432 



NATURE 



{March 15, 1877 



" No one, I think, 'can ride over those thirty miles and observe 

 closely without being convinced that these mounds are wholly 

 the result of surface-erosion, acting under peculiar conditions. 

 The conditions are a treeless country and a drift soil consisting of 

 two layers, a fine and more movable one above and a coarser 

 and less movable one below." ..." The necessary condition, 

 I believe, is the greater movableness of the surface soil com- 

 pared with the sub-soil." ..." Surface erosion cuts through 

 the finer superficial layer into the pebble layer beneath, leaving, 

 however, portions of the superficial layer as mounds." 



" Similar less conspicuous mounds, under the name of ' Hog- 

 wallows,' are well known to exist over wide areas in middle and 

 southern California." 



The words in italics are so in the original. 



Alfred R. Wallace 



SCIENCE A T CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



THERE is marked activity in all scientific pursuits in 

 and about Harvard University. The Agassiz Museum 

 has at last had its management fully turned over to the 

 University, the transfer being effected by permission from 

 the State Legislature. At present the estimated worth of 

 the property is §322,000 ; the land and buildings being 

 valued at $ico,ooo, and the collections at $60,000 ; the 

 rest being trust funds. By the transfer, Harvard will 

 have the use of the collections for educational purposes, 

 and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology will erect an 

 edifice connected in plan with the Agassiz Museum. The 

 Peabody trust provides for a Professorship of Anthro- 

 pology, as well as for collections and a building. The 

 Agassiz Museum is arranged so as to display types of the 

 whole animal kingdom in their natural classification. 

 Great facilities are already furnished to students and 

 specialists, and these facilities will now be further in- 

 creased. The force employed in the Museum is sufficient 

 not only for the care of the specimens, but also to aid 

 in new research. 



There is a steady increase in the number of Harvard 

 students in the scientific courses — physics, chemistry, 

 natural history, botany, anatomy, and physiology. Text- 

 books are little used in these courses ; students are re- 

 quired to handle the things themselves, in the labora- 

 tories. "Summer schools" are conducted from June to 

 September, in which teachers from the public schools 

 become pupils. Chemistry has been taught in these sum- 

 mer schools for three years, geology and botany for two 

 years, and zoology will be undertaken this year under 

 Assistant-Professor Walter Faxon. Prof. Shaler's Sum- 

 mer School of Geology is the most widely-known of these 

 enterprises. This year it will be conducted with head- 

 quarters successively in the Connecticut Valley, the 

 Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, and the Helderberg 

 or the Catskili Mountains of New York. The class will 

 be limited to fifty members. After the school closes, a 

 trip will be made by those who can join in it to Cleve- 

 land, Nashville, Louisville, and the Mammoth Cave. 

 Besides the Summer Schools, there is also organised a 

 series of four courses of lectures to teachers, which in- 

 clude laboratory work. These are given on Saturdays 

 from January to May. They embrace geology, physics, 

 botany, and zoology, and have the services of Professors 

 Shaler, Trowbridge, Goodale, and McCrady, and some 

 assistant-professors of special repute. There are about 

 forty members to a class. 



The Boston Society of Natural History sustains a 

 similar series of course-lectures to teachers during the 

 winter months. The instruction is practical, as far as it 

 can be made so by the illustrative specimens in the 

 Society's collection. Prof. S baler is also organising a 

 system to furnish teachers with selected specimens and 

 appropriate text-books and descriptions. It is expected 

 that this new system will be the means of inducing 

 teachers in the public schools to make further collections 

 for their own use and to instruct their scholars. The 

 Harvard Natural History Society is very actively engaged 



in promoting scientific education, especially among be- 

 ginners in such studies. Prizes are offered for the best 

 essays of the students upon their actual observations 

 in natural history and botany. A free course of six scien- 

 tific lectures is furnished by this Society, the lecturers 

 being eminent specialists in the University. Two scien- 

 tific associations at Cambridge are also doing active work 

 — the Nuttall Ornithological and the Cambridge Entomo- 

 logical Clubs. The latter is the larger of the two, and 

 contains many members of eminence. It publishes a 

 periodical, the Psyche. The Nuttall Club publishes a 

 quarterly magazine, the Bulletin, edited by Prof. J. A. 

 Allen. This list of scientific enterprises in and around 

 Cambridge, Mass., is by no means exhaustive, but it will 

 give a fair notion of the activity with which they are pro- 

 moted at the present time. It is hoped that the present 

 year will be marked by even greater effort than its pre- 

 decessors. 



NATURAL HISTORY AND GEOLOGICAL RE- 

 SULTS OF THE ARCTIC EXPEDITION 



HTHE public will, we are sure, be glad to hear that 

 -*• though the Admiralty have declined to undertake or 

 assist in the publication of the results of the late British 

 Arctic Expedition, beyond matters purely hydrographi- 

 cal, the natural history and geological collections brought 

 back by the expedition are being rapidly arranged and 

 named. The whole of the numerous collection of fossils 

 from the Silurian (Wenlock), Devonian, Carboniferous 

 Limestone, and Miocene rocks of the coasts of the cir- 

 cumpolar sea have been examined by Mr. Etheridge, the 

 palaeontologist of the Geological Survey, and found to 

 contain several new and interesting forms, which will be 

 described in his forthcoming paper, at the Geological 

 Society, on the Arctic fossils brought back by Capt. 

 Feilden, R.A., and which will accompany a paper by that 

 officer on the rocks and general geological facts observed 

 by him in the Arctic area. 



We especially rejoice to find that Capt. Feilden has 

 brought back a large series of notes and portions of rocks 

 glacially scratched and scored, scratched boulders and 

 pebbles, which will throw much light upon the manner in 

 which this country was glaciated during the Drift period. 

 It will be seen that stones on a headland coast can receive 

 the greatest possible amount of glaciation by the mere im- 

 pinging of floe-bergs, driven by violent gales and currents, 

 on the breaking up of the pack. On the much-vexed 

 question of the parallel roads of Glen Roy, light also may 

 possibly be thrown, for terraces fringe nearly every valley 

 flanking the Arctic coast, formed by fresh water, dammed 

 by pack ice. These rest on marine beds of boulder clay, with 

 sea shells, which rise to heights of more than 500 feet 

 above the present sea-level, and prove the recent eleva- 

 tion of the land, which movement is still going on; the 

 marine beds outside the ice- foot fringing the coast of to- 

 day will doubtless ere long be elevated above the water- 

 level, and be covered with the latest fluviatile terrace 

 behind the pack. 



To those accustomed to the magnificent results brought 

 to England by perfectly equipped expeditions like that of 

 the ChaUe7iger, proceeding leisurely through seas teeming 

 with the luxuriance of tropical life, the collections brought 

 back by the Arctic Expedition may appear small ; but 

 we feel sure when the specimens are fully catalogued, and 

 the difficulty realised of carrying heavy specimens of 

 rocks and fossils when up to the arms in snow, and of 

 securing insects with fingers numbed by a temperature 

 of 50° below freezing, it will be felt that the naturalists 

 of this expedition have made excellent use of their oppor- 

 tunities. We may mention that the extensive series of 

 Miocene plants associated with the thiity-feet coal-bed 

 of Lady Franklin's inlet will be described by Prof. O. 

 Heer, the insects (recent) by Mr. McLachlan, and the 

 fishes by Dr. Giinther, of the British Museum. 



