November 9, .1883.] 



SCIENCE. 



635 



was done. It will be recollected that the college lost 

 the fine mineralogical cabinet of Prof. C. M. Shepard 

 last year by fii-e; and the fear of a repetition of that 

 disaster caused a too hasty removal of many objects 

 from the lower floor, labels and specimens becoming 

 sadly mi.\ed. The wind was very high; and, had the 

 fire gained greater headway, nothing could have 

 saved the museum, or the observatory attached. 



— Charles Leslie McKay of the U.S. signal-service, 

 stationed at Nushegak, Alaska, was drowned In Bris- 

 tol Bay last April, while engaged in collecting fishes 

 for the U.S. national museum. Mr. McKay had done 

 considerable work in ichthyology, his most impor- 

 tant publication being a ' Review of the Centrarchi- 

 dae,' in the Proceedings of the U. S. national museum 

 for ISSl. 



— At its meeting, Oct. 27, the Philosophical society 

 of Washington listened to a communication by Dr. 

 T. N. Gill on the ichthyological results of the voyage 

 of the Albatross, and to one by Prof. A. Graham 

 Bell on fallacies concerning the de.af. Dr. Gill de- 

 scribed two anomalous fishes, one of which required 

 the institution of a new order. Professor Bell's 

 paper was the subject of a lively debate. 



— Those who have followed the discussions in Sci- 

 ence on the St. David's rocks will be interested in a 

 new phase of the controversy, introduced by a paper 

 before the British association by Prof. J. F. Blake. 

 The rocks below the Cambrian conglomerate have 

 been described by Dr. Uicks as bedded rocks belong- 

 ing to three distinct periods. The same rocks have 

 been recently asserted by Dr. Geikie to be partly Cam- 

 brian, and partly intrusive. Professor Blake contends 

 that they are pre-Cambrian in age, but form a very 

 complete volcanic series, which may well be desig- 

 nated the Dimetian. The basis of the series is the 

 Dimetian gr.anite, serving as the core. This is sur- 

 rounded by the more acid rocks, as the quartz felsites 

 and the felspar porphyries (the so-called AiToni- 

 an); and the more outlying portions consist of very 

 ■varying materials, chiefly rough ashes or agglom- 

 erate breccias, — on the east side finely-bedded ' halle- 

 flintas,' and on the north .side many basic lava-flows. 

 These are the so-called ' Pebidian.' The arrange- 

 ment of these rocks shows the characteristic irregu- 

 larity of volcanic rocks; and, though many portions 

 are bedded, they have no dominant strike over the 

 whole district. The Cambrian series, commencing 

 with the conglomerates, is quite independent, and 

 hangs together as a whole. In no case can a continu- 

 ous passage be proved from the one series to the other: 

 the junction is in most cases a faulted one; and, 

 at the places where this is not so, the conglomerate 

 lies on different beds of the volcanic series. 



— At the meeting of the Boston society of natural 

 history, Nov. 7, Prof. H. \V. Haynes spoke of the 

 agricultural implements of the New-England Indians, 

 Prof. W. O. Crosby read a paper on the origin and 

 relations of continents and ocean-basins, and Dr. M. 

 E. Wadsworth gave brief notes on the lithology of 

 the island of Jura, Scotland. 



— Mr. George Shoemaker, a very industrious and 

 promising young naturalist connected with the Nation- 



al museum, died in Washington on the 12th of Octo- 

 ber. 



— Herr Jacobson, who has spent four years on the 

 north-west coast of America in making ethnological 

 collections for the Berlin museum, has recently re- 

 turned, and will sail for Europe. 



— Dr. Leonhard Stejneger has arrived in San Fran- 

 cisco, en ruute for Washington. He has spent a year 

 in Bering Island in the study of its fauna, and in 

 collecting remains of the extinct arctic sc.i-cow. 



— The Hydrographic oflice has published a mono- 

 graph (no. 4.), by Lieut. Southerland, upon the two 

 August hurricanes. It contains abstracts from the 

 logs of forty vessels which were near the path of one 

 or both of these storms, a chart of the course of each 

 storm, a diagram of the tracks of two barques which 

 were near the path of the second hurricane, and sail- 

 ing-directions for managing vessels when near similar 

 dangerous cyclones. The projected paths resemble 

 those previously published by the signal-office in the 

 Weather review for August (S.cie>ce, no. 37), but 

 differ somewhat in detail. The latter were based 

 upon the reports of more vessels than those enumer- 

 ated by Lieut. Southerland. Some of the ships men- 

 tioned are common to the two reports; but doubtless 

 a more accurate representation of the paths of the 

 hurricanes could have been obtained, had all the data 

 been combined in one report. 



— Mr. J. B. Fell, CE., gave a paper on the con- 

 struction and working of alpine railways, at the 

 recent meeting of the British association, which is 

 thus reported in J^ature. There are three alpine rail- 

 ways in e.\istence at the present time, — the Mont 

 Cenis and St. Gothard railways, which have been 

 made with long summit tunnels, and with ordinary 

 gradients; and the Brenner railway, that has been 

 made with similar gradients, but without a long tun- 

 nel. The important question luas now arisen, and has 

 been taken into serious consideration by the govern- 

 ments and local authorities interested, as to how far it 

 may be possible to make other trans-alpine railways, 

 some of which are urgently needed, at a cost that 

 would render them financi.ally practicable; and, to 

 accomplish this object, it has been proposed to effect a 

 reduction of one-half or more of the cost, by carrying 

 these railways over the mount.ain-passes by means of 

 steep gradients and the use of the centre rail system, 

 as it was adopted on the Mont Cenis railway. Upon 

 these improved summit railways the same weight and 

 number of trains could be run that are now running 

 on the Mont Cenis tunnel railway; and, with the pro- 

 tection of avalanche galleries and covered ways, the 

 regularity of the service would be maintained at all 

 seasons of the year. The extra cost of working- 

 expenses caused by working over a higher level than 

 that of a tunnel line would, if capitalized and added 

 to the cost of construction, still leave a clear net sav- 

 ing of more th.an one-half in the cost of construction, 

 as compared with the cost of a tunnel railw.ay. The 

 result of the experiences of the last twenty-five years 

 seems to point to the conclusion that a method of 

 constructing alpine railways with long, non-paying 

 tunnels, is a thing of the past. The future belongs 



