592 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 225. 



nals of the colored plates in Miss Lounsberry's 

 forthcoming work, ' How to Know the Wild 

 Flowers.' Selections which showed the char- 

 acter of the book were read, including the In- 

 troduction, written by Dr. Britton, and the 

 Preface, which pointed out the fact that the dis- 

 tribution of plants according to soils was made 

 the keynote of the work. 



Dr. Britton said that the book was interesting 

 to him on two accounts, from the ecological 

 basis of classification and the remarkable repro- 

 ductions in color. 



In the absence of Mrs. Annie Morrill Smith, 

 of Brooklyn, Mrs. E. G. Britton read for her 

 the manuscript of a paper, entitled ' The Flora 

 of the Adirondack Mountain Club Area.' 



Meeting of March H, 1899. — The Summer 

 Courses in Botany given jointly by this Club 

 and the College of Pharmacy were announced 

 to begin at 4:30, March 24th, ending June 10th, 

 the General Course to be given by Dr. H. H. 

 Rusby, that in Histology by Dr. M. A. Howe. 



The paper of the evening, by Mrs. Caroline 

 A. Creevey, on ' Plant Juices and their Commer- 

 cial Values, ' described the secretions, oils, gums, 

 resins and other products of plants, with exhibi- 

 tion of numerous specimens. Among the numer- 

 ous oils considered none has become so important 

 commercially as cotton-seed oil, now produced 

 at about 28 million gallons per year, pressed 

 from 800,000 tons of cotton seed. Another in- 

 dustry dependent upon plant juices is that of 

 tanning, the tannin found in the saw-palmetto 

 and in Rumex hymenosepalus promising to rev- 

 olutionize the process of the leather-industry. 

 The waste sands occupied by these plants in 

 the South and West bid fair to become valuable. 



Dr. Underwood exhibited a series of photo- 

 graphs of the Fleshy Fungi by Mr. G. A. Ander- 

 son, of Lambertville, N. J., colored from the 

 living specimens by his daughter. Miss H. C. 

 Anderson. They illustrate a new process of 

 preserving fleshy fungi. 



Dr. Britton reported a brief communication 

 from Mr. A. A. Heller sent from Porto Rico, 

 February 18th, reporting collections made about 

 Ponce, Ibonito, Coamo, etc., now reaching 584 

 numbers after six weeks' work. On the north 

 side of the islands many species occur on the 



shore which are montane species when growing 

 on the south side. 



Dr. Britton also read from a letter of Feb- 

 ruary 26th, just received from Mr. S. Henshaw, 

 from San Juan, describing the sugar plantations, 

 now in the midst of cutting and boiling. He 

 finds the flora not so varied as in Trinidad ; the 

 woods are few ; in 100 miles he did not see a 

 single large tree. 



Edward S. Burgess, 



Secretary. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



DUPLICATION OF GEOLOGIO FORMATION NAMES. 



Referring to Mr. F. B. Weeks' letter on 

 this subject in your issue of March 13th, I ven- 

 ture to doubt whether Cache Valley group 

 (1879) or Cache Lake beds (1888) can pi-operly be 

 considered as conflicting with each other or with 

 the name Cache Creek formation. If, however, 

 regarded as an undesirable duplication of simi- 

 lar names, I wish to point out that the Cache 

 Creek group or formation undoubtedly holds 

 priority, a circumstance which would scarcely 

 appear from Mr. Weeks' remarks. 



The name was first applied (by Dr. Selwyn, 

 jn 1872) as Upper and Lower Cache Creek 

 groups, to certain rocks in British Columbia. 

 The age of the upper series was only conjec- 

 tured, but the lower was known to occupy a 

 position somewhere ' between the base of the 

 Devonian and the summit of the Permian.' In 

 1876 Carboniferous fossils were found in rocks 

 assigned to the lower group in the northern 

 part of British Columbia, and in the following 

 year a re-examination of the original area led 

 to the discovery of similar fossils in both lower 

 and upper groups there. In my report for 1877 

 these groups are, therefore, referred to collec- 

 tively as the Cache Creek series. In the latest 

 report dealing with these rocks the same usage, 

 is followed, although upper and lower parts of 

 the Cache Creek series or formation are sepa- 

 rately referred to. 



It thus appears that the name in question has 

 been consistently applied by the Geological 

 Survey of Canada to the same terrane since 

 1873. Nor is it merely a ' horizon ' of the Car- 

 boniferous, but a formation estimated at more 

 than 9,000 feet in thickness. It includes, in 



