May 2, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



711 



Scientific School, entitled ' Catastrophism and 

 the Evolution of Environment.' This address 

 was a protest against the extreme views held 

 in those days by the British schools of imi- 

 formitarians headed by Lyell. With his own 

 peculiar delicacy of touch, Mr. King first 

 sketched the origin of the adverse schools of 

 catastrophists and uniformitarians, and 

 showed that they difiiered not so much in 

 regard to the facts of geology as to the rate of 

 geological change. He then stated that in 

 his recent 30,000 miles of geological travel on 

 the Survey of the 40th Parallel he found that 

 geological history, as he read it, showed not 

 the often unvarying rate of change of the uni- 

 f ormitarian, but periods of cahn interrupted by 

 others of accelerated change that in their effect 

 upon life must have been catastrophic in their 

 nature. 



In response to man's questioning as to his 

 origin, he said Nature vouchsafes one syllable 

 of answer at a time. The syllable that Darwin 

 got was the Natural Selection. Biologists con- 

 sider it necessary to deny catastrophism in 

 order to save evolution and reason only from 

 the continuity of the paleontologieal record, 

 neglecting the evidence of physical breaks in 

 the geological record ; but the latter must have 

 varied the rate of geological change and thus 

 brought a modified catastrophism. Natural 

 Selection resolves itself into two laws : heredi- 

 tivUy and adaptivity, the latter being the 

 accoromodation to circumstances, which is 

 dependent, half upon organism, and half upon 

 the environment. Environment has affected 

 the evolution of life during rapid movements 

 of the crust or sudden climatic changes, either 

 by extermination, by destruction of the biolog- 

 ical equilibrium, or by rapid morphological 

 changes on the part of plastic species. At the 

 end of a period of uniformitarian conditions 

 there has been a period of accelerated change 

 in which only the more plastic forms have sur- 

 vived. In the future the geologists must 

 therefore take into account periods of modified 

 catastrophism, King says, and concludes in the 

 following words : 



"Moments of great catastrophism thus 

 translated into the language of life, become 

 forms of creation when out of plastic organ- 



isms something new and nobler is called into 

 being." 



Mr. F. L. Eansome spoke on 'Faulting and 

 Mountain Structure in Central Arizona.' 



The district discussed is in the Globe Quad- 

 rangle, lying in the sierra region which borders 

 the Colorado Plateau on the southwest. 

 Paleozoic quartzites and limestones rest 

 unconformably on pre-Cambrian schists and 

 granites, and all of these rocks are extensively 

 intruded by diabase. After a long erosion 

 interval, effusive rhyolites were erupted, prob- 

 ably during the Tertiary. The region was then 

 deformed by a remarkably numerous series of 

 normal faults. The rocks are divided into 

 countless small fault-blocks and the prevail- 

 ing structure is monoclinal, the Paleozoic beds 

 dipping southwest at an angle of about twenty- 

 five degrees. The strata are nowhere folded 

 and the mountains are due to faulting, 

 although the external forms of the faulted 

 blocks have been considerably modified by 

 erosion. Alfred H. Brooks, 



Secretary. 



TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB. 



At the meeting of the Club on March 26, 

 1902, the first paper was by Dr. L. M. Under- 

 wood, entitled 'Notes on Goniopteris.' Distin- 

 guishing features, found in the venation and 

 in the form of the indusium, were illustrated 

 by figures. Nine species were mentioned, 

 chiefly of the West Indies, including G. rep- 

 tans of Florida, and species recently collected 

 in Porto Rico and in St. Kitts. 



The second paper was by Dr. M. A. Howe, 

 'Notes on the Marine Flora of Nova Scotia 

 and Newfoundland.' Numerous examples were 

 exhibited, illustrating especially the larger 

 Phseosporeffi, including rolls of dried Lami- 

 naria, rock specimens bearing crustaceous 

 species, and many others preserved in jars or by 

 mounting in sheets. Among noteworthy 

 species or forms found were Fucus serratus; 

 Fucus vesicidosus without vesicles on the Nova 

 Scotia coast; Stipocaulon at Pictou, the first 

 discovery in North America of this genus of 

 the Sphacelariacese. Examples were shown 

 of Laminaria longicruris and L. plaiymeris 

 from the Newfoundland coast whence De la 



