August 5, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



185 



sexual " brood in Table II. Sections showed 

 that the females have only very small, rudi- 

 mentary ovaries, while no trace of a testis 

 could be found in any of the males examined. 

 Externally the flies appeared to be normal in 

 every way, and the sterile males could be dis- 

 tinguished from females with a hand lens, by 

 the coloration and other characters of the end 

 of the abdomen, as in normal specimens. The 

 preparations were made by serially sectioning 

 the entire abdomen, in which process the hard 

 copulatory organs, especially of the male, were 

 always more or less torn and therefore can 

 not be reconstructed; but from the fact that 

 sterile males and females were observed to 

 copulate with one another and with normal 

 individuals it seems fairly certain that the 

 copulatory apparatus of the sterile flies is 

 normal. "We thus have another example of 

 development of the sexual instinct, and at 

 least some of the external secondary sexual 

 characters, independently of the gonads; and 

 some additional evidence of independent dif- 

 ferentiation of the copulatory structures. 



Though the factor which caused the pro- 

 duction of these unisexual, sterile broods was 

 not discovered, there seems to be no reason 

 why it should not turn up again; and it may 

 be worth while for those engaged in breeding 

 Drosophila to be on the lookout for a repeti- 

 tion of the occurrences above recorded, in 

 view of their possible importance as bearing 

 on sex-determination in general. 



L. S. QUACKENBUSH 



TWESTY-SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OP 

 THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 



The first session of the twenty-second annual 

 meeting of the Geological Society of America, held 

 at Boston and Cambridge, Mass., December 28-31, 

 1909, was called to order at 10 o'clock A.M., on 

 Tuesday, December 28, in the lecture hall of the 

 department of geology. University Museum, Cam- 

 bridge, Mass., by Vice-president Adams, in the 

 absence, on account of illness, of President Gil- 

 bert. In the course of the meeting the following 

 program was offered: 

 The Post-Tertiary EUtorij of the Lakes of Asia, 



Minor and Syria: Ellsworth Huntington, 



New Haven, Conn. 



A study of the lakes of the Anatolian Plateau 

 and of Syria was one of the chief objects of the 

 Yale Expedition of 1909. The lakes fall naturally 

 into five groups, namely, normal fresh-water lakes 

 with ordinary outlets, salt lakes of the common 

 type without outlets, karst lakes with under- 

 ground outlets in limestone regions, glacial lakes 

 with no definite outlets, but kept fresh by under- 

 ground seepage, and crater lakes with similar 

 indefinite outlets. In Syria the number of lakes 

 is small, there are no glacial lakes and the other 

 four types are sharply differentiated. The most 

 interesting problems are, first, the part played by 

 lava fiows and deltaic deposits in the formation 

 of Lakes Huleh and Galilee, and, second, the 

 former outlet of the Dead Sea and the fluctuations 

 to which this lake has been subject in Post-Ter- 

 tiary times. In Anatolia the number of lakes is 

 large and the various types merge into one an- 

 other. For instance, crater lakes are sometimes 

 saline, normal lakes have in some cases been 

 drained by underground outlets, and salt lakes 

 have in the past overflowed and been fresh. A 

 comparison of the ancient strands and deposits of 

 the lakes of both regions affords abundant data 

 for the reconstruction of the varied climatic his- 

 tory of western Asia since the close of the Ter- 

 tiary era. 



Discussed by W. M. Davis, F. P. Gulliver, A. W. 

 Grabau, D. W. Johnson and .Joseph Barrel!, with 

 reply by the author. 



Oscillations of Alaskan Glaciers: R. S. Tabr and 

 Laweence Martin, Ithaca, N. Y., and Madison, 

 Wis. 



The National Geographic Society's Alaskan Ex- 

 pedition of 1909 observed the following glacial 

 oscillations. In Yakutat Bay the Marvine lobe of 

 Malaspina Glacier and the Atrevida, Haenke and 

 Variegated glaciers have ceased the advance which 

 began in the winter of 1905-6. The Hidden Gla- 

 cier has advanced over two miles since 1906, but 

 has now begun to shrink away from the new shore 

 moraines. The Lucia Glacier is newly crevassed 

 and advancing this summer, and is riding up on 

 a nunatak. These oscillations confirm the earth- 

 quake-avalanche theory for glacial advance, pro- 

 posed in 1906 by the senior author, and furnish 

 facts as to the brevity of such advances. On the 

 lower Copper River the Childs Glacier was more 

 active in 1909 than 1908, but the position of the 

 front remains unchanged. The Miles, Childs and 

 Baird glaciers are essentially as in 1884, 1885, 

 1891 and 1900. In eastern Prince William Sound 



