228 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [July 



Society in New York long before the present national 

 society by that name had commenced operations and he 

 was its first president. 



He went to California in 1877 to study diatoms col- 

 lected by the State Geological Survey and by the North- 

 west Boundary Survey, but was prevented from complet- 

 ing the work. He lived at Berkeley, Cal., two years, fell 

 sick, came East, leaving specimens and books to the San 

 Francisco Microscopical Society. 



He has since lived in Newark, N. J. His publications, 

 largely microscopical, are to be found in the Transactions 

 of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York, in the 

 transactions of the San Francisco Microscopical Society; 

 in the Journal of the Quekett Club, in the proceedings of 

 the Boston Society of Natural History, in nature in the 

 Quarterly Journal of Microscopy , in the Microscope, and 

 in this Journal. He has also published "The Natural 

 History of the Diatomaceaj." 



A New Form of Analytical Procedure Applicable to the 

 Study of Diatomaceous and Other Clayey Deposits. 



BY K. M. CUNNINGHAM, 

 MOBILE, Ala. 

 Towards the completion of the second decade of my 

 career in studying that branch of microscopy, whose use- 

 ful results are recorded as belonging to the department 

 of Micro-Geology, I have been accustomed to avail my- 

 self of certain useful expedients which were gradually 

 devised and evolved by myself. They are a necessary 

 sequence of attempts to obtain the best results from dif- 

 ficult diatom or other . fossil organic-bearing material. 

 As the outcome of the line of experimentation followed 

 and fully mastered, I have been enabled to reduce my 

 acquired experiences to a set of rules, or process methods. 

 They may be communicable to anyone who may not have 



