234 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [July 



erable component part of beds of great thickness in past 

 ag-es. Beneath the Athmtic coastal plain there has been 

 continuous!}' traced a marine Miocene bed from Asbury 

 Park, N. J., to Richmond and Petersburg-, Va. It out- 

 crops along- the deeply-cut creek banks about Richmond, 

 and underlies the town. It occurs between the depths of 

 16 and 95 feet at Asbury Park, between the depths of 400 

 and 700 feet at Atlantic City, N. J., and between the depth 

 of 400 and 800 feet at Crisiield, Md. Its maximum thick- 

 ness, so far as yet known, is therefore 300 to 400 feet. At 

 Richmond, however, it is but about 25 feet thick. 



A fresh water deposit, of Pliocene ag-e, underlies the 

 Llano Estacado or Staked Plains of Texas, an area several 

 times larg-er than Pennsylvania. Lewis Woolman. 



MICEO;SCOFirAL NOTES. 



Crystals from Muller's Fluid. — As an object for the 

 study of embryolog-y, this slide [of fetal tissues hardened 

 in Muller's fluid, and mounted throug-h clove oil into ben- 

 zole-balsam] is g-ood ; but look at it with your polariscope 

 and tell the rest of us what these beautiful crystals are, 

 which stud the entire surface of the mount. They evi- 

 dently do not belong- to the fetal hand, for they are diffused 

 throug-hout the mounting- fluid. If the preparer, after 

 hardening- in Muller's fluid, omitted to wash out the 

 bichromate of potash from his object, these needles are 

 bichromate of potash crystals. They have a somewhat 

 rhombic form, which is what would be expected. 



H. M. F. 



Sonorous Sand from Hawaii. — The present writer has, 

 recently received from Dr. Benj. Sharp, who, with Prof. 

 Libbey, visited the Sandwich Islands during- the summer 

 and fall of 1893, some of this same sonorous sand. It was 

 obtained from a dune facing- the beach upon the island of 

 Kauai. Geolog-ically the island is the oldest of the g-roup, 

 having- been first formed ; it is the only one of the islands 

 on which dunes occur. All of the islands are of volcanic 

 orig-in. 



