488 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 65. 



this upou them at this period of development is 

 to make them precocious, and consequently, to 

 arrest development and to rush them into de- 

 generacy. The child, if left to himself, will 

 discover symbolism in nature. When it is 

 given to him ready made it has a tendency to 

 render him superstitious, credulous and super- 

 ficial. During these specially sensitive years of 

 early childhood impressions should be pure, 

 clear, direct and complete. The brain, at this 

 period, is more susceptible and much more 

 active, consequently much more intensely con- 

 scious, that in later life, eagerly clinching every 

 new impression in order to make use of it in 

 giving expression to its own individuality, 

 which has become firmly rooted in the loves 

 and lives of its environment. The thought 

 centers for this period should be full of instruc- 

 tion and abound in beautiful sentiment. 



There is current a doctrine that in each child 

 there are repeated the various phases of devel- 

 opment in the life of humanity. It should be 

 remembered, however, that the earlier stages 

 of development, through which the child must 

 pass, are meant, by the very laws of evolution, 

 to sink into rudimentary conditions. To em- 

 phasize them must result in arrested develop- 

 ment and retard the progress of the race. 

 Education should treat them in such a way as 

 to reduce to a minimum their influence in the 

 life of the child and to assist him to use all his 

 strength in living intelligently toward the ideals 

 of the race. The crudities and superstitions 

 transmitted to us in the myths and allegories of 

 past ages can stimulate only crudity and super- 

 stition in the minds of little children whose 

 mental development is not suflBcient to enable 

 them to see and appreciate their latent truth and 

 beauty. To force such myths and allegories upon 

 childi-en at too early an age will, on the one 

 hand, subject them in later years to painful 

 struggles to overcome morbid tendencies, and, 

 on the other hand, will blunt their sensibilities 

 to the truth, beauty and love in their environ- 

 ment. Moreover, when persons tell such myths 

 and allegories to little children they labor to 

 adapt them to the children's understanding, in 

 what they call simpler language, and mar both 

 the story and the child. A. Carman, 



Secretary. 



THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES OF 

 PHILADELPHIA, PA. , FEBRUARY 10, 1896. 



A paper entitled ' Summary of New Liberian 

 Polydesmoidea, ' by O. F. Cook, was presented 

 for publication. 



General Isaac J. Wistar called attention to 

 the apparently capricious distribution of iron 

 oxide as coloring matter in the rocks of the 

 anthracite coal region. A section in Lykens 

 Valley, for example, shows a thick stratum of 

 red shalS below the carboniferous series. It is 

 overlaid by thin green sandstones, the color 

 of which is due to another oxide of the same 

 metal. Upon this rests the thick masses of the 

 Pottsville conglomerate, a white quartzite which 

 shows no coloration from iron, except perhaps 

 a slight external tinge on the enclosed quartz 

 pebbles. Above the conglomerate we find in- 

 tercalated among the sand stones of the coal 

 measures sixteen coal seams of varying thick- 

 ness, of which the lowest three show a red ash, 

 several below them a white ash, while the upper 

 three return to a red or pink ash. Above the 

 coal measures there are no signs of iron colora- 

 tion until, in other localities, the Trias is 

 reached, when we find the red coloring as pro- 

 nounced as in the carboniferous shales. 



These several strata cover a long period in 

 geological history and exhibit the following 

 phenomena : During the red shale period the 

 presence of iron oxide was sufiicient to give a 

 high color to the entire deposits. During the 

 still longer period of the conglomerate the 

 available iron, having been all distributed in the 

 red shale, did not appear at all and the con- 

 glomerate beds show none. In the deposit of 

 the three lowest seams a fresh supply of iron 

 appears, enough to color their mineral con- 

 stituents red. Then ensued a long series of 

 coal seams containing little or no iron, to 

 be followed by several red-ash seams near 

 the top of the series. There is then an en- 

 tire absence of iron in sufficient quantity to 

 color the rocks, until, when the Triassic period 

 occurs, evidences of the universal distribution 

 of iron oxide are more abundant than ever. 



These facts appear to show several points 

 during which the accessible supply of iron was 

 exhausted by complete distribution in the strata 



