538 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. Lll. No. 1353 



attention to a remarkable reef of huge con- 

 cretions in the Lakota of " Driftwood Canon " 

 several miles northerly through the " rim " 

 from the Burlington dam. The forms simu- 

 lated huge more or less glohular cycads three 

 or four feet through, and displayed much 

 coarse radial structure, with more or less 

 granular siliceous or even sandy, to partly 

 limy texture. As an illustration of these 

 forms, Plate 21 in " Lakes of Forth America," 

 by I. 0. Eussell, showing an old lake Lahon- 

 tan shore, would all but serve. Though know- 

 ing the Lakota of the Black Hills so widely, 

 and never having noted anything similar he- 

 fore, I looked on the Driftwood reef as be- 

 longing to the domain of the purely inorganic. 



Ifow, however, this phenomenon has come 

 up in a much more tangible form. Early this 

 year Mr. Jesse Simmons, a geologist of the 

 Midwest Eefining Company wrote me that he 

 had observed innumerable cycad-like masses in 

 the Lakota [Cloverly] of the Como anticline, 

 about sixteen miles easterly from Medicine 

 Bow, Wyoming. On reaching this point last 

 August I found very striking conditions in- 

 deed. There is, fairly speaking, a reef of the 

 calcareous concretionary forms, or tufaceous 

 heads of finely radiate structure. This lies 

 near the top of a sandy to conglomeratic rim 

 80 or more feet thick resting on the broadly 

 exposed [Como of Marsh] Morrison. The reef 

 stratum itself marks a change in sedimenta- 

 tion, being sandy, to shaly or slightly limy, 

 with the concretions very definitely in the 

 lower portion and varying from quite glob- 

 ular types one to two feet in diameter up to 

 much larger more irregular shaped masses. 

 While immediately within the reef occur nu- 

 merous smoothed quartz pebbles from small 

 up to several pounds weight. Of these many 

 are simply smoothed or with a ground-glass 

 surface, but many others are polished, and of 

 the type known as " Dreikanter " with the 

 desert " patina." Such are like, though in no 

 way to be confused with the gastroUihs of the 

 Como or other Dinosaurians. 



As showing in a most curious manner the 

 course of events on this reef one of the concre- 

 tions, a subspherical example one and one half 



feet through which I packed and sent back to 

 Tale, contains imbedded well toward its center 

 one of the highly smoothfed, pebbles a half 

 pound in weight. All round this pebble the 

 radiate concretionary structure runs as un- 

 interruptedly, the same as if no pebble were 

 present. Evidently when these siliceous 

 pebbles containing traces of fossils of some 

 earlier geologic period were being smoothed 

 by wind or wave or both, and when the masses 

 of calcareous tufa were being deposited from 

 more or less saturated waters, a wave cast that 

 pebble on top of the first formed basal or 

 squamous rosette. Then the tufaceous mass, 

 with little increase of diameter, continued its 

 growth and regularity of structure upward as 

 before. 



Of such tufa reefs as these, and such pebbly 

 shore lines of the western Cretaceous, little is 

 as yet known, and to mj^ knowledge nothing 

 has been reported hitherto. But inasmuch as 

 the general facts seem to indicate conditions 

 not unlike those found about such recedent 

 lakes as Bonneville and Lahontan, it is hoi)ed 

 this preliminary note may call forth much fur- 

 ther observation afield. If those who have per- 

 chance seen the tufa reefs, and especially the 

 smoothed pebble beaches, would kindly report 

 their observations I would esteem it a favor. 

 It is not improbable that some considerable 

 and synchronous lacustrine shore lines can be 

 definitely located, a result which would be of 

 the first geologic interest. 



To what extent algal life has played a part 

 in the growth of these tufas of more remote 

 geologic time is not fully understood. In the 

 case of all the finely radiate tufas there is less 

 likdihood of substitution of any kind than in 

 the coarser Thinolitic type of Lake Lahontan 

 studied by E. S. Dana. It seems unlikely that 

 the masses often of such striking regularity 

 of form could result from purely inorganic 

 processes. 



G. E. WiELAND 



Yale XTniversitt 



IS HONEY A LUXURY? 



In the October 15, 1920, number of Science 

 appeared an article by Mr. J. J. Willaman, 



