SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 3fi7. 



duct researches in the metallurgy of iron and 

 steel and allied subjects, with the view of 

 aiding its advance or its application to in- 

 dustry. There is no restriction as to the place 

 of research which may be selected, whether 

 university, technical school, or works, provided 

 it be properly equipped for the prosecution of 

 metallurgical investigations. 



The appointment to a scholarship shall be 

 for one year, but the council may at their 

 discretion renew the scholarship for a further 

 period instead of proceeding to a new elec- 

 tion. The results of the research shall be com- 

 municated to the Iron and Steel Institute in 

 the form of a paper to be submitted to the 

 annual general meeting of members, and if the 

 council consider the paper to be of sufficient 

 merit, the Andrew Carnegie Gold Medal shall 

 be awarded to its author. Should the paper 

 in any year not be of sufficient merit, the 

 medal will not be awarded in that year. 

 By Order of the Council, 



Bennett H. Beough, 



28, Victoria Steeet, London. Secretary. 



CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 



THE WASHINGTON FOLIO. 



The Washington double-sheet folio, by Dar- 

 ton and Keith, embraces a district in which 

 the Potomac flows from its gorge in the Pied- 

 mont plateau to its estuary in the Coastal 

 plain. Along the junction of the two areas is 

 an ' inner lowland ' similar to that so well de- 

 veloped in New Jersey, but of less breadth. It 

 is determined on one side by the descending 

 floor of crystallines on which the Coastal plain 

 strata rest, and on the other by a pale and 

 ragged 'euesta' whose sinuous crest appears 

 to be held up by the Matawan formation, over- 

 lapped by abvmdant later deposits, while the 

 lowland itself is opened out on the clays and 

 sands of the Potomac (Cretaceous) formation. 

 The economic sheets give the underground 

 contours of water-bearing strata. The struc- 

 tural sections exhibit the wonderfully even 

 truncation of the steep-dipping crystallines in 

 the Piedmont area. A novel feature is pre- 

 sented on the physiographic geology sheet, 

 where the existing planes and slopes are colored 

 " according to the date of their production, and 



not that of the rocks on which they are carved. 

 This brings out clearly the pre-Columbia dis- 

 section of the Lafayette plain, as well as the 

 Columbia and later terraces, the latter having 

 their greatest extension along the inner low- 

 land between the old land and the euesta. 



PHYSIOGRAPHIC ECOLOGY. 



' The Physiographic Ecology of Chicago and 

 Vicinity, a study of the origin, development 

 and classification of plant societies,' by Cowles 

 (Botan. Gazette, XXXI., 1901, 73-108, 145- 

 182), and 'The Genetic Development of the 

 Forest of Northern Michigan, a study in 

 physiographic ecology,' by Whitford (ibid., 

 289-325), are essays in which the relation of 

 plant distribution to land forms is carried to 

 much more' than ordinary detail. Not only 

 is the existing distribution of plants traced 

 out, but the extension of one plant society 

 and the corresponding restriction of another, 

 with the slow advance of physiographic de- 

 velopment, as previously suggested by Wood- 

 worth, are here clearly pointed out, as in the 

 discussion of the flora of ravines, valley sides 

 and flood plains. 



Studies of this kind are of especial interest 

 to the physiographer from the use that they 

 make of physiographic details; they are en- 

 couraging in the evidence that they give that 

 the real intention of physiography is coming 

 to be recognized. It is not so much an end in 

 itseK as a means to a larger end; hence it 

 must concern itself not only with large fea- 

 tures of earth form and climate, but with local 

 details as well. It is particularly in these 

 applications of physiography that an effective 

 terminology will be demanded, for when the 

 distribution of plant societies is followed out 

 on so gently modulated a surface as that of a 

 flood plain, nothing less than a systematic and 

 detailed method of description will suffice. 

 When not only biologists, but geographers and 

 even travelers come to avail themselves of the 

 results of physiographic study, the need of a 

 careful terminology will be still more ap- 

 apparent. 



THE OOAST-PLAIN OF NORWAY. 



Under the title ' S0ndre Helgelands mor- 

 fologi' (Norges geol. undersbgelse. No. 29, 



