298 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 634 



such climate as they are in our own time. 



On the same principle, tropical climate 

 is implied by the domination of the flora 

 of a period by such plants as the cycads; 

 and at least subtropical conditions by such 

 conifers as the Sequoia. All of these warm 

 climate representatives have long been 

 known to have prevailed on the Middle 

 Atlantic Coast during Middle Secondary 

 or Lower Cretaceous time; but during the 

 past year another tropical group has sud- 

 denly come to light, viz. : the palms. Mr. 

 B. "W. Berry appears to have been the 

 first to detect them in a somewhat doubt- 

 ful fragment of a frond from the Magothy 

 formation or the Upper Chesapeake Bay. 

 Shortly after, there came to the writer's 

 notice some half dozen fragments of dif- 

 ferent silicified palm trunks, chiefly from a 

 single neighborhood in the Lower Cre- 

 taceous belt, between Baltimore and Wash- 

 ington, suggesting that these fossils are 

 likely to prove, upon systematic search, in 

 other Lower Cretaceous areas to be of 

 scarcely less frequent occurrence than the 

 silicified sequoia and eyead trunks of those 

 areas, thus greatly emphasizing the evi- 

 dence of the tropical climate of their time. 

 Geology of Core Bank: Collier Cobb, 



Chapel Hill, N. C. 



The coast from Hatteras southward is 

 rising, not subsiding. As the dunes ad- 

 vance toward the Sound side they depress 

 by their weight the swamp muck in which 

 the trees of that side grow, and these are 

 left exposed on the seaward side when the 

 dunes have passed. This compression of 

 the muck is often mistaken for subsidence 

 of the land. On the land opposite the Core 

 bank successive strata of muck filled with 

 well-rounded blown-sands rise twenty feet 

 above Core Sound at Atlantic. Kitchen- 

 middens, too, mark this line of elevated 

 dunes. 



Drum Inlet was opened by a storm on 

 October 17, 1906, and Tertiary shell-rock 



thrown upon the bank. Numerous Cre- 

 taceous fossils, such as the author has 

 already reported from Currituck Bank 

 were found along the entire length of Core 

 Bank, which dates back to Cretaceous time 

 at least. "Whalebone Inlet between Core 

 Bank and Portsmouth Island has again 

 been closed. 



There is thus no longer any question as 

 to the origin of Core Bank or of Currituck 

 Bank, for they are both essentially parts 

 of the mainland. Currituck Sound was 

 formerly a river that flowed into the old 

 Albemarle or -Caroline River before the 

 present Albemarle Sound was formed by 

 the drowning of that valley; and Core 

 Sound was for the greater part of its length 

 a southern tributary of the large river 

 made up of the Pamlico and the Neuse and 

 passing to seaward through the present 

 Ocracoke Inlet. The Albemarle River 

 passed through the present fresh ponds 

 just south of the Kill Devil Hills, and the 

 margin of the continent was some three 

 score miles eastward of its present position. 



The following papers were read by 

 title : 



The Low-Water Channel of the Mississippi 

 Biver: Robeet Marshall Brown. 



Walnut Canyon, Arizona, Section com- 

 pared With Rocks of Similar Age in the 

 Territory: H. W. Shimer. 



Structural Control of Surface Features in 

 the Highlands of the Hudson: Charles 

 P. Berket. 



The Occurrence of Diamonds in North 

 America: George Frederick Kunz. 



A Lower-Middle Cambrian Transition 

 Fauna From Braintree, Mass.: H. W. 

 Shimer. 



Notes on the Upper Aubrey of North- 

 ivestern Arizona: H. W. Shimer. 

 Edmund Otis Hovet, 



Secretary 



