■^46 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 415. 



plantations of Guatemala. Where several 

 Bueli varieties from other parts of the world 

 have also been tested, the new sorts offer 

 great diversity in other respects, but agree 

 in being less fertile than the parent stock in 

 actual amount or weight of seeds. It seems 

 reasonable to associate this relative or com- 

 plete sterility with the fact that coffee has 

 been unintentionally inbred, new regions hav- 

 ing usually been stocked from single trees, 

 and it is further noted that reproductive de- 

 bility is a general characteristic of other in- 

 bred domestic plants and of the so-called 

 ■' sports ' or ' mutations ' which appear among 

 them. In other words, it is suggested that 

 both the sterility and the mutations may be 

 due to the same cause, the absence of normal 

 cross-fertilization. This interpretation ac- 

 cords with what has been called a kinetic 

 liheory of evolution under which evolution is 

 "viewed as a physiological as well as a mor- 

 l)hologieal process. 



The tenth regular, and second annual, meet- 

 ing of the Botanical Society of Washington 

 was held at the Portner Hotel, November 8, 

 1902, with President A. F. Woods in the 

 chair. No regular program had been pre- 

 pared, the evening being given over to the 

 -election of officers and the consideration of 

 general business. The following officers were 

 elected for the ensuing year: President j A. 

 P. Woods; Vice-president, Frederick V. Co- 

 ville; Recording Secretary, Charles L. Pol- 

 lard; Corresponding Secretary, Herbert J. 

 Webber; Treasurer, Walter H. Evans. 



Herbert J. Webber, 

 .Corresponding Secretary. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



THE GRAND GULF FORMATION. 



To THE Editor of Science: I am naturally 

 much interested in the communication of 

 Messrs. Smith and Aldrich in your issue of 

 November 21, and, as in the main it confirms 

 my earlier determinations, yet does not cor- 

 rectly state either my position or that of Dr. 

 Hilgard in more recent publications, I ven- 

 ture to supplement it by some words of ex- 

 planation. 



The original complex included under the 

 name of Grand Gulf by Hilgard in 1860 was 

 heterogeneous, but, in the absence of paleon- 

 tological data, it could not be in its several 

 parts correlated with other beds of known 

 age. This of course led to various, some- 

 times conflicting, estimates of its place in the 

 column. Professor Hilgard's last character- 

 ization of it (Am. Journ. ScL, 3d ser., XXII., 

 p. 59) is as follows: 'Clearly the Grand Gulf 

 rocks alone represent, on the northern borders 

 of the Gulf, the entire time and space inter- 

 vening between the Vicksburg epoch of the 

 Eocene and the stratified (Quaternary) drift.' 

 We now call the Vicksburgian ' Oligocene,' 

 so it is hardly fair to represent Dr. Hilgard as 

 referring the Grand Gulf at present to the 

 Eocene. Neither have I ' referred it ' at dif- 

 ferent times ' to the Eocene, the Oligocene 

 and the Miocene.' By means of paleontolog- 

 ical data which have come in from time to 

 time during the seventeen years I have been 

 at work on our southeastern Tertiary, and 

 to which no one has been more active in con- 

 tributing than Professor Smith and Mr. Al- 

 drich, I have been enabled to fix the age of 

 different portions of the original heterogene- 

 ous series, as iippermost Oligocene (transi- 

 tional) and Chesapeake Miocene, which is 

 fully confirmed by the facts now cited by 

 your correspondents. But there are still con- 

 siderable portions which have yielded no fos- 

 sils, and the age of which can only be inferred 

 from their position in relation to other beds 

 of known age. In 1898 (' Fifteenth Annual 

 Eeport U. S. Geol. Survey,' part II., p. 340 

 and table) I was obliged to decide on some 

 portion of the original Grand Gulf which 

 should continue to bear the name, after de- 

 duction of beds of which the age had been 

 determined, and fixed upon the Oligocene 

 clays containing lignite and fossil palm leaves, 

 the only fossils cited by Hilgard in his original 

 description; and in my table of Tertiary hori- 

 zons referred to them as ' Typical Grand, 

 Gulf.' The beds which Messrs. Smith and 

 Aldrich call ' Grand Gulf ' in their communi- 

 cation to Science are not the same, but are 

 the non-fossiliferous upper portion at the other 

 end of Hilgard's Grand Gulf section. I have 



