POPULAR SCIENCE KEWS. 
[January, 1891. 
Oct. 18. — Winthrop. Study : Drumlins. Speci- 
meus : Fossil shells, glaciated pebbles, Ijornite, 
pyrrhotiti;, chalcopyrite, etc. 
Oct. 27. — Jvewburyport. Study: Primordial 
limestone. Sijecimens : Precious serpentine, chry- 
sotile, tremolite, Wollastonite, jadelte,Vesuvianite, 
siderite, galenite. 
Nov. 1. — Roberts and Weston. Study : Glacial 
Age. Kames and osars. Specimens : Pebbles of 
modified drift. 
Xov. 8. — Agassiz Museum, Cambridge. 
Nov. 22. — Museum of Peabody Academy of 
Science, Salem. 
Dec. 6. — Peabody Arcli geological Museum, Cam- 
bridge. 
Dec. 20. — Museum of Boston Society of Natural 
History, Soston. 
Jan. 3. — Boylston Mineralogical Museum, Cam- 
bridge. 
Jan. 17. — Botanical Museum, Cambridge. 
At all outings each member is requested to 
make a collection of the characteristic specimens 
of a locality, and for this purpose to carry a ham- 
mer, cold chisel, and bag, as well as a note-book 
and labels. These specimens should lie properly 
labelled and classified, under the direction of the 
Committee on Instruction. 
Season tickets, entitling the owner to accompany 
the Barton Chapter on all excursions during the 
year, will be sold for 50 cents. To members of A. 
A. Chapters the price will be 25 cents. Tickets 
for a single excursion, 10 cents. Tickets may be 
obtained from members o4 the Outing Committee. 
THE PRINCETON SCIENTIFIC EXHIBITION 
OF 1889. 
BY AUTHUK M. MILLER, 
Of the Agassiz Association. 
(yA.MP COTTONWOOU, 'A MiLES FROM MONUMENT, 1 
Grant Co., Oregon, July 17, 1889. / 
Mr. Harlan H. Ballaru — Dear Sir : 
Your letter forwarded from Baker City to Monu- 
ment was received by me on my arrival in camp last 
'I'hursd.ay, after being nearly 19 continuous hours 
in the saddle. It is now over two weeks since we, 
a party of 15, left Baker City mounted on horse- 
l)ack and bound for the Miocene fossil-bearing 
beds of the John Day River region in this State. 
We are — with the exception of our guide, Mr. 
Davis, (an old collector in these regions), our cook, 
and a boy from Baker City — a Princeton College 
crowd, all graduates with one exception. Prof. 
Scott, "77, is our leader. Prof. Boyd, of Macalas- 
ter College, and myself are '86 and "84, respect- 
ively. Eight are '89 men, and the undergraduate 
is of the class of '90. 
For just one week we rode through the wildest 
and most beautiful mountain country of Eastern 
Oregon — the forests all of fine large "Oregon 
yellow pine," vv ithout undergrowth, and, although 
(owing to the season) we saw none, full of wild 
game, such as deer, elk, and bear. The days were 
, hot, and we sunburned dreadfully ; the nights 
cool to f rostiness, and we slept soundly. We have 
had our share of small adventures, for some of our 
horses were "buckers," and we the tenderest of 
"tender feet."' Two of the bronchos were so incor- 
rigible that they had to be traded off, and one 
fellow's horse ran away with him "down a steep 
place violently," and he came into camp with so 
much cuticle oft" his nose, chin, and forehead that 
he presented a woe-begone spectacle, indeed. 
Being such a comical wag himself, he got only 
laughter instead of sympathy. 
Our iirogress, necessarily slow at best, was, by 
reason of our heavily-loaded wagon of stores, still 
more slow. Before entering the worst part of our 
journey, indeed, we found it necessary to store a 
part of our provisions in order to lighten the load. 
And even then it was with difficulty that our four- 
horse team, aided by our eftbrts at the wheels and 
from behind, could get up the steep, ragged lava 
boulder-strewn hills. 
Sunday morning, July 7, we wound down from 
the last mountain summit into the first open 
ranching country we had seen, and went into 
camp on a small stream seven miles from the near- 
est fossil beds on the middle fork of the John 
Day. 
Monday morning we went into these beds, and 
in the three days that we worked them, made a 
number of excellent finds — among them the skull 
of a rhinocei'os and the leg bones of a three-toed 
horse, both new species. The Professor and I 
stayed that night at the nearest ranch, while the 
rest of the party returned to camp. In the morn- 
ing we two got to work bright and early at the 
rhinoceros skull, with Mr. Sloan, our host, for a 
very interested spectator. Mr. Sloan had lived on 
that ranch in plain sight of those "white chalky'" 
beds for nine years, and, although he "had heard 
there were fossils in them hills," (Davis had been 
there in '79 with Professor Cope), had never seen 
any. Perhaps he expected to see a fully articu- 
lated skeleton sticking out of the cliffs, or at least 
as complete and perfect a set of bones as presented 
by the ))leaching remains of that ))lizzard-killed 
sheep in the gulch below. 
I find this error to be cxuite common — even in 
scientific circles. A person in charge of one of 
the finest Tertiary mammal collections in this 
country, apologized for them as being in " a verj' 
fragmentary and worthless condition." 
