664 
The Philadelphia Gneisses: F. BASCOM. 
A study of the petrography, structure, age 
and genesis of the gneisses in the vicinity of 
Philadelphia. 
Possible Pre-Wisconsin Tills of Massachusetts : 
Myron L. FULLER. 
In the central portion of this country, the 
deposits of till have been differentiated into 
sheets of different ages, but in New England 
the severe glaciation of the Wisconsin Period 
removed, as a rule, all traces of earlier tills. 
Recently, however, a number of exposures have 
been discovered in the region south of Boston 
in which highly oxidized or disintegrated tills 
are found to underlie the ordinary light buff 
till of the Wisconsin ice invasion. 
This lower till contains from two to four 
times the amount of clay contained by the Wis- 
consin till, is composed almost entirely of deeply 
decayed or disintegrated materials, is marked 
by the presence of the bright colors character- 
istic of advanced oxidation, lies upon deeply 
altered and practically unglaciated rock sur- 
faces, has no far-traveled rock fragments, and 
is sharply separated from the overlying till 
both by its color and by its composition. 
This older till is probably to be correlated 
with the Kansan or pre-Kansan till of the cen- 
tral portion of the United States. 
TheWaverly Group in Northeastern Ohio: GEORGE 
H. GirtTy. 
In 1900 an effort was made to trace eastward 
into Pennsylvania the members of Newberry’s 
Waverly section in northern Ohio. The Berea 
grit of the Waverly group was found to be the 
equivalent of the Cussewago sandstone of north- 
western Pennsylvania. The Orangeville shale 
of that region is the basal third of the Cuyahoga 
shale, in part equivalent to Orton’s Berea shale. 
The Sharpsville sandstone representing the 
middle portion of the Cuyahoga is probably 
the stratum producing the lower falls at the 
village of Cuyahoga Falls. The Meadville 
shale can with little doubt be correlated with 
the upper portion of the Cuyahoga, and it 
seems probable that the Shenango sandstone 
and shale are the equivalents of the Logan 
group. It is doubtful if the Corry sandstone 
is represented in Ohio, while the Bedford and 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. XIII. No. 330. 
Cleveland shales probably die out before reach- 
ing the Pennsylvania line. 
F, L. RANSOME, 
DAVID WHITE, 
Secretaries. 
CHEMICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
THE 125th regular meeting of the Society was 
held March 14th. The following papers were 
presented : 
‘ Notes on a New Indicator,’ by E. G. Runyan. 
In this paper were presented results on the de- 
termination of total acidity in both white and 
colored wines, using as indicator an alcoholic 
solution of malachite green and commercial 
rosolic acid or corralin. For comparison, re- 
sults obtained on the same samples with phe- 
nolphthalein and litmus were also presented. 
The data given seemed to be favorable to the 
use of the corralin-malachite indicator in titrat- 
ing wines and similar colored products. 
‘The Action of Saccharin on Sugars and 
other Carbohydrates,’ by L. M. Tolman. The 
author stated that saccharin was being sold as 
a substitute for sugar, and that it was some- 
times found mixed with cane sugar. The best 
method of determining the saccharin present 
is the Reid method, by which the saccharin is 
hydrolized to the acid ammonium salt of sulfo- 
benzoic acid, and the ammonia determined by 
distillation. The benzol-sulfimide was found to 
bea strong hydrolizing agent, readily inverting 
cane sugar. With cane sugar the inversion 
was as complete as by the official method, and 
upon heating for a long time there was no de- 
struction of sugar. Lactose and dextrose were 
not affected by the sulfimide, a fact that may 
be used in the determination of cane sugar in 
the presence of milk sugar or dextrin, or both. 
‘The Nature and Function of Soil Solutions,’ 
by F. K. Cameron. 
‘Permanganate of Potash asa Chemical Anti- 
dote,’ by V. K. Chesnut. After a critical dis- 
cussion of the work of La Cerda, Antal, Schlag- 
denhauffen and Reeb, Moor, Wood and others, 
who applied dilute solutions of the permanga- 
nate as an antidote in cases of human poisoning 
caused by snake bites, phosphorus, oxalic and 
hydrocyanic acids, coronillin, morphine and 
various plant alkaloids, the writer gave the 
