Apeil 13, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



355 



pressed and the line of no change must have mi- 

 grated westward toward the land, because in spite 

 of the repeated uplifts, there are no belts of ma- 

 rine deposits along the shore Hne. The last of 

 these changes is comparatively recent. It was pre- 

 ceded by a long period of still-stand, during which 

 the border of the mainland was worn down to low 

 relief, even though it consisted of rather resistant 

 rocks. Preceding that still-stand period, a tilting 

 similar to the one that has recently taken place 

 raised the land area and depressed the marine 

 area. Inasmuch as the recent tilting introduced 

 reef growth, there is every reason to think that the 

 earlier tnting also introduced reef growth; but 

 while the reef of recent introduction is still imma- 

 ture, because of its youth, the reef of the earlier 

 cycle must have reached advanced maturity in the 

 long still-stand that followed its beginning, and 

 thus its original lagoon area must have been con- 

 verted into a reef plain, overlapped by deltas built 

 out from the initial shore lines of that time. It is 

 on the outer part of this reef plain, now submerged, 

 that the present reef appears to have grown up. 

 The fact that, contemporary with both cycles of 

 reef formations off the Queensland coast, a con- 

 tinental shelf was in process of formation by im- 

 impeded marine action off the coast of New South 

 Wales, in no wise invalidates the above conclu- 

 sions: the two processes are going on at the same 

 time on adjoining coasts now; they may have been 

 similarly synchronous and neighborly at earlier 

 times also. 



Searching for a Doubtful Geological Zone in the 

 Canadian EocTcies: Charles D. Walcott. 

 The stratigraphic position of the Mount Whyte 

 formation of the Cambrian system in the Canadian 

 Eookies having been questioned, I searched for 

 evidence of its place during the field season of 

 1916 and found that it forms the upper member of 

 the Lower Cambrian terrane both from the evi- 

 dence of its contained fauna and its stratigraphic 

 position. This conclusion is supported by the sec- 

 tions of the Cambrian formations in the Lake 

 Champlain and the Lower St. Lawrence valleys. 

 The Influence of Diet upon the Heat Production 

 During Mechanical Work in the Dog: E. J. 

 Anderson and Graham Lusk. 

 The energy production in a dog moving at the 

 rate of about three mUes per hour is the same 

 whether he be given no food or 70 grams of glu- 

 cose. However, when the dog is given meat the 

 increase in energy production during exercise is 

 equal to the s\mi of the increases which the two 

 influences of exercise and chemical stimulation 



through the metabolism of amino-acids would in- 

 dividually have induced. 



What Determines the Natural Duration of Life? 

 Jacques Loeb and J. H. Northrop. 

 Each species seems to have a characteristic aver- 

 age duration of life. In order to find out the na- 

 ture of the variables responsible for this duration, 

 experiments were made on the temperature coeffi- 

 cient for the duration of life of an insect 

 (Drosophila) . The experiments were carried out 

 on breeds free from all microorganisms to avoid 

 the objection that bacterial poisons formed in the 

 intestine influenced the result. It was found that 

 the temperature coefficient was of the order of that 

 of a chemical reaction as we had found previously 

 in non-sterile cultures. This result means that the 

 duration of life is due either to the cumulative for- 

 mation of harmful substances in the normal meta- 

 bolism of the body leading to the phenomenon of 

 old age and death; or that it is due to the grad- 

 ual elimination or destruction of substances with- 

 out which life becomes impossible. 

 The Difference in the Action of Antipyretics ac- 

 cording to Species of Animals Subjected to this 

 Action, the State of Health of the Animals, the 

 Height of their Normal Temperature and the 

 Substance Employed: T. S. Githens (by invi- 

 tation) AND S. J. Meltzer. From the Depart- 

 ment of Physiology and Pharmacology of the 

 Bockefeller Institute. 



The principal point of this communication, ar- 

 rived at by experimental observations, consists in 

 the fact that subcutaneous injections of antipyret- 

 ics administered to healthy hens, roosters and pi- 

 geons, whose normal temperature is regularly 

 higher than that of normal mammals, reduces the 

 temperature by several degrees centigrade, while 

 injections of correspondiag doses of the drug into 

 healthy mammals have only either a slight effect 

 or none at all. On the other hand, pyramidon re- 

 duces perceptibly the normal temperature in both 

 classes of animals. In human beings all antipy- 

 retics reduce febrile temperatures more or less 

 strongly, while the normal temperature is affected 

 by them only slightly. 



SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 



NITROGENOUS COMPOUNDS IN GERMANY 



According to an article in the Revue gen- 

 erale des Sciences by Professor Camille 

 Matignon abstracted in Nature, before the 

 war Germany was the greatest consumer of 

 combined nitrogen. In 1913 the consumption 