To most people such specimens, even after there 
has been expended on them by the curator much 
labor with chisel and plaster and glue, appear 
sorry-looking objects upon which to base such 
elaborate restorations, and still more elaborate 
theories of descent as are found in geological text- 
books. What would those same persons say, 
should they see those bone chips or shattered 
teeth fresh from their matrix, which the paleon- 
tologist recognizes as a " Protohippus " or "Oreo- 
don ! "■ Not that some wonderfully complete 
skeletons are not occasionally found, but they are 
rare ; and what wonder when we consider to what 
exigencies they have been subjected. 
All this country was, in Miocene Tertiary times, 
a vast fresh water lake. The wash from the sur- 
rounding lanil mingled the bones of the then exist- 
ing laud animals with the ordinary slow accumu- 
lating sediment. Notice that this means partial 
preservation of disassociated fragments. 1'hen 
came the consolidation and heaving up of these 
sediments, with accompanying loss and destruc- 
tion of organic remains. A hill in sight of c?lmp 
shows faulting of strata, and all bones found here 
show more or less distortion by pressure. Coinci- 
dent with and subsequent to tliis deposition came 
the forcing up through and pouring out upon these 
beds, great dikes and vast sheets of lava. In my 
excursion yesterday after fossils, I clambered over 
two great trap dikes, each forming the back-bone 
of a long range of hills and jutting up above into 
ridges carved by erosion into craggy and fantastic 
shapes. As I write I can look over and beyond 
these dikes and count eight successive terraces of 
lava sapping these white, sloping exposures, whicli 
form the fossil beds of Cottonwood Creek. Last 
of all has come the extensive d-enudation, which, 
while it has rendered them accessible to the col- 
lector, has removed vast fossil accumulations in 
the process, and shattered and crumbled those 
which it loosens from their long interment. 
Removing a fossil from a steep, white cliff 
facing a glaring afternoon sun, is exhausting 
work. It took two of us just one solid day to 
chisel out that rhinoceros skull. Footholds had to 
lie picked in the nearly perpendicular clift". Then 
a trench was dug around the nodule containing 
the skull, and deepened until it was deemed safe 
to wedge it off. As pieces of teeth or bone 
loosened, thej' had to be glued on or removed, 
wrapped separately in tissue paper and numbered 
in order to facilitate museum restoration. We 
fluislied these middle fork beds in three days. 
Wednesday the main body of the expedition broke 
up camp, and, sending word for me to follow, set 
out for our present camp, about thirty-five miles 
distant from where I was at work. I started 
about 3 o'clock, but, night coming on, lost track 
of the party, and it was not until 10 o"clock the 
next morning that I rode into camp on about as 
tired a pony as one often sees. I was a little tired 
myself. 
The country about here presents a wild and oiUl 
appearance, with its lofty lava-terraced buttes 
gliding oft" at the bottom into dry sage-brush cov- 
ered approaches, chalky white on their steep. 
gulch-furrowed sides. It is a country of rattle- 
snakes. Three have been killed on the edge of 
the camp. 
We had a little excitement Sunday night. A 
thuiuler-shower (rare in this localit}- at this time 
of year) drove us into a leaky log barn (?) for tlie 
night. The ranchman's little boys had driven a 
rattlesnake in here the day before, and it was 
with joking reference to this fact that we spread 
our blankets upon the straw and turned in for the 
night. Soon I became convinced tliat the heaviu^ 
up of the straw under my shoulder was due to 
something more than the wind surging in between 
the logs. A lantern was lit, our cook seized an 
old sheep trough, my bed-fellow a pitchfork, 
while I removed the blankets. The rest of the 
fellows raised up and awaited developments, 
chaffing' us all the while. My companion raised 
the fork, and, with unerring aim, plunged it into 
the designated spot ; — a smothered squall, and then 
was hoisted aloft a poor old setting hen. Shaken 
from the tines slie ran off cackling; and what a 
greeting our exploit I'eceived from the rest of tlic 
gang! 
Although the Miocene exposui'es here are quite 
extensive, they have not, as a whole, very riclily 
repaid our labors in this locality. Only one small 
area of a few square yards has jaelded anythin;;' 
of value. From tliis w« have obtained a skull 
of pal!»ochoirus (ancient hog), eporeodon, three 
turtles, one in excellent state of preservation, and 
numerous fragments of bone and teeth. A portion 
of our party has been absent since yesterday, 
working on some rich finds seven miles up this 
stream, on which we are encamped. Temnocyon 
(a dog) and agriochcerus are, among others, tli<' 
animals whose remains have been already found 
there. We leave soon for a place called "The 
Cove," on the main fork of the John Day, where 
fossils are abundant, and where we expect to be 
occupied for some weeks. 
SiMi'LE AND Rapid Preparation of Pure 
Gases. — Instead of using an acid for the evolution 
of carbonic anhydride, sulphurous anhydride, 
and similar gases, it is convenient to use sodium 
hydrogen sulphate or sodium bisulphate. A mix- 
ture of equivalent quantities of the respective salts 
in powder gives, when wetted with water, a regu- 
lar stream of the required gas, which will be fn'c 
from the impurities usually derived from the usi' 
of an acid. 
