientific 

 test, and in the second, he thought that the author had ignored some 

 of the most important geological factors. 



Perhaps the strongest geological evidence, in favor of the artificial 

 origin of the caves in Staffa, was the fact that at the Giant's Cause- 

 way, in similarly formed basaltic and columnar rocks, there are no 

 caves, although the coast there is exposed to the full force of the At- 



