Januaey 7, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



33 



A half mile below are one or more well-marked ' 

 semicircular terminal moraines. 



Two miles northwest of San Gorgonio, and 

 in another northeastward facing cirque was a 

 glacier which carried down a vast amount of 

 debris to within a quarter of a mile of the 

 termination of the large glacier already de- 

 scribed. A small body of water known as 

 Dollar Lake occupies the last resting place of 

 the ice close up under the rocky cliffs. 



Following the ridge westerly for two miles 

 more we come to a cirque-like basin close up 

 under the crest and forming the head of 

 Hathaway Creek. Here was perhaps the 

 most interesting glacier of all in the district. 

 It was a long narrow tongue of ice which 

 reached downward a mile and left the most 

 perfect moraines ■ seen. Five semicircular 

 terminal moraines cross the canon and upon 

 its eastern side is an ideally perfect marginal 

 moraine. The middle one of the terminal 

 moraines is formed of immense blocks of rock 

 and looked at from below its curving front 

 forms a great wall nearly 100 feet high. The 

 lowest moraine, 1,000 feet farther down the 

 canon, is formed of the finest material of any, 

 as though when the first ice tongue came down 

 it found the surface soft and deeply disinte- 

 grated. The phenomena here indicate that 

 glaciation was of considerable duration, and 

 that the history of the period was anything 

 but simple. 



The last glacier on the ridge was a small 

 one nestling also in a northeast-facing alcove 

 near the top of San Bernardino Mountain. 



None of these glaciers appear to have de- 

 scended much below 8,500 feet, and it will be 

 seen from the descriptions given that the con- 

 ditions had to be just right for their appear- 

 ance at all. Such conditions were a north- 

 ward or northeastward facing alcove which 

 headed sufficiently close to the crest to receive 

 the snows which drifted over its summit. The 

 west fork of Hathaway Creek, which headed 

 nearly as high as the glaciated one, was sepa- 

 rated from the crest by a plateau-like 

 shoulder and in its sharp V-character ap- 

 pears never to have contained anything of a 

 glacial nature. 



There seems to be no other possible inter- 

 pretation of the phenomena observed but that 

 of glacial action, and it is quite remarkable 

 that this extensive lofty region known to have 

 a heavy precipitation and to contain a boreal 

 fauna and flora should not long before have 

 been investigated in regard to the possibility 

 of its having been glaciated. 



H. W. Fairbanks, 

 E. P. Carey 



Berkeley, Cal. 



mallophagan parasites from the california 



CONDOR 



The great vulture or condor of California, 

 Gymnogyps calif ornianus, although not as 

 rare a bird as reported by most bird books is 

 yet so uncommon and shy, and hence so rarely 

 seen, and is such an extraordinary great feath- 

 ered animal, that it is one of the most inter- 

 esting of American birds. It ranges north 

 and south through the mountains of the state, 

 nesting in wild and inaccessible places. It is 

 nearly, if not quite, as large as the condor of 

 the South American Andes, averaging four 

 and a half feet in length and ten feet in spread 

 of wing. The female lays a single enormous 

 egg (44x2J inches), specimens of which are 

 rarer in collections than those of the great 

 auk. 



Up to the present time no Mallophaga 

 (biting bird lice) have been recorded from this 

 bird giant. However one of my students of 

 several years ago, C. S. Thompson, a student 

 of birds as well as of insects, took a number of 

 Mallophaga from a single condor and I have 

 just taken time to go over this material. It 

 includes only two species, a small Menopon 

 and a Lipeurus of average size. 



The Lipeurus belongs to the well-character- 

 ized group of sex-guttati (with six curious 

 chitinized spots on the anterior half of the 

 head), whose members are found only on 

 raptorial birds, especially the larger kinds as 

 vultures and eagles. The group afiinities of 

 the specimens (two females and a male) are 

 certain, but whether they should be assigned 

 to one of the few already described species of 

 this group or be looked on as representatives 

 of a new form is not so easily determined. 



