Geographic Notes 



i6i 



U. S. COAST AND GEODETIC 

 SURVEY 



FIFTEEN young Filipinos will 

 soon be selected by civil service 

 examinations in Manila as aids in the 

 U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. They 

 will probably be brought to the United 

 States for a preliminary training at the 

 head office in Washington before being 

 assigned to active work in charting the 

 rivers and harbors of the islands. They 

 will be paid $720 a year, a very generous 

 salary in the Philippines, and clever 

 young Filipinos will undoubtedly be se- 

 cured. The experiment, initiated by 

 Dr. O. H. Tittmann, superintendent of 

 the Survey, is of great importance, as it 

 is the first step to interest, train, and 

 identify the young Filipino in the scien- 

 tific development of his country. 



The coast of southeastern Alaska has 

 been well charted by parties of the Survey 

 during the past several years, but the 

 approaches to this section have remained 

 unmapped. This summer the Path- 

 finder z.w^ Mc Arthur, in charge respect- 

 ively of J. J. Gilbert and F. Westdale, 

 will carry survey parties to these chan- 

 nels and soundings will be taken to ac- 

 curately determine them . A large party 

 will "work in Prince William Sound, 

 while several vessels will carry other 

 men westward to tackle the difficult 

 problem of charting the many channels 

 between the Fox Islands of the Aleutian 

 archipelago. 



GLACIAL ACTION IN AUS- 

 TRALIA 



THE evidences of glacial action in 

 Australia during Permo-Carbon- 

 iferous times are discussed by Pro- 

 fessor Penck in the Zeitschrift of the 

 Berlin Gessellschaft fiir Erdkunde, and 

 compared with traces of simultaneous 

 action in India and South Africa. The 

 hypothesis of a shifting of the South 



Pole to a central point on the tropic of 

 Capricorn, in longitude 86° E., does 

 not satisfactorily account for the geolog- 

 ical facts and the existence of glacial 

 conditions over such an enormous area. 

 Professor Penck is quoted in Nature as 

 saying that the appearances ascribed to 

 ice action present in each case certain 

 features not characteristic of ordinary 

 glacial deposits; the deposits are strati- 

 fied and the pebbles are faceted in the 

 manner first described by Wynne. He 

 further observes that the Gondwana 

 beds, always closely associated with 

 these boulder deposits, have lately been 

 found in the Argentine Republic, and 

 he compares the bedding and faceting 

 with conditions induced by pressure 

 observed in the Nagelfluh and in cer- 

 tain localities near Vienna. While 

 many of the observed facts appear to 

 indicate glacial action, still he thinks 

 that these special points demand in- 

 vestigation. 



THE NORTHWEST BOUNDARY 



IT is well known that the boundary 

 between the British possessions in 

 North America and the United States, 

 from the Lake of the Woods westward 

 to the Pacific Ocean, was long a matter 

 of dispute. Every one knows, too, that 

 after the controversy had given rise to 

 threats of war the 49th parallel was 

 agreed upon by both governments as the 

 dividing line. So, as represented upon' 

 the map, the whole question seems set- 

 tled. Nevertheless there are many per- 

 sons along this line to whom nothing 

 indicates whether they are living in the 

 territory of the King or of the Union. 

 During 187 2-' 76 a joint commission 

 erected 388 boundary monuments along 

 the line about two miles apart, but they 

 hardl}^ proceeded farther west than the 

 Rocky Mountains, ai'id left the 410 miles 

 between the mountains and the Strait of 

 Georgia almost unmarked. To survey 



