7i6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



adorn their nests, and by instances in which 

 their choice of companions, food-fruits, etc., 

 is guided by color. Many of the feathered 

 tribes also " manifest real pleasure at the 

 execution of simple harmonies. They en- 

 joy the notes of musical instruments, but 

 more especially their own songs and those 

 of one another. . . . Our unmusical English 

 sparrow enjoys the songs of other birds; 

 on diiferent occasions I have seen several 

 of them gather about a robin as he caroled 

 a pleasant song ; when they came too near 

 or in too large numbers, he would dart at 

 them and drive them out of the tree, but 

 when he commenced again to sing some of 

 them were quite sure to return. A friend 

 sends me an account of a bobolink, that 

 placed in a cage with some canaries exhib- 

 ited great delight at their songs. He did 

 not sing himself, but with a peculiar cluck 

 could always set the canaries singing. Af- 

 ter a while he began to learn their songs, 

 note by note, and in the course of a few 

 weeks mastered the entire song." The 

 goose is also fond of music, " and a lively 

 air on a violin will sometimes set a whole 

 flock wild with delight. On one occasion, 

 at a country wedding, I was witness of a 

 curious performance by one of these ani- 

 mals. After dinner a lady entertained the 

 guests assembled on the lawn with music 

 from an accordeon. A flock of geese were 

 feeding in the road just below the house, and 

 with outstretched necks answered back loud 

 notes of satisfaction. Soon a white gander 

 commenced dancing a lively jig, keeping 

 good time to the music. For several min- 

 utes he kept up the performance, to the great 

 delight of the company. The experiment 

 was tried several times for a week or more, 

 and the tones of the accordeon never failed 

 to set the old gander into a lively dance." 



Milne-Edwards's Marine Inyestigations. 



— M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards has expressed 

 himself well satisfied with the results of his 

 deep-sea expedition in the Talisman. He 

 claims to have corrected some of the sound- 

 ings as given in a recent German atlas, and 

 to have traced a different relief from the 

 one indicated in it for the ocean-bed. He 

 found the bottom of the Sargasso Sea — six 

 thousand metres deep — to be of a volcanic 

 character. Some of the lavas and scoriae 



in the collection the expedition has brought 

 home seem to be of relatively recent origin, 

 and to offer an explanation of the poverty 

 of the flora of the region in which they were 

 found. In a letter to the French Geograph- 

 ical Society, M. Milne-Edwards speaks of 

 an immense volcanic bed running parallel 

 with the Andes, of which the Cape Verd 

 Islands, the Canaries, and the Azores form 

 the culminating peaks, and which, he con- 

 jectures, may extend to Iceland. 



The Glacial Dam and Lake of the Ohio 

 Rlyer. — Professor G. Frederick Wright, in 

 tracing the boundary-line of the glaciated 

 area through Ohio, found that it crossed 

 over into Kentucky in the neighborhood of 

 Cincinnati, returning, however, to the north 

 side of the Ohio River at a few miles farther 

 down. Examining the ground more closely, 

 he found that the entire valley of the river, 

 for a distance of fifty miles in this region, 

 had been, for a short time during the gla- 

 cial period, filled with glacial matter which 

 formed a dam at least five hundred and fif- 

 ty feet high. The effect of this must ne- 

 cessarily have been to make a narrow lake 

 corresponding in depth with the ice-barrier, 

 and extending far up the Ohio and its tribu- 

 taries, including the Licking in Kentucky, 

 the Kanawha in West Virginia, and the Al- 

 leghany and Monongahela in Pennsylvania, 

 and covering the present site of Pittsburg 

 to a depth of about three hundred feet. 

 Evidence of the former existence of such a 

 lake, in the shape of terraces marking its 

 margin, has been found along these rivers, in 

 one case independently of Professor Wright's 

 investigations. Professor J. C. White, of 

 Morgantown, West Virginia, and of the 

 Pennsylvania Geological Survey, says that it 

 is exactly what is needed to explain the ter- 

 races along the Monongahela, which extend 

 from Pittsburg as far south at least as 

 Fairmount, West Virginia, one hundred and 

 thirty miles, and " suddenly disappear at 

 an elevation of one thousand and fifty or one 

 thousand and seventy-five feet above tide, or 

 about two hundred and seventy-five feet 

 above the river." Professor Lesley has ob- 

 served terraces along the Alleghany and its 

 tributaries, at the same absolute level. Along 

 the Great Kanawha, water-worn bowlder de- 

 posits disappear at an elevation of from two 



