io8_ 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVII. No. 420 



■which appear not to have heretofore been described in connection 

 ■with this question. 



For instance: in the town of Schroeppel, Oswego County, N.Y., 

 and extending across the Oneida River (outlet of Oneida Lake) 

 for several miles into Clay, Onondaga County, there is a plain of 

 much rolled and rounded bowlderets, cobbles, pebbles, gravel, and 

 sand. Many of the stones, especially the larger ones, are com- 

 posed of crystalline rocks from Canada. In the midst of the plain 

 are numerous depressions, some of them containing one hundred 

 acres or more. The deeper depressions are occupied by lakes 

 without visible outlets, usually bordered by steep banks of sand 

 or gravel up to seventy-five feet high. The smaller hollows pre- 

 sent the well-known phenomenon of kettle-holes surrounded by 

 reticulated kames, some of which are shown by excavations to 

 have an anticlinal stratification. The coarser material is more 

 abundant toward the north, and the eediments become finer in 

 composition as we go south and south-eastward. At the same 

 time the hollows become shallower, and the deposit expands some- 

 what in fan shape. Many of the shallower hollows contain 

 swamps, once ponds, now peated over or filled with humus and 

 silt often containing fresh-water shells. The plains of sand and 

 gravel are bordered by broad plains of clay or silt. Some of the 

 clays contain fresh-water shells; but my observations were made 

 some years ago, and are not detailed enough to determine whether 

 any of the fossiliferous clays are contemporaneous with the sand 

 and gravel plains. Some of them are plainly later. 



In Maine I have had opportunity to study scores of the deltas 

 dropped by glacial rivers near where they entered the sea at a 

 time it stood above its present level. They present the same 

 proofs of a gradual stopping of the currents as are shown in the 

 plain above described. The coarser fragments were first dropped 

 as the rivers entered still water, and the assortment proceeded as 

 their rate became slower, until at last the fine.<it clay and rock- 

 flour settled on the bottom of the water. The plain at the Oneida 

 River has substantially the same structure as the deposits which I 

 have described in Maine as deltas of glacial sediments: 1 therefore 

 regard the plain as having been deposited by glacial rivers in still 

 water in front of the ice. but not far from the icefront. The 

 assortment is more systematic, and takes place within less distance 

 than is found in the frontal plain deposited in front of the ice on 

 land sloping away from the glacier. This I regard as proof that 

 the slopes of the land at that place were northward in glacial 

 time, as they are at present. According to this interprelation, 

 certain conclusions follow: 1. At a certain time the central part 

 of the basin of Lake Ontario was still occupied by land-ice. which 

 extended south to near the present Oneida River; 3. At this time 

 south of the ice-front there was a body of open water, which at 

 this place was fifteen or more miles wide; 3. The broad and deep 

 sheets of gravel, sand, and clay which no.v cover the site of this 

 open water are composed chiefly of the sediments of glacial rivers 

 pouring from the north into still water, and dropping their buWen. 



If it be claimed that these sediments represent a sheet of glacial 

 till which was eroded by the waves and re-deposited as aqueous 

 sediment, then the material should grow finer as we go north- 

 ward away from the Iroquois beach, whereas at the Oneida River 

 we have the opposite arrangement. If it be claimed that these 

 sediments were the result of wave-erosion of the solid rock, we 

 have a right to demand that the system of beach-cliffs adequate 

 to furnish so great a mass shall be pointed out to us. There are 

 hundreds of square miles covered with sediments which in many 

 places are known to be eighty or a hundred feet thick. The 

 small amount of wave-erosion required to form the beach is in 

 remarkable contrast with the scarp of erosion required by this 

 theory. Moreover, any erosion hypothesis must assume a much 

 greater erosion of the till than even the Atlantic was able to 

 accomplish on the coast of Maine during its elevation in late gla- 

 cial and post-glacial time. And if we suppose this drift to have 

 its origin in any form of floating ice, how shall we account for the 

 deep kettle-holes and reticulated ridges, or for the attrition which 

 rounded the cobbles and bowlderets in tracts extending at right 

 angles to the beach, or for the horizontal assortment of the sedi- 

 ments, they growing finer as we go south ? I see no admissible 

 theory except that above stated. 



