Dkoembeb 14, 1900.] 



SCIEKGE. 



925 



Mitchell, Davis, Shaler and others on the geol- 

 ogy of Cape Ann, with especial reference to 

 the district from Chatham to Yarmouth. In 

 the stratified deposits of sands and gravels 

 which underlie the plains south of the morainal 

 ' back-bone ' of the Cape, the more frequent 

 intercallation of clays was pointed out, and 

 the occasional disturbance and flexure. Stri- 

 ated pebbles, although much water-worn, are 

 quite largely interspersed. The discovery of 

 true glacial silt at some depth in one locality 

 indicates that the ice-sheet there rested, in- 

 stead of floating. The kettle shaped hollows 

 and pond-basins were shown by the speaker to 

 be largely connected with the damming of sur- 

 face streams, and some observations on the pre- 

 glacial drainage valleys and topography were 

 discussed. The identification of certain trans- 

 ported fragments of quartz-porphyry with out- 

 crops of the same near Marblehead indicate a 

 pre-glacial movement from N.N. W. to S.S. 

 E. To the fifteen changes of level which have 

 been recorded, a final small elevation probably 

 should be added, judging from the low terrace 

 along this part of the coast. Examples of the 

 facited pebbles were exhibited and provoked 

 considerable discussion among those present 

 as to the origin of those pebbles. 



Professor Richard E. Dodge recounted his 

 pleasure in visiting the region of the Colorado 

 Canyon, during the past summer, in company 

 with a party, and finding the physiography, as 

 graphically illustrated in the drawings in Pow- 

 ell's reports, to be a most faithful and non-dia- 

 grammatic portrayal of the features themselves. 

 He then described the striking examples of 

 gigantic geophysical results seen in the Great 

 Kiabab anticline, the Grand Canyon itself, and 

 the Kiabab plateau and its faults. He also de- 

 scribed the appearance of the great basin of 

 ' Lake Bonneville.' 



Remarks on foreign localities visited by them 

 during the summer, were made by Professor J. 

 J. Stevenson and Dr. E. O. Hovey. 



Theodore G. White, 

 Secretary of Section. 



SECTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY. 



The regular meeting of the Section was held 

 on November 26. The first paper was a report 



of the Paris Congress of Psychology by Dr. R. 

 S. Woodworth. This report was more detailed 

 than the published accounts and also suggested 

 certain questions in regard to the enlargement 

 and control of American representation at sim- 

 ilar congresses in the future. 



The second paper, by Mr. Clark Wissler, on 

 ' Correlation of Anthropometric Tests,' reported 

 some results of a series of mental and physical 

 tests upon students in Columbia University and 

 Barnard College. The young women of Barnard 

 College were found to be superior to Columbia 

 freshmen in the tests for time of perception, 

 naming of colors and resistance to pressure ; 

 they were equal to the freshmen in rate of 

 fatigue, perception of weights, sensation areas, 

 perception of size and logical memory; they 

 were inferior in size of head, strength of hand, 

 reaction time, association time and auditory 

 memory. There is some probability that the 

 young women are superior in perception of 

 pitch and inferior in movement time. With 

 the freshmen who repeated the test in their 

 senior year an improvement was found in all 

 except sensation areas and perception of size, 

 though the difference in some cases is slight. 

 It was also found that the seniors showed a de- 

 cided tendency to hold the same relative rank 

 as when freshmen, thus indicating a general 

 advancement of the group during college life. 

 In correlations it appeared that logical memory 

 and length of head are related characteristics, 

 but length of head also correlates with lung 

 capacity and strength of hand. The work has 

 not gone far enough to say which of these has 

 the most weight. Attempts to correlate reac- 

 tion time and the other tests of quickness gave 

 no results. 



The third paper, presented by Dr. E. L. 

 Thorndike, reported the results of certain ex- 

 periments on the ' Efifects of Special Training 

 on General Ability.' These experiments were 

 performed jointly by Drs. Woodward and 

 Thorndike. The results of a number of experi- 

 ments show that when any mental function is 

 trained in connection with certain data, the 

 improvement is not of the function in general. 

 If ditFerent data are used there will be less or 

 even no improvement shown. The general 

 theory that the mind equals a number of special 



