Nov. 27, 1SS4 j 



NA TURE 



89 



This lava did not by any means come altogether from 

 Mount Taylor itself, but from many vents scattered around 

 its flanks, or situated miles away from it. These outlying 

 vents are sufficiently preserved in many cases to admit of 

 their complete identification, and they are very numerous. 

 But one of the most charming and striking features con- 

 sists in the numerous "necks" or "chimneys" which are 

 left standing in the valley-plains beyond the farthest verge 

 of the lava-capped mesas. Some of these are splendid 

 objects. Newberry has depicted similar forms in the 

 valley of the San Juan — a hundred miles or more to the 

 north-west of here — in his admirable account of the 

 observations made in his journey with Capt. Macomb's 

 expedition. But these are even larger and finer, one being 

 nearly two thousand feet high. What perfect testimony 

 this is to the enormous erosion of the country ! A child 

 can read and comprehend it. 



In the wide valley-plains which lie between the mesas 

 are fresher fields of lava. Some look as if they could 

 hardly be a century old ; but my experience in the 

 Hawaiian Islands has taught me that, in a dry country, 

 a basalt-stream can preserve its freshness for many 

 centuries. Still, it is clear enough that these eruptions 

 occurred after hundreds, even thousands, of square miles 

 of strata, overflowed by the older basalts, had been eroded 

 away. 



A striking fact in connection with these young basalts 

 is the entire absence of all distinguishable traces of the 

 vents from which they came. A few miles from here, in 

 a broad valley, lies a basalt-field black as Erebus, and the 

 whole circuit of it as accessible as a sheet of paper on a 

 table, or a rug on the floor. There is no cone, no trace 

 of fragmental ejecta, not a single feature in it to indicate 

 the locus of eruption, except, however, the fact that the 

 whole field, and the valley in which it lies, has a gentle 

 declivity to the south-east, say forty feet per mile or so : 

 and as the sheet follows the modern slope of the valley, 

 it may be inferred that the vent is situated near the north- 

 west end. There are many other fields of fresh lava, of 

 which the above is sufficiently descriptive. One stream 

 is nearly sixty miles long ! Some of them, however, indi- 

 cate unmistakably their sources in small depressed cones 

 of very flat profiles. Great deluges of basalt have issued 

 from them, flowing away for many miles, and spreading 

 out five or six miles wide. 



No fragmental ejecta (scoria, lapilli,ecc.) have been found 

 in connection with these young eruptions. But on Mount 

 Taylor are numerous parasitic cinder-cones, of small or 

 moderate dimensions, formed during the period of the 

 eruption of the older basalts. The quantity of this 

 fragmental material, however, is relatively very small. 



The appearance of the young basalts is much like 

 the rougher lava of Mauna Loa, called "aa" in the 

 Hawaiian Islands. This is the typical malpais of this 

 region. All the lava thus far seen is apparently basalt, 

 though some of the older may prove to be andesitic when 

 critically examined. There is little variety in it. It now 

 appears that, all along the western, southern, and south- 

 eastern rim of the Plateau Country is a marginal belt 

 characterised by basaltic eruptions. I have identified 

 two ages of eruption, both here and in South-West Utah. 

 In the latter region I have associated these two periods 

 of eruption with two periods of general upheaval of the 

 plateaux. Whether the same will prove to be so here 

 u mains to be seen. 



But it is getting dark, and I must close. We go to 

 bed and get up with the chickens in this country. 



C. E. IJii i"X 



NOTES 

 A meeting of members of the University and others, to pro- 

 mote the objects of the Marine Biological Association, will be 

 held at Cambridge on Saturday next, the 29th inst., in the 



Lecture- Room of Comparative Anatomy, the use of which 1. r 

 this purpose was granted to Prof. Newton by grace of the 

 Senate on Thursday last. The Vice-Chancellor of the Un.- 

 versity (Dr. Ferrers, F.R. S., Master of Gonville and Caius 

 College) has kindly undertaken to preside ; and Prof. Moseley 

 (the Chairman of the Council of the Association), Prof. Lan- 

 kester (its Secretary), and Prof, hell, of the British Museum and 

 King's College, London, are expected to attend and set forth 

 the aims and needs of their deserving body. The chair will L e 

 taken at three o'clock in the afternoon, and the proceedings (the 

 details of which are being arranged by Mr. J. \V. Clark, Super- 

 intendent of the Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, 

 and Mr. Sedgwick, University Lecturer in Animal Morphology) 

 are likely to be full of interest. The same evening the anni- 

 versary dinner of the Cambridge Philosophical Society will be 

 given in the hall of Peterhouse, on the special invitation of the 

 Master and Fellows of that ancient college, the newly-elected 

 President of the Society, Prof, foster, Sec. U.S., in the chair. 



The German Government has granted another sum of 7500/. 

 for the scientific investigation of Cential Africa, and 1900/. for 

 the working out of the materials collected by German Polar 

 expeditions. 



There seems to be no end to the works of the highest value 

 issued from the American Nautical Almanac Office. This week 

 we have received a paper on "The Motion of Hyperion — a 

 New Case in Celestial Mechanics," by Prof. Simon Newcomb , 

 and another on " Lunar Inequalities due to the Ellipticity of 

 the Earth," by Mr. G. W. Hill. 



At the first meeting of the new session of the Society of 

 Arts held on November 19, Sir Frederick Abel made some 

 feeling and pregnant remarks on the loss that not only the 

 Society of Arts, but the whole scientific world, had sustained 

 by the sudden and unexpected death of Sir William Siemens. 

 In the course of his address Sir Frederick Abel said : — "It will 

 be in the recollection of many whom I am addressing that, while 

 Mr William Siemens was an ardent and successful labourer in 

 the advancement of electric lighting, he also maintained the 

 view that gas would continue to hold its own as the poor man's 

 friend. The name of Siemens is associated with the origination 

 of a great advance in the application of gas to the brilliant illu- 

 mination of open spaces ; but it must also be conceded that 

 many streets and public places in London and the provinces 

 bear evidence that even such simple modifications in the arrange- 

 ment of old forms of gas-burners as have been introduced by 

 Sugg and others have restored to gas some of its original pres- 

 tige, and that, especially in towns where fog^ are periodically 

 prevalent, gas is now by no means wholly eclipsed by electricity 

 as an open-air illuminant." 



Last week we announced the death of Dr. Wright of Chel- 

 tenham ; to-day we have to make known that another of the 

 lights of English geology has passed away. Mr. R. A. Godwin- 

 Austen died at his residence, Shalford House, Guildford, on the 

 morning of the 25th inst., after a long, but happily not a painful 

 illness. He has for so many year-, lived retired in his country 

 home that the younger generation of geologists has hardly known 

 him personally. But his papers are classical in the literature of 

 English geology, and long ago marked him out as one of the 

 most philosophical of all the geological writers of this country. 



Mr. James Buckman, formerly one of the Professors at the 

 Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, and author of a num- 

 ber of geological papers, died at Bradford Abbas, Dorset, on 

 the 23rd inst. 



The death is announced of Herr- August Wilhelm Thiene- 

 mann, the President of the German Society for the Protection 

 of Birds, well-known in ornithological circles by his researches 



