January 14, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



45 



I am tempted, in closing, to tell of the remark 

 made to me by one of the older inhabitants of East 

 Hampton who had paid my laboratory a visit. The 

 milky way happened to be overhead and the 

 mouth of the telescope pit was filled with hundreds 

 of star images. "What are they all anyway?" he 

 asked. "Suns like ours, only bigger," I replied. 

 ' ' You don 't say so, ' ' he answered, ' ' and have they 

 earths and planets and things going round 'em, 

 and are they all inhabited?" "Very likely," said 

 I, "some people think so." He scratched his head 

 and then turned to me with a restfiil smile and 

 said, "Well, do you know, I dunno as it makes so 

 much difference after all whether Taft or Bryan's 

 elected. ' ' 



The similarity betvreen the two conversa- 

 tions leads me to believe that Professor Camp- 

 bell's questioner was leading for an opening 

 to repeat the remark of the old farmer. 



Others have been similarly victimized, for 

 in G. Lowes Dickinson's " Appearances " pub- 

 lished in 1915, on page 163 a similar conver- 

 sation occurs between the author and a lone 

 telegraph operator in a railroad shack in the 

 Rockies. 



From one newspaper topic to another we passed 

 to the talk about signalling to Mars. Signalling 

 interested the youth; he knew all about that, but 

 he knew nothing about Mais or the stars. These 

 were now shining bright above us, and I told him 

 what I knew of suns and planets, of double stars, 

 of the moons of Jupiter, of nebulae and the galaxy, 

 and the infinity of space and of worlds. He 

 chewed and meditated, and presently remarked, 

 "Gee I I guess that it doesn't matter two cents 

 after all who gets elected president. ' ' 



Should it be discovered that the story ap- 

 pears also in the writings of Galileo, or 

 Copernicus, or Pythagoras, it will mean that 

 I too have been victimized. 



E. W. Wood 



ARE THE LANCE AND FORT UNION 

 FORMATIONS OF MESOZOIC TIME? 



In a paper recently published by Dr. Stan- 

 ton we have for the first time a description 



1 ' ' The Fauna of the Oannonball Marine Mem- 

 ber of the Lance Formation," by T. W. Stanton, 

 TJ. S. Geol. Survey, Prof. Paper 128-A, pp. 1-66, 

 Pis. 1-10, 1920. 



of the complete fauna of the Cannonball mem- 

 ber of the upper Lance formation, consist- 

 ing of 73 forms; 2 are sharks' teeth, 6 are 

 cup corals (described in an appended paper 

 by T. W. Vaughan), 2 are foraminifers, and 

 the rest are molluscs (31 bivalves, 1 scapho- 

 pod, and 31 gastropods). There are 41 new 

 forms, and 2 remain tmnamed specifically. 

 Of tlie Yl invertebrates, but a single bivalve 

 passes upward into the Fort Union fresh- 

 water beds (Oorhula mactriformis) , while 24 

 forms occur below in the marine Fox Hills 

 or older Cretaceous formations. Not one of 

 the species of the entire Cannonball fauna 

 is known in the marine Eocene province of 

 the Gulf of Mexico. In other words, " 40 per 

 cent, of the molluscan species in the Cannon- 

 ball faima are known in the combined Pierre 

 and Fox Hills or Montana faima of the same 

 general region, and 30 per cent, of them have 

 been found in the Fox Hills fauna. . . . The 

 fauna clearly belongs to the open sea and was 

 modified after Fox Hills time by the extinc- 

 tion " of the ammonoids and other forms, 

 " and by the introduction of a considerable 

 number of new types that are not known in 

 the Fox Hills and Pierre faunas" (p. 12). 

 This new element, however, is not distinctively 

 Cenozoic, but consists of types that are else- 

 where found in the Cretaceous. 



Again, the Fox Hills fauna is about of the 

 time of the Exogyra costata zone of the At- 

 lantic and Gulf Coastal Plain. The last 

 named fauna has, according to Stephenson, 

 168 molluscs, and yet not a single one passes 

 upward into any Cenozoic formation. From 

 these and other facts Stanton concludes that 

 " a large element in the Cannonball fauna is 

 directly descended without specific change or 

 with only slight change from the preceding 

 Cretaceous faunas of the Rocky Mountain 

 and Great Plains region. These late Cre- 

 taceous faunas show a progressive moderniza- 

 tion due to the gradual elimination of dis- 

 tinctive Mesozoic generic types and the con- 

 current introduction of modem generic types 

 which continued through the Tertiary and 

 are still living in the Recent fauna" (p. 12). 



