Editorial. 



The Lake Superior excursion, under the leadership of Profes- 

 sors Van Hise and Wadsworth, which preceded the scientific 

 meetings at Madison and Chicago, was participated in by a 

 goodly company of foreign and American geologists from whose 

 testimony we learn that it was unusually profitable and enjoyable. 

 It was thoroughly planned, even to minor details, and carried 

 into execution with remarkable precision, no time being wasted 

 by errors or by undue attention to trivial features. Brief lucid 

 explanations by the guides brought out the essential features of 

 the formations and greatly facilitated observation. 



The meeting of the Geological Society of America at Madison 

 was attended by somewhat larger numbers than usually gather at 

 a summer meeting. The following twenty papers were offered 

 and read in full or given in substance, with the exception of two, 

 whose authors were absent, and which were only read b} T title for 

 lack of time : On the Study of Fossil Plants, by Sir J. Wm. 

 Dawson ; On a New Species of Dinichthys, On a new Cladodus from 

 the Cleveland Shale, and On a Remarkable Fossil Jaw from the 

 Cleveland Shale, by E. W. Claypole ; Origin of Pennsylvania 

 Anthracite, by J. J. Stevenson ; The Magnesian Series of the 

 North-western States, by C. W. Hall and F. W. Sardeson ; On 

 the Succession in the Marquette Iron District of Michigan, 

 by C. R. Van Hise ; Extra-morainic Drift in New Jersey, by G. 

 Frederick Wright ; On the Limits of the Glaciated Area in New 

 Jersey, by A. A. Wright ; South Mountain Glaciation, by Edward 

 H. Williams, Jr. ; Terrestrial Subsidence South-east of the Amer- 

 ican Continent, by J. W. Spencer; Evidences of the Derivation 

 of Karnes, Eskers, and Moraines of the North American Ice- 

 sheet, chiefly from its Englacial Drift, and The Succession of 

 Pleistocene Formations in the Mississippi and Nelson River 

 Basins, by Warren Upham ; The Cenozoic History of Eastern Vir- 



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