JANUAET 3, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



21 



Connecticut Valley depression with its Tri- 

 assic traps and sandstones stands over against 

 the similar narrow Triassic basin of the Bay 

 of Fundy, continued in the Boston and Narra- 

 gansett basins. There remains the broad cen- 

 tral New England Plateau, made up of great 

 late-Carboniferous granite batholites running 

 north and south, or with a little easting and 

 isolated by bands, often very narrow, of late 

 Paleozoic rocks, largely Carboniferous. 



The series of batholites in this central 

 plateau is itself symmetrically arranged and 

 becomes more basic from the center outwardly. 



Crossing the center of the plateau from 

 north to south is the broad Hubbardston- 

 Princeton band of granite which is truncated 

 by erosion so nearly along its contact with the 

 cover of Carboniferous schists, that it is 

 everywhere contaminated with the sillimanite 

 and graphite of these schists, and is made 

 coarsely pegmatitic from the water obtained 

 from them. 



Next on the east is the long train of oval 

 batholites running through Worcester, the 

 Ayre series, which are of uniform porphyritic 

 texture, and are matched on the west by the 

 coarsely porphyritic Coy's Hill series, passing 

 east of Ware. 



Next outwardly the dark biotite Bolton 

 granite-gneiss on the east is matched by the 

 broad band of the black Hardwick biotite 

 granite, passing through Ware. 



Then follows on the east the fine-grained 

 Milford biotite granite, so valuable as a build- 

 ing stone, which is comparable with the Mon- 

 son and Pelham biotite granites on the west, 

 which are also extensively quarried. 



Finally, the complex Quincey-Dedham 

 series of igneous rocks along the eastern border 

 of the area, with its basic and soda-rich rocks, 

 is balanced by the basic Belchertown series, 

 which is a counterpart of the Cortlandt series, 

 and borders the plateau on the west. Each 

 marks the locus of a principal fault system 

 which form, respectively, the eastern and west- 

 ern limit of the plateau. By contrast faulting 

 is wanting or inconspicuous in all the central 

 portion of the province. ^ -^ Emerson 



Amherst College 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 Oxidations and Reductions in the Animal 

 Body. By H. D. Dakin, D.Sc, F.I.C, The 



Herter Laboratory, New York. Longmans, 



Green & Co., New York. 1912. Pp. viii + 



135. Price $1.40 net. 



For some time in the past, " energy " has 

 been the keyword of the theories of nutrition. 

 The problems presented in relation to the 

 transformation of energy in the body were so 

 conspicuous and the technique of investiga- 

 tion so effectively improved in application to 

 the study of the metabolism of energy, that 

 other aspects of the subject were neglected. 

 This trend of the science is reflected in the 

 popular literature of the present time when 

 expressions like " calories " and " fuel value " 

 are employed with the skill of the conjurer to 

 impress the uninitiated. The mere compari- 

 son of the intake and the output of the organ- 

 ism and the broad statement that metabolism 

 is essentially a process of oxidation change 

 has, however, long since failed to satisfy the 

 more critical inquirer; and accordingly the 

 questions of what is now termed intermediary 

 metabolism, concerned with the destiny of the 

 individual nutrients or corresponding tissue 

 components, are forging to the front. The 

 newer knowledge of the chemistry of the di- 

 gestive processes has made great strides in a 

 decade or two. Yet how little we know of the 

 various steps beyond the barrier of the intes- 

 tinal wall. 



It is of certain of these intricate processes 

 considered primarily as chemical reactions 

 that the present monograph aims to give an 

 account. The animus of the attempt at what 

 is essentially a novelty in the literature of 

 physiology may be elicited from a few quo- 

 tations. Dakin writes : 



The statements that fats and sugars are oxidized 

 in the body to carbon dioxide and water, while 

 proteins yield urea in addition, are no longer con- 

 sidered all-sufficient explanations of the chemical 

 role of these substances in the animal economy. 

 The study of chemical structure is rapidly chang- 

 ing the whole aspect of biological science, and we 

 may confidently look forward to the time when the 

 orderly succession of chemical reactions consti- 



