January 3, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



27 



criticisms of the author, and presenting new 

 observations; M. L. Fernald publishes a final 

 paper upon the instability of the Rochester 

 nomenclature, being an answer to papers of 

 Messrs. C. L. Polard, L. M. Underwood and 

 ]Sr. L. Britton ; and Charles Eobertson has pub- 

 lished a third set of observations of flower 

 visits of oligotropic bees. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 

 SECTION OF GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 



The regular meeting of the Geological Sec- 

 tion of the New York Academy of Sciences 

 was held on Monday evening, November 18, 

 with the chairman. Dr. A. A. Julien, presi- 

 ding. The program of the evening was begun 

 with the reading of a memorial of Dr. Theo- 

 dore G. White by Professor James F. Kemp, 

 who said in part : 



Theodore Greely White was born in New 

 York, August 6, 1872, and was the only child 

 of his parents, both of whom he lost but a 

 short time before his own death. He was grad- 

 uated from the School of Mines of Columbia 

 University in the course in geology and pa- 

 leontology as Ph.B. in 1894, as M.A. in 1895 

 and as Ph.D. in 1898. He was appointed as- 

 sistant in the department of physics in 1896 

 and held the position until 1900, being especi- 

 ally in charge of the experimental work in 

 optics. From early boyhood Dr. White was in- 

 terested in natural science, and while yet an 

 undergraduate he began investigations both 

 geological and botanical. His bachelor's thesis 

 was a description of the geology of Essex and 

 Willsboro towns on Lake Champlain, and he 

 took up the study of the faunas of the Trenton 

 group in the Champlain valley for his doc- 

 torate. In the end he extended these faunal 

 studies all around the Adirondack crystalline 

 area. He also carried on work for the New 

 York State Museum under the direction of 

 Dr. F. J. H. Merrill; and, in association with 

 Professor W. O. Crosby, he described the pet- 

 rographical characters of the Quincy granite. 

 During an excursion to the seashore last sum- 

 mer he became exhausted while bathing in the 

 salt water, and took a cold which developed 

 into pneumonia and caused his death on the 



Tth of August, after a brief illness. Dr. White 

 was a man of indefatigable industry and of 

 great perseverance. He has left a large circle 

 of sincere and devoted friends who can with 

 difficulty reconcile themselves to his loss. 



The second paper was a memorial of Pro- 

 fessor Joseph Le Conte by Professor John J. 

 Stevenson. A memorial of Professor Le 

 Conte having appeared in the columns of 

 Science, an abstract of this paper will not be 

 given here. 



The next paper was by Dr. Edmund O. 

 Hovey and was entitled 'Notes on the Triassic 

 and Jurassic beds of the Black Hills of South 

 Dakota and Wyoming.' In this paper the 

 author described, with the aid of a map and a 

 number of lantern slides, the geological char- 

 acteristics, the stratigraphic relations and the 

 topographic features of the famous Red Valley 

 of the Hills and its inclosing rim of Jurassic 

 shales and sandstones; the observations being, 

 for the most part, a result of a collecting trip 

 made for the American Museum of Natural 

 History during the past summer. 



The closing paper was by Dr. Alexis A. 

 Julien and was a discussion of 'Erosion by 

 Flying Sand on the Beaches of Cape Cod.' 

 The author said in part: The physical char- 

 acters of the beach sand of Cape Cod show, 

 in general, its recent derivation from the ad- 

 jacent beds of the later Tertiary and especially 

 from sands and gravels of Glacial age. In 

 form the sand grains are mostly angular to 

 subangular with but small admixture of those 

 nearly spherical grains (for which I have 

 proposed the term 'palfeospheres') the form 

 of which would indicate long erosion and 

 high antiquity. In constitution the sands 

 differ somewhat from those of the Atlantic 

 coast to the southward, e. jr., of Long Island 

 and New Jersey, particularly in a smaller con- 

 tent of iron-oxides and garnet. Through the 

 continual movement of the winds over the 

 peninsula, the sand upon the beaches and 

 dunes is in a state of constant motion. Dur- 

 ing the frequent winter storms it is even 

 borne along in vast quantities by aerial trans- 

 port, and commonly with a violence sufficient 

 to produce sharp attrition upon fixed solid 

 objects. 



