274 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 165, 



and open-mouthed by slight submergence ; 

 off-shore sand reefs, with inlets and off-sets; 

 agriculture and forestrj'^, rather than mining 

 and manufacturing, as industries — to all 

 these a good artesian supply of water is an 

 important additional feature, especially to 

 the towns on the low and smooth littoral 

 plain and to cities on the shore or on the 

 off-shore sand-reefs. 



' Artesian well prospects in the Atlantic 

 coastal plain region ' is a timely summary, 

 by N. H. Darton (Bull. 138, U. S. Geol. 

 Surv.), of our present knowledge on this 

 subject. It gives much encouragement for 

 the future. A number of colored maps and 

 corresponding sections make the report 

 easily understood. The location of success- 

 ful and unsuccessful wells is conspicuously 

 shown. Repeating the curious example, 

 already described by Darton, of wells in 

 eastern Maryland supplied by water-bearing 

 strata (aquifers) that pass under Chesa- 

 peake bay, we here find wells about Norfolk 

 fed by aquifers that pass beneath the saline 

 estuaries of southeastern Virginia. The 

 greater amount of detailed knowledge con- 

 cerning the well prospects in New Jersey 

 than in the Southern States is a tribute de- 

 servedly earned by the New Jersey Geolog- 

 ical Survey. 



DRUMLINS IN NORTH GERMANY. 



K. Keilhack, of Berlin, describes a 

 ' Drumlinlandschaft in Norddeutschland ' 

 (Jahrb. k. preuss. geol. Landesamt, 189G 

 [1897], 163-198), from which it appears 

 that an extensive group of well defined 

 drumlins lies east of the lower Oder, be- 

 tween the Baltic sea and one of the terminal 

 moraines of that glaciated region. The hills, 

 illustrated by a number of detailed maps, 

 are of moderate height, with ratio of 2^ or 3 

 between length and breadth ; some of 

 them being elongated ridges, three or 

 four kilometers in length. Their distribu- 

 tion, indicated by diagram and map, is of 



especial value in a region where glacial 

 strise are rarely seen ; for their axes show 

 as ympathetic parallelism in a curving ar- 

 rangement that strongly indicates a glacial 

 flow toward the free morainic border near 

 by. Now that drumlins have been found 

 on the northern piedmont of the Alps by 

 Sieger and Friih, in Sweden by de Geer, 

 and south of the Baltic by Doss and Keil- 

 hack, they need not be regarded as such 

 rarities in continental Europe as they were 

 thought to be fifteen years ago. 



THE VEENAGT GLACIER. 



The Vernagt glacier in the eastern Alps, 

 famous for its flood-like advances into the 

 Rofen valley (1599, 1680, 1773, 1845), and 

 for the disasters caused by the outbreaks of 

 the impounded valley stream, is made the 

 subject of accurate measurement and de- 

 scription bj' Dr. S. Finsterwalder, of Mu- 

 nich ; his monograph forming the first 

 ' scientific supplement ' to the Zeitschrift of 

 the most flourishing of all Alpine clubs, the 

 German and Austrian Alpenverein (Graz, 

 1897). The history of the glacier and the 

 earlier maps of its form are carefully re- 

 viewed. A detailed account is given of the 

 author's survey, the result being presented 

 on a most beautiful map in several colors, on 

 a scale of 1 : 10,000, with contours every ten 

 meters. Then follows a discussion of the 

 conditions of glacial motion, as here exem- 

 plified, and finally a consideration of the 

 outbreaks of this remarkable glacier ; their 

 cause being ascribed to variations of snow 

 and neve supply in the irregular upper res- 

 ervoir. A special study follows on the end 

 of the glacier in 1891, '93 and '95, by 



Bliimcke and Hess. 



W. M. Davis. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 



QUIPU READING. 



In the Bulletin of the Free Museum of 

 Science and Art, Philadelphia, for D>icem- 

 ber, 1897, Dr. Max Uhle has an article on 