It would appear that any hypothesis of the marine origin of the 

 Iroquois beach must concede that the central part of the basin of 

 Lake Ontario was still covered by land-ice at the time when a 

 body of water ten to thirty miles broad lay to the south of the 

 ice-front. Into this body of water great glacial rivers flowed, so 

 that it was practically a body of fresh water, even if at sea-level. 



In addition to the delta plain above described, there are in the 

 region other deposits that are probably glacial sediments, but I 

 have not examined the country lying east of the plain in question 

 so systematically as to be certain. If a line of frontal deltas can 

 be traced eastward and westward, it will enable us to map the 

 ice-front of that period. The relation of such a series to the 

 Iroquois beach, especially in the country situated north and 

 north-east of Watertown, would greatly help to decide the ques- 

 tion whether the body of water that lay south of the ice was a 

 lake or an arm of the sea. G. H. Stone. 



Colorado Springs, Col., Feb. 5. 



Rain-Formation. 



In your issue of Feb. 6 Professor Hazen has produced a table 

 whereby it is intended to show that " on an average more than 

 half the rain at Pike's Peak occurs with a falling temperature; " 

 and from subsequent remarks in his letter it appears that the 

 professor hereby means to say that the sui-face air grew gradually 

 colder while this rain was falling, at which, to him, extraordinary 

 result he expresses his surprise. 



To an ordinary individual it may not seem surprising if rainfall 

 should have the effect of lowering the temperature of the surface- 

 air, when it is considered that the raindrops descend from colder 

 upper regions, and in all probability generally first appear as 

 snow-flakes, and also, though not so mucVi, that the clouds pre- 

 vent the sun from keeping up the temperature of the surface-air; 

 but I shall allow myself to point out that whether the downpour 

 has the effect of changing the temperature of the surface-air or 

 not, cannot possibly be ascertained from observations at Pike's 

 Peak or any other isolated station. 



Let us take the case before us of rain having fallen at Pike's 

 Peak for ten hours with a falling thermometer, and that the 

 wind was blowing during that time at a rate of about twenty 

 miles an hour. The surface-air which during the ten hours passes 

 the station at Pike's Peak will then represent a body of air two 

 hundred miles long; and when the rain set in it may have been 

 located on lower land. The eleven readings of the thermometer 

 give us, therefore, the temperatm-e of air-bodies located at dis- 

 tances of twenty miles from one another, and taken, not all at the 

 same moment, but at eleven different hours; and I should feel 

 obliged to Professor Hazen if he would explain how it is possible 

 to deduce from these readings whether the surface-air as such 

 grew colder or warmer during the fall of rain. 



It is probably from drawing inferences of this nature that the 

 professor arrives at such apparent anomalies as when he makes 

 the following amazing statement: "While it might be thought 

 that a falling temperature in a saturated air would tend to pro- 

 duce rainfall, such is by no means the fact. There are many 

 cases in which a fall of from ten to fifteen degrees of Fahrenheit 

 has occurred in saturated air without any corresponding rainfall." 

 Here is really no anomaly. The air which passed the place of 

 observation was all saturated, and the air which came first had a 

 temperature ten to fifteen degrees higher than the temperature of 

 the air which afterwards passed by; but Professor Hazen infers 

 that it was the same air he was examining all the time, and con- 

 sequently wonders why it wouldn't rain when saturated air " got 

 chilled." Franz A. Velschow, C.E. 



Brooklyn, N.T., Feb. 13. 



BOOK-REVIEWS. 



Social Diseases and Worse Remedies. By T. H. Huxley. New 

 York, Macmillan. 16°. 30 cents. 

 This pamphlet contains a series of letters published a few weeks 

 since in the London Times, criticising quite severely the scheme 

 for relieving poverty devised by Mr. Booth, the " general" of the 

 Salvation Army. In his first letter Mr. Huxley condemned the 



