Febrtjaey 25, 1898.] 



SCIENGE. 



273 



Wednesday night was on the Dignity of 

 Analytical Cliemistry, and was a strong 

 plea for this field from the standpoint of 

 pure chemistry and has already been 

 printed in this Jouenal. 



The election of Dr. Charles E. Monroe, of 

 "Washington, as President of the Society for 

 the ensuing year was announced. 



Thursday night was devoted to a ban- 

 quet given by the local section at Maison 

 Eauscher's, which was attended by nearly 

 three hundred. President W. D. Bigelow, 

 of the local section, presided, and Dr. H. 

 ■Carrington Bolton acted as toastmaster. 

 Among many notable speeches, a poetical 

 effasioa by Dr. H. W. Wiley, of the Agri- 

 cultural Department, was perhaps the best 

 appreciated. 



Washington is so full of places of inter- 

 est to the American citizen as well as to the 

 chemist that considerable time was given 

 to sight-seeing. The members were re- 

 ceived by President McKinley at the White 

 House ; the various department laboratories 

 were visited, as well as many other govern- 

 ment buildings ; a special excursion was 

 given to Mt. Vernon, Friday morning, re- 

 turning to Fort Meyer to witness the Cos- 

 sack drill in the afternoon ; and, perhaps 

 not least in the estimation of many of the 

 chemists, the great Heurich brewery was 

 fully inspected and a bountiful collation in 

 German style was partaken of. Finally, 

 the courtesies of the Cosmos Club, which 

 was made almost a rendezvous for the So- 

 ciety, added much to the enjoyment of the 

 meeting. 



J. L. H. 



CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 

 SPECIAL FEATURES OF DISSECTED PLATEAUS. 



Plateaus of horizontal strata, maturely 

 dissected, offer a great number of variations 

 upon simple types of hills and valleys ; no 

 two hills being alike, yet all having a 

 strong family resemblance. The student 



soon passes from these widely prevalent 

 forms to local examples of special features, 

 which then receive an amount of attention 

 quite out of proportion to the area that they 

 occupy, but highly appropriate to their 

 peculiar evolution. 



C. F. Marbut describes some local forms 

 of this exceptional kind in Missouri (Cote 

 Sans Dessein and Grand Tower, Amer. 

 Geol., XXI., 1S9S, 86-90). A short dis- 

 tance upstream from the fork of two 

 streams the widening of their graded val- 

 ley floors occasionally results in the lateral 

 abstraction of the smaller stream by the 

 larger one. An isolated hill or group of 

 hills is then left between the forked valleys 

 below the new cut-off. An example that 

 bids fair to become typical for this country 

 occurs in Benton County, Mo., where the 

 town of Warsaw lies on the margin of one 

 of these hill-groups, in the (former) fork of 

 the Osage and the Grand River valleys. 

 Three miles above the former junction of 

 these streams the outward cutting of their 

 meanders has worn through the dividing 

 ridge, and has thus tempted the Grand to 

 enter the Osage and desert its lower course. 



' Cote Sans Dessein ' is described as the 

 narrow remnant of a hill-group of this kind, 

 once included in the fork of the Missouri 

 and Osage, but now reduced to a narrow 

 isolated ridge a mile long and 200 feet wide, 

 rising above the Missouri flood-plain. The 

 name given to this ridge by the early voy- 

 ageurs reminds one of the early naturalists 

 and their ' queer fish,' now the treasure of 

 the zoological evolutionist. 



ARTESIAN WELLS OF COASTAL PLAINS. 



The artesian well should take high rank 

 as a characteristic of the normal coastal 

 plain. Simple structure consisting of dis- 

 crete or of slightly indurated strata ; de- 

 creasing relief and variety of form from the 

 old shore line to the new; low-grade rivers 

 extended from the old land, often deltaless 



