JUNE 28, 1901.] 
THE MINNESOTA ACADEMY OF NATURAL 
SCIENCES. 
THE April meeting of the Academy, which 
proved to be a very interesting one, was ad- 
dressed by Mr. F. K. Butters, who spoke on the 
‘Fungus Flora of Minnesota.’ The more fun- 
damental relationships of the fungi were illus- 
trated by slides, taken from Engler and Prantl’s 
‘Pflanzenfamilien,’ and also by original micro- 
photographs of common minute Phycomycetes 
and Ascomycetes, as well as by a large number 
of photographs of the fleshy fungi of the lo- 
cality, taken in the field to show their natural 
conditions of growth. 
The speaker pointed out that the fungi are to 
be considered as one of the most successful 
groups of the plants, showed by their diversity 
of form, the great variety of conditions under 
which they will grow and their numerical im- 
portance. In Minnesota the number of species 
is probably in excess of the flowering plants. 
The diverse conditions under which fungi will 
grow, ¢. g., in water, upon living plants and 
animals, on decaying organic substances, in hu- 
mus and in sand containing a minimum amount 
of organic matter was illustrated. Attention 
was called to the fact that on account of the 
great number of spores produced wherever 
there is suitable environment there also will be 
numbers of plants. The diverse forms of fungi 
are modifications of a few types to be regarded 
as distinct phylla and parallel lines of develop- 
ment sometimes exist in different groups. 
The lecture was productive of a very general 
discussion of local fungi and was greatly en- 
joyed by the large audience present. 
F. G.-_WARVELLE. 
DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
GEOLOGY OF CHINA. 
To THE EprToR or Science: In the discus- 
sion in the last number of SciENCE of my 
article in McClure’s Magazine, there are some 
things which deserve attention in order to get 
the facts fairly before the public. 
1. It is proper for me tostate that the title of 
the paper and the headlines were put in by the 
editors; so that I was in no sense responsible 
SCIENCE. 
1029 
for them. I think that in the article itself 
there are no offensive claims to original dis- 
covery. 
2. The quotation from Geikie’s ‘ Great Ice 
Age’ (p. 699) is unfortunate for my critic, since 
it was that very quotation which misled me 
during a considerable portion of my trip. In 
this quotation Geikie says, ‘‘Its materials 
[those of the loess], we may believe, are largely 
of fluvio-glacial origin, and represent in great 
measure the flood-loams swept down from the 
mountains and plateaux when these supported 
extensive snow-fields and glaciers. But, as 
Baron Richthofen in his great book on China 
has demonstrated, the loess, as we now see it, 
owes its structure and heaping up to the action 
of the wind, and is even now forming and ac- 
cumulating in many regions of Asia. It is, in 
short, a true steppe-formation.’’ On page 697 
Geikie had said, ‘‘ According to Przevalski, un- 
doubted traces of former glaciation are seen in 
the Suma-Hada range, west of Kalgan in 
China.’? My first point was to visit this moun- 
tainous region west of Kalgan supposed both 
by the Russian and by Geikie to be the source 
of the loess in Eastern China. But we found 
no indications of glaciation in that region, and 
pursued our investigations sufficiently to con- 
vince us that there were none; so that Geikie’s 
theory of the ‘fluyio-glacial origin’ of the 
loess falls to the ground in that region. That 
came pretty near being a discovery. 
8. On the same page Geikie says, ‘‘ Kropot- 
kin’s researches have led him to conclude that 
the whole of the upper plateau of Asia and its 
border-ridges were under a mighty ice-cap.’’ 
Assuming the truth of these statements, Geikie 
says upon the next page, ‘‘Tbhe mountain-val- 
leys everywhere contain wide and thick sheets 
of rounded blocks, and coarse and fine gravel, 
which are in every respect comparable to the 
fluvio-glacial gravels of the Alps. But in none 
of the descriptions of these which I have read 
is there any clear indication as to whether the 
deposits occur in successive terraces like the 
high- and low-level terrace gravels of the Al- 
pine lands of Europe. Something like this ar- 
rangement seems to be present in the valleys of 
the Thian Shan, and may possibly refer to re- 
current phases of glaciation.’’ In accordance 
