20 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 940 



similar problems were familiar to English 

 architects of the seventeenth century. 



1666, Aug. 27, I went to St. Paule's church, 

 where with Dr. Wren, Mr. Prat, Mr. May, Mr. 

 Thos. Chichley, Mr. Slingsby, the Bishop of Lon- 

 don, the Deane of St. Paule's and several expert 

 workmen, we went about to survey the general 

 decays of that ancient and venerable church, and 

 to set downe in writing the particulars of what 

 was fit to be don, with the charge thereof, giving 

 our opinion from article to article. Finding the 

 maine building to recede outwards, it was the 

 opinion of Mr. Chichley and Mr. Prat that it had 

 been so built ab origin e for an effect in perspec- 

 tive, in regard of the height; but I was, with 

 Dr. Wren, quite of another judgment, and so we 

 entered it; we plumb 'd the uprights in severall 

 places. . . . (From Evelyn's Diary.) 



Edward S. Holden 



West Point, N. Y., 

 November, 1912 



THE QUESTION OF THE OLDER AND NEWER APPA- 

 LACHLiNS 



In a lucid and valuable article on the geog- 

 raphy of the United States, Professor Wm. M. 

 Davis divides the Appalachians^ into an older 

 eastern and a newer western belt. He makes 

 in New England the Taconics and the great 

 limestone valley the newer, and all the rest of 

 New England from and including the Green 

 Mountain range the older. By this he means 

 composed mainly of older rocks. 



The distinction is good, but the names 

 should be reversed for New England. 



The western division contains mainly Cam- 

 brian and Ordovician rocks. A narrow inter- 

 rupted band of Arch»an forms the west border 

 of the eastern band, going south from the 

 Hoosac Tunnel. Next east is a band of the 

 Hoosac and Eowe schists, which are correlated 

 with the Berkshire schist of the western di- 

 vision and so are Ordovician. Next east is 

 the much broader band of the " Calciferous 

 Mica Schist " (the Goshen and Conway 

 schists), which extends to the Connecticut 

 Valley, and widens northerly into Canada, 

 carrying Silurian fossils. Next east is the 



'Mill's "International Geography," pp. 717- 

 732. 



Bernardston Devonian, underlying the Con- 

 necticut Valley and in part covered by Trias. 

 The whole of Worcester County is Carbonifer- 

 ous, cut by late Carboniferous granites. The 

 new discovery of Carboniferous fossils in Wor- 

 cester by David White reinforces Perry's 

 earlier finds, and all the Carboniferous rock 

 types occur in the eastern rim of the Con- 

 necticut Valley, and all the intervening 

 country can be connected by transitions with 

 the undoubted Carboniferous. 



East of Worcester is a narrow seaward band 

 of Algonkian and Cambrian greatly covered 

 by Carboniferous, so that about nine tenths of 

 the area between the Housatonic Valley and 

 the sea is covered by rocks newer than those 

 of this valley and the Taconics. 



This change of name does not lessen the 

 great value of the distinction, which is based 

 not so much on age as on the presence of the 

 great limestone in the western belt and its 

 lesser metamorphism, which has caused great 

 differences in the topography. The lesser meta- 

 morphism of the western belt depends, in part, 

 on the absence of granite which has over- 

 whelmed all the area of the eastern belt. They 

 have both been subjected to the same folding 

 and uplifting agencies, but the overthrust 

 faulting along the east border of the lime- 

 stone valley has had for an effect that less and 

 more varied pressure was transmitted west- 

 wardly, while the greater pressure in the east 

 has not only caused greater metamorphism 

 across central New England, but the extensive 

 intrusion of various granites has greatl,y in- 

 creased this metamorphism, and has left a 

 country where a very broad meshed network of 

 Carboniferous schists rests in great areas of 

 carboniferous granite. 



The eastern division, which has for its west- 

 ern border the Green and Hoosic Mountains, 

 constitutes the New England Province, and, 

 taken as a whole, has an interesting balanced 

 arrangement. The ancient Green Mountain 

 protaxis made up of Archseau to Ordovician 

 rocks is balanced on the east by the equally 

 ancient Nova Scotian series, which is litho- 

 logically similar, and both are gold bearing. 



Next inwardly the narrow fault bounded 



