464 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 197. 



southeast part of the Bay of Biscay, and 

 more than 6,000 feet at the mouth of the 

 Congo. These great uplifts are thought to 

 have given the cold and snowy climate 

 under which the ice-sheets were amassed. 

 But the lands were afterwards depressed, in 

 the closing, or Champlain, epoch of the Gla- 

 cial period, to levels mostly somewhat 

 Ijelow their present heights, whereby a tem- 

 perate climate, with warm and even hot 

 summers, was restored on the borders of 

 the ice-sheets, melting them gradually from 

 the periphery inward. Steep frontal gradi- 

 ents and vigorous glacial currents were 

 thus produced, heaping much of the drift in 

 prominent recessional moraines. 



6. Clayey Bands of the Glacial Delta of the 

 Cuyahoga River at Cleveland, 0., compared 

 tvith those in the Implement-hearing Deposits of 

 the Glacial Delta at Trenton, N. J. By Pro- 

 fessor G. Frederick "Wright, Oberlin, 0. 

 A year ago Professors Wright, Hollick, 

 Mercer and Libbey made excavations at 

 Trenton in the field where Mr. Ernest Volk 

 has been working under the direction of 

 Professor Putnam. As a result of their 

 work, they found several implements from 

 three to four feet below the surface, and 

 beneath certain red clayey bands which 

 they supposed to be a part of the original 

 delta deposited at Trenton during the close 

 of the Glacial period. In the meetings of 

 the American and British Associations, 

 however, at Detroit and Toronto last year, 

 vigorous efforts were made by others to 

 prove that these clayey bands do not belong 

 to the original water deposition, but may 

 have been wind-blown surfaces or lines of 

 oxidation in the sand. During the past 

 year Professor "Wright has made numerous 

 observations upon excavations in a similar 

 delta of Glacial age at Cleveland, where he 

 finds a succession of reddish clayey bands 

 in the sand precisely similar to those at 

 Trenton ; and at Cleveland they merge into 

 cross-bedded sand and gravel strata on the 



same level, showing unequivocally that the 

 whole is a water deposit, and that it has 

 not been disturbed since the original de- 

 position. This strongly confirms the infer- 

 ences drawn a year ago concerning the age 

 and undisturbed character of the deposits 

 at Trenton from which Mr. Volk has de- 

 rived so many implements for Professor 

 Putnam, indicating that men were present, 

 making, using and losing those implements 

 at the time of departure of the ice-sheet. 



7. The Middle Coal Measures of the Western, 

 Interior Coal Field. By H. Foster Bain and 

 A. T. Leonard, Des Moines, Iowa. These 

 coal measures are marked by non-persist- 

 ence of strata. The upper measures are 

 more regular. Between the two is a series 

 partaking of the characteristics of each. 

 This series includes the Raccoon River beds, 

 the Appanoose formation and equivalents 

 in Iowa, the Henrietta in Missouri, and 

 the Oswego and Pawnee limestones of 

 Kansas. No fitting general term for the 

 whole has yet been proposed. The old 

 term, middle coal measures, included the 

 beds here referred to and the higher beds 

 now quite generally known as the Pleasan- 

 ton shales. 



8. The Principal Missourian Section. By 

 Charles R. Keyes, Des Moines, Iowa. The 

 previous classifications of the Carboniferous 

 formations of the region west of the Missis- 

 sippi River were briefly outlined. The re- 

 sults of the recent work along the Missouri 

 River were summarized and the inferences 

 to be drawn were given. The Missourian 

 series, as one of the four principal sub- 

 divisions of the Carboniferous of the conti- 

 nental interior, was described. Eleven well 

 defined formations or stages are shown to 

 have a wide distribution, the formations in 

 five States being correlated. 



9. Tourmaline and Tourvialine Schists from 

 Belcher Hill, Jefferson County, Colorado. By 

 Horace B. Patton, Golden, Colo. Black 

 tourmaline, often in fine large crystals, 



