580 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. II., No. 38. 



INTELLIGENCE FROM AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC STATIONS. 



GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS. 

 National museam. 

 Pub!icatio)is. — The publications of tbe museum 

 are issued under two titles, — ' Bulletins ' and ' Pro- 

 ceedings.' Tbe bulletins consist of monograpbs of 

 groups of animals, plants, or minerals; papers upon 

 tbe fauna, flora, and minerals of different regions 

 of tbe globe; and similar works. Tbe proceedings 

 contain sborter communications descriptive of new 

 species, etc., or relating to novel phenomena. All 

 papers are based on material in tbe museum. Five 

 volumes of tbe proceedings, and twenty-two bulle- 

 tins, have already been publisbed, aggregating 7,306 

 octavo pages. The sixth volume of the proceedings, 

 and several bulletins, are now in course of publica- 

 tion. Tbe bulletins which will appear within a short 

 period are the following : — 



A bibliography of the writings of Professor Spencer 

 Fullerton Baird, by G. Brown Goode, A.M.; Avi- 

 fauna Columbiana, by Elliott Coues and D. Webster 

 Prentiss, M.D. ; A contribution to the natural history 

 of Bermuda, edited by 6. Brown Goode, A.M. ; A 

 manual of herpetology, by Henry C. Yarrow, M.D. ; 

 Official catalogue of the collections exhibited by the 

 U. S. national museum at the London fisheries exhi- 

 bition, 1S83. 



The exhibition-halls. — Two very important objects 

 are about to be placed on exhibition in the museum. 

 The first of these is a group of orangs, mounted by 

 Mr. William T. Hornaday. The group represents a 

 fight in the treetop, in which are concerned two adult 

 male orangs, and as spectators a female and baby, 

 and a young male. The setting has beerl "worked 

 out with great care, especially as regards the nests 

 of the orangs, the foliage, vines, orchids, etc. All 

 the specimens were shot by Mr. Hornaday in Borneo, 

 and are mounted froin his notes upon the living and 

 fresh specimens. 



The second object of interest is an antique Eoman 

 mosaic derived from Carthage. It was exhibited at 

 the Centennial exhibition in the Tunisian section, 

 and was afterward presented to the museum by Sir 

 Kichard Wood, British consul-general at Tunis. The 

 mosaic represents a lion of life-size, seizing an animal 

 resembling a horse or ass. It is believed to date from 

 the first century B.C. 



Additions to the collections. — The museum has re- 

 cently secured a very valuable collection of archeo- 

 logical objects from Missouri, comprising twenty-five 

 specimens. Included among them are a digging- 

 implement of peculiar shape, and about a foot long, 

 and two hourglass-shaped ceremonial objects of 

 pink quartz about four inches long. Among the re- 

 cent accessions to the department of birds is a nest 

 of Opornis agilis, with eggs, — the first specimen of 

 which there is authentic record. The department of 

 reptiles is at present negotiating for a specimen of the 

 very rare North-American serpent, Ophtbalmidium 

 longissimum. The department of mammals has re- 

 ceived a valuable accession in the form of partially 



complete skeletons of eleven sperm whales. They 

 represent the. remains ot a small school of these 

 cetaceans, which stranded near Cape Canaxeral, 

 Florida, in the winter of 1882-83. 



Bnrean of etlinology. 



Pueblo of Tallyhogan. — Mi'. James Stevenson 

 reports that careful investigations in the vicinity of 

 the abandoned pueblo of Tallyhogan, in the ancient 

 province of Tusayan, Arizona territory, disclose the 

 fact that the sand-dunes on the north and east of 

 the village were used by the former inhabitants as 

 burial-places. A very little digging exposed the re- 

 mains of the interred, which were usually placed in 

 a hole in a doubled-up, mummy-like attitude. 



In many cases vases and bowls, which probably 

 contained food, were inhumed with the dead, and in 

 some instances trinkets were found. 



A number of old specimens were secured, among 

 them being small images of human beings (previously 

 unknown to collectors in this region), curious in 

 workmanship, and ancient in ornamentation. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



Mk. G. K. Gilbert has recently given some rather 

 disturbing suggestions to the people of Salt Lake 

 City (Salt Lake weekly tribune, Sept. 20) concerning 

 the probability of destructive eartbijuakes there. He 

 describes the slow and still continuing growth of the 

 ranges in the Great Basin by repeated dislocation 

 along great fractures, the earth's crust on one side 

 being elevated and tilted into mountain attitude by 

 an upthrust that produces compression and distor- 

 tion in the rocky mass, until the strain can no longer 

 be borne, and something must give way. Suddenly 

 and violently there is a slipping of one wall of the 

 fissure on the other, far enough to relieve the strain, 

 and this is felt as an earthquake ; then follows a long 

 period of quiet, during which the strain is gradually 

 reimposed. Such a shock occurred in Owen's val- 

 ley, along the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada, in 

 1872, when a fault-scarp five to twenty feet high and 

 forty miles long was produced. A scarp thirty or 

 forty feet high is known along tbe western foot of 

 tbe Wahsatch range, south of Salt Lake, and other 

 scarps of similar origin have been found at the bases 

 of many of the Basin ranges. The date of their for- 

 mation is not known ; but it must be comparatively 

 recent, because they are still so little worn away. 

 Wherever they are fresh, and consequently of modern 

 uplift, there is probable safety from earthquakes for 

 ages to come, because a long time is needed for the 

 accumulation of another strain sutficient to cause a 

 slipping of one wall of the fissure on the other. Con- 

 versely, when they are old and worn down, the break- 

 ing strain may even now be almost reached, and an 

 earthquake may be expected at any time. This is 

 the case at Salt Lake ; for, continuous as are the fault- 

 scarps along the base of the Wahsatch, they are ab- 

 sent near this city. From the Warm Springs to 



