36 



ASSOCIATIONS FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



brara deposits covers an area reaching from 

 western Iowa to the Rocky mountains, while 

 north and south it stretches from Texas to Mani- 

 toba, and probably northward to the Arctic Ocean. 

 The Niobrara sediments are unique among the 

 geological formations of the Nor! Invest. Where 

 typically developed, they are wholly calcareous, 

 or nearly so, and yet they are altogether unlike 

 the limestones that are so common and so char- 

 acteristic a feature of the geology of the upper 

 part, of the Mississippi valley. They lie, indeed, 

 in massive strata, varying from 6 inches to more 

 than 2 feet in thickness, as do some of the lime- 

 stones, but the material is chalky in appearance 

 and correspondingly soft in texture. The color 

 ':' freshly exposed" surfaces varies from white 

 through shades of gray and yellow. In some in- 

 stances the weathered surfaces become reddish, 

 owing to the final oxidation of the small amount 

 of iron which the beds contain. Allow me to 

 t ra verse familiar ground long enough to say that 

 the Niobrara chalk is a part of the Missouri Cre- 

 taceous series that was long ago made classic by 

 t he labors of Meek and Hayden. The work of 

 Hill and others in Texas enables us now to refer 

 the beds in question to the Upper Cretaceous, as 

 distinguished from the Comancheor Lower Cre- 

 taceous series of the Southwest. In the region 

 we are considering the Cretaceous begins with 

 the Dakota sandstone. Before the Niobrara age 

 came to an end the upward movement of the 

 region began. Step by step the sea receded from 

 its line of farthest advance, somewhere east of 

 the middle of Iowa. It will be noted that in 

 the Sioux river region the conditions that gave 

 us successively the Dakota, Benton, Niobrara, 

 and Pierre deposits passed one into the other by 

 practically imperceptible gradations. While in 

 the Black Hills the transition from Dakota sands 

 to the Benton shales is very abrupt, along the 

 Sioux river the transition is so gradual that any 

 line of separation would seem to be purely ar- 

 bitrary. The dead skeletons of successive gen- 

 erations of such organisms, unmixed with the 

 grosser products of land erosion, constituted 

 practically the only sediment that accumulated 

 during the Niobrara phase of the Cretaceous. It 

 is upon the nature of these skeletons and their 

 mode of aggregation that the very unusual char- 

 acteristics of the rocks belonging to this partic- 

 ular stage depend." 



The following-named papers were read and 

 discussed before the section : 



Witter Resources of the United States," by John 

 W. Powell; " Geographic Development of 'China, 

 :. :iti<l .Japan," l>y Gardiner G. Hubbard ;" A Min- 

 iature Kxtinet Volcano," by W J McGee ; -'A Pahe- 

 ozoic Eruption in Missouri," by Arthur Winslow; 

 "The /'me Mines at franklin Furnace and Ogdens- 

 burir, N. J.," by .lames F. Kemp: " Notes on the At- 

 lantic: Miocene," by William 11. Dull; " A New Fossil 

 Lin.lei]'ln>n from the Laramic at Walsenderg, Col., 

 and its Significance,'' by Arthur MolHck ; '-The Age 

 <>f the Galena Limestone," by Nathaniel ll.Winchell; 

 u The Carboniferous Strata of Shasta County, Cal.," 

 by James P. Smith; " Quaternary Time, Divisible 

 in Three Periods, the Layette, Glacial, and Recent," 

 by Warren Upham ; " The Columbia Formation in 

 Northwestern Illinois," by Oscar II. Jlcrshcy; "The 

 Later Geological Changes in Cuba," " Progress in 

 the Geological Survey of the Great Lakes," " Duration 

 of Niagara Kails," and " Drainage of the. Great Lakes 

 into the Mississippi River by Way of Chicago," by 



John W. Spencer ; " On Standard Sizes for Trays, 

 Drawers, and Cases for Mineralogical and Microscop- 

 ical Cabinets," by Wallace G. Levison and Daniel S. 

 .Martin; U A Prehistoric Relic, with Extracts from a 

 Survey of Lands in Monroe and Ontario Counties, New 

 STork. which were under the Ancient Lake of Ontario," 

 by Charles 11. Jenner; u Exhibition of a Microscope 

 u'.ade of Aluminium for Portability, and modified in 

 ( 'i instruction to adapt it for searching over the Surface 

 of Large Mineral Specimens" ami "Exhibition of 

 Map and Photograph of a Peat Bed in Prospect Park, 

 Brooklyn, N. Y., made in 1867, when the Peat was 

 removed and the Excavation tilled," by Wallace G. 

 Levison ; " The Geological Atlas Folios issued by 

 United States Geological Survey " and " The National 

 Domain," by Frederick II. Newell; "The Minerals 

 of Paterson, Upper Montclair, and the Palisades, 

 N. J." (exhibited by the Local Committee in Case in 

 the Press Room), by Joseph* H. Hunt ; " On the Age of 

 the St. Clair Limestone of Arkansas," by S. II. Wil- 

 liams; u The Report on Progress in Geology from the 

 Centennial to the Columbian Expositions'," by Jede- 

 diah Hotchkiss ; and " Oil and Gas in Kansas," by 

 Erasmus Haworth. 



F. Zoology. At the Madison meeting last 

 yeai-, Samuel H. Scudder, of Cambridge, Mass., 

 distinguished for his researches in fossil ento- 

 mology, was elected to preside over this section, 

 but he resigned this honor ; and as there was no 

 opportunity to fill the vacancy no address was 

 delivered. Subsequently the place was filled by 

 the election of Joseph A. Lintner, of Albany, 

 N. Y., State Entomologist of New York. As 

 secretary of the section William Libbey, Jr., of 

 Princeton, N. J., had been chosen, but as he was 

 not present, John B. Smith, of New Brunswick, 

 N. J., was elected. 



The following-named papers were read and 

 discussed before the section : 



"A Migration of Cockroaches" and "The Ques- 

 tion of Spider Bites," by Lemuel O. Howard; " The 

 Pulmonary Structures of the Ophidia (Snakes)," by 

 Edward D. Cope; " Photographing Fishes and other 

 Aquatic Animals under Water by Means of a Verti- 

 cal Camera" and "The Transformations of the Lake 

 and of the Sea Lamprey," by Simon H. Gage ; " Sex- 

 ual Characters in Scolytidse," by A. D. Hopkins ; 

 " Notes on the Genus Perigoninus, Sars," by Charles 

 W. Hargett; "On the Above-ground Buildings of 

 the Seventeen-year Cicada," by Joseph A. Lintner-; 



and, in joint session with Section G, 



" The Struggle for Existence under Cultivation " and 

 " Relation of Age of Type to Variability," by Liberty 

 11. Bailey; and "Limits of Biological Experiments,'" 

 by Manly Miles. 



G. Botany. The presiding officer of this sec- 

 tion was Prof. Lucien M. Underwood, of De 

 Pauw University, Greancastle, Ind., who chose 

 as the subject of" his address "The Evolution 1 of 

 the Hepatica3." He said there was a natural 

 tendency among specialists to magnify the im- 

 portance of their specialty, hence his 'desire to 

 set, forth in something of "a reasonable way the 

 characters of a group and to correct some mis- 

 understandings that have resulted from our im- 

 perfect appreciation of its relations. Known 

 since the time of Adanson as the Hepaticae, this 

 group stands in a unique place on the boundary 

 line of thallose and leafy plants, and its position 

 is not only intermediate from the structural 

 standpoint," but in its relation to the evolution 

 of the higher plants it stands as a key or link 

 between the lower and simpler and the higher 



