182 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 606. 



COMPARATIVE TABLE OF CABBONIFEROTJS FORMATIONS. 



thorities on the Russian Permian formation, 

 and who has visited the Kansas localities, 

 places the Marion beds, which are immediately 

 beneath the Red Beds, on a level with the 

 Russian Artinsk terrane. Personal observa- 

 tions in both fields point strongly to the cor- 

 rectness of this correlation. The Artinsk 

 formation is older than any terrane of the 

 original Permian sequence. Girty, who quite 

 recently has also rather critically examined 

 the Guadalupan section in Trans-Pecos Texas, 

 concludes that if this fauna is Permian then 

 certainly that of Kansas is not. 



It would seem then that our conceptions of 

 the American Permian formations must un- 

 dergo very radical changes. Our scheme of 

 comparison with the original Permian section 

 of Russia would then be about as in the table 

 given above. Charles R. Krtrs. 



New Mexico State School of Mines. 



QUOTATIONS. 



PBOFESSOR m'kENDRICK AND THE PROGRESS OF 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



The valedictory address delivered by Pro- 

 fessor J. G. M'Kendrick, at the close of the 

 summer session of the University of Glasgow, 

 on the occasion of his resignation of the pro- 

 fessorship of physiology, provides a striking 

 account of the progress of physiological sci- 

 ence during the past thirty years. In 1861, 

 when Professor M'Kendrick attended a course 

 of lectures at Aberdeen, there was no attempt 

 at demonstration except by diagrams and a 

 few microscopes on a side-table. There were 

 no experiments, and the only instrument dis- 

 played was a sphygmograph. But a little later 

 Goodsir, of Edinburgh, brought from con- 

 tinental schools of physiology to the Univer- 



sity of Edinburgh such instruments as myo- 

 graphs, kymographs, electrical appliances and 

 other apparatus, and the teaching of practical 

 physiology was soon firmly established under 

 Argyll Robertson. Professor M'Kendrick 

 himself installed similar teaching in the Uni- 

 versity of Glasgow in 1876, the date of his 

 appointment to the chair of physiology. The 

 requirements of modem physiological teaching 

 are shown by a statement in the address that 

 while Professor M'Kendrick has worked and 

 taught for thirty years in five rooms, twenty- 

 five are apportioned to physiological work in 

 the new buildings. Reviewing the progress of 

 physiology. Professor M'Kendrick detailed the 

 advances made in histology and expressed the 

 doubt whether much more progress can be 

 expected. Graphic methods have been elabor- 

 ated during the same period, and the action 

 of electrical stimuli on muscle and nerve 

 elaborately worked out. The study of the 

 functions of living isolated organs, modern 

 vivisectional methods, our knowledge of the 

 nerve paths in the central nervous system, 

 and the subject of internal secretions, are all 

 among the triumphs of physiological science 

 during the past thirty years, and were each 

 passed in review. In conclusion. Professor 

 M'Kendrick indicated physiological chemistry 

 as the direction in which progress will be 

 made during the next few decades. — Nature. 



ASTRONOMICAL NOTES. 

 THE SYSTEM OF CASTOR. 



Castor was one of the first close double 

 stars known and one of those which led Sir 

 William Herschel to the belief that such stars 

 form real binary systems. 



