January 17, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



107 



note Is made of his ability to carefully weigh 

 scientific evidence and of his unprejudiced posi- 

 tion and final decision concerning the doctrine 

 of evolution. A portrait and a bibliography 

 accompany the sketch. 



Mr. Warren Upham, in an article on ' Physi- 

 cal Conditions of the Flow of Glaciers,' de- 

 scribes the veined or ribboned structure and 

 the granular structure of glaciers and ice sheets, 

 with a review of the theories of Forbes and 

 Tyndall to account for glacial motion. Prefer- 

 ence is given to the recent granulation theory 

 of Deeley and Fletcher ; and the lamination of 

 the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets is at- 

 tributed, like that of Alpine glaciers, to the 

 diiferential shearing movement of the ice layers, 

 with varying decrease, growth and shear of 

 contiguous ice granules. 



Some phenomena presented by floating sand 

 are discussed by Prof. F. W. Simonds. He 

 records an instance of the floating of a consid- 

 erable amount of sand on the Llano River of 

 Texas, and he also states the results obtained 

 by artiflcally floating sand of various materials 

 and degrees of flneness. 



Mr. Oscar H. Hershey describes the ancient 

 river deposits of the Spring Eiver valley in 

 Kansas and outlines the Quaternary history of 

 this stream. 



Prof. E. W. Claypole, in an article entitled 

 ' The Timepiece of Geology, ' rapidly sketches 

 the rise of paleontology and the use of fossils 

 in determining the age of strata. The applica- 

 tion of this means of fixing the age of various 

 rocks is rapid and easy, but the final test is 

 stratigraphy. 



In an editorial comment Mr. Upham notices 

 the shell-bearing sand and clay beds between 

 deposits of till at Clava, Scotland. The inter- 

 glacial fossiliferous beds he thinks to be modi- 

 fied drift, like the similarly shell-bearing sand 

 and gravel of Cape Cod. In neither case would 

 he consider the enclosed marine fossils to be 

 evidence of submergence, instead of which the 

 shells and their fragments are referred to glacial 

 erosion from old sea beds and transportation in 

 the ice sheets to altitudes where they are now 

 found. 



Under 'Correspondence' Prof. W. B. Scott 

 writes concerning the term ' Goodnight Beds, ' 



proposed for a division of the Texas Tertiary 

 by Mr. W. F. Cummins. 



PSYCHE, JANUARY. 



A. P. Morse begins a review of the N. E. 

 Tryxalinse, giving tables for the determination 

 of the 8 genera and 15 species; three of the 

 genera are new. H. G. Dyar describes and 

 discusses an arctic Lymantriid larva found on 

 Mt. Washington, N. H., which he suspects is 

 Dasychira rossii. C. H. Tyler Townsend gives 

 a table for the determination of the 12 species 

 of Exorista from temperate North America 

 known to him, describing one of them as new; 

 and F. H. Harvey gives some notes on Smerin- 

 thus oerysii with a description of some of the 

 early stages. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OP WASHINGTON. 



A SPECIAL meeting was held December 26th 

 in the assembly hall of the Cosmos Club under 

 the auspices of the joint commission of the scien- 

 tific societies of Washington, on the occasion of 

 the annual address of the retiring President, 

 Mr. Wm. H. Ashmead. Major J. W. Powell, 

 of the joint commission, presided. Mr. Ash- 

 mead's subject was 'The Phylogeny of the 

 Hymenoptera, ' which he treated at length, 

 giving his ideas as to the position of the Hymen- 

 optera in the class Insecta, and as to the rela- 

 tive position of the several families of the order. 



The 113th regular meeting was held January 

 2d. The following ofiScers were elected for the 

 year 1896 : President, C. L. Marlatt ; Vice- 

 Presidents, Theodore Gill and H. G. Hubbard ; 

 Eecording Secretary, L. O. Howard ; Corre- 

 sponding Secretary, Frank Benton ; Treasurer, 

 B. A. Schwarz ; Additional Members Executive 

 Committee, W. H. Ashmead, D. W. Coquillett 

 and C. W. Stiles. 



Mr. Schwarz presented a paper on the semi- 

 tropical insect fauna of Texas. He referred to 

 the fact that he had made a short visit to the 

 region in question in 1895, and said that the 

 fauna west and south of the Guadaloupe River, 

 and which extends across the Rio Grande into 

 the Mexican States of Coahuila and Tamaulipas, 

 is by no means semi-tropical in its character. 

 It is simply a subdivision of the lower Sonoran 



