996 



SCIENCE. 



[N.ti. Vol. XVI. No. 416. 



a fiord 500 feet deep, thus making a discord- 

 ance of 1,250 feet between trunk and branch 

 ice-channek. Although the coast exhibits a 

 very large proportion of bare rock, moraines 

 of well-preserved form are found here and 

 there. The limit of post-glacial sea-action 

 is about 575 feet above present sea-level at 

 St. John's and declines northwestward some- 

 what irregularly to 250 feet at the furthest 

 point reached. Within the wave-washed slope 

 boulders are rare; sea-cut and sea-built shore 

 lines are common. 



A narrative of the expedition is given by 

 Delabarre (Bull. Oeogr. Soc. Phila., III., 

 1902, 65-212). 



PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEW YORK. 



The series of articles contributed by Tarr 

 to the Bulletin of the American Oeographical 

 Society is now published in book form — ' The 

 Physical Geography of New Tork State ' — 

 with a chapter on Climate by Turner (Mac- 

 millan, 1902, 397 pp., many figures and 

 maps). It makes by far the most compendi- 

 ous treatise yet devoted to the physiography 

 of the Empire State, and must prove of great 

 service to students there and elsewhere from 

 its interesting style, its abundance of illus- 

 tration (some of the half-tone cuts are, how- 

 ever, blurred to the point of being useless 

 defacements of the pages), and its plentiful 

 reference to sources. Yet the book is dis- 

 appointing, in so far as it shows that regional 

 physiography is still an undeveloped subject, 

 uncertain of its limits, relatively unsystema- 

 tized and undisciplinary in its methods, and 

 not clearly guided in its presentation by a 

 thoroughly developed scheme of systematic 

 geography. To Tarr, nevertheless, belongs 

 the merit of actually accomplishing an im- 

 portant piece of work according to his best 

 plan available for it, while other physi- 

 ographers seem to hesitate to begin such 

 tasks because they do not see clearly through 

 them to the end. 



NEW MAP OF SWITZERLAND. 



The Federal Topographical Bureau at 

 Bern has recently published a four-sheet wall 

 map of Switzerland on a scale of 1 :200,000, in 

 which the illusion of actual relief is most 



effectively produced. The original map was 

 colored by Kiinemerly, artist-lithographer of 

 Bern. It subdues the lowlands in a cool 

 gray tint, and brings out the mountains as 

 if lighted from the northwest by a mid- 

 summer sunset; the illuminated slopes being 

 white or rose, the shaded slopes blue or 

 purple. The area includes reaches from the 

 southern Vosges and Schwarzwald to the 

 northern border of the plains of Lombardy, 

 and takes in the whole of the Jura on the 

 west and part of the Tyrolese Alps on the 

 east. Boundaries and the larger towns and 

 cities are in red, water in blue, roads and 

 names in black. Contours are drawn for 

 every one hundred meters. The map is an 

 exceptionally fine piece of work and should 

 come into general use in the study of the 

 Swiss Alps. W. M. Davis. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



The committee of the House on Buildings 

 and Grounds has reported favorably the bill, 

 which has passed the Senate, carrying $2,500,- 

 000 for the construction of a new building for 

 the Department of Agriculture, but reduced 

 the limit of cost to $1,500,000. 



Dr. W. a. Setchell, professor of botany 

 at the University of California, has been given 

 leave of absence for the next academic year. 



Mrs. M. C. Stevenson has returned to 

 Washington from ethnological investigations 

 at Zuni. 



At New Tork University Professor Carl 

 C. Thomas, head of the department of marine 

 engineering, has resigned to devote his time 

 exclusively to professional work on the Pacific 

 Coast. 



Dr. Rose Bradford has resigned the post, 

 which he has held since 1896, of professor- 

 superintendent of the Brown Animal Sanitary 

 Institution, London. 



Messrs. Siemens and Halske, Berlin, have 

 acquired the European patents of the system 

 of long distance telegraphy, discovered by 

 Professor Michel Pupin, of Columbia Uni- 

 versity. 



Dr. Andrew Balfour, of Edinburgh, is go- 

 ing out as director of the chemical and phys- 



