March 20, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



471 



tention to one fundamental point in my posi- 

 tion which the latter failed, to grasp upon 

 first reading. 



Dr. Thurston quotes me in the following 

 words : " The much-discussed ' Second Law of 

 Thermodynamics ' takes the form : ' The en- 

 tropy of the world tends to a maximum and 

 the temperature to a minimum.' It is, how- 

 ever, pointed out, etc." 



These words are correctly quoted (page 35), 

 but their significance has been directly re- 

 versed by omission of the context. The 

 statement of the second law just quoted is 

 given by me as itself a quotation of its here- 

 tofore accepted form, for direct contrast with 

 my own statement of it, which will be found 

 (on pages 25 and 35, with elaboration and ex- 

 planation in the intervening pages) in words 

 which may be condensed into the following, 

 for present purposes: 



" That while any given quantity of energy 

 tends, so long as it exists without transforma- 

 tion, to fall in intensity, and never the re- 

 verse, yet the secondary form of energy into 

 which that quantity may at any time find 

 itself transformed possesses a degree of in- 

 tensity which is entirely independent of that 

 of the original quantity, and which is the 

 maximum permitted iy circumstance. In 

 other words, energy tends downward in in- 

 tensity during untransformed existence and 

 upward during transformation." 



This necessarily denies in toto the doctrine 

 of the dissipation of energy. It affirms, on 

 the contrary, that as much exaltation of en- 

 ergy is constantly going on as there is of de- 

 pression of energy. In short, the total fund 

 of intensity or availability of the energy of 

 the universe is as constant as is the universe's 

 total fund of mass, or as is its total fund of 

 the product of the two, energy itself. 



The availability of the energy of the solar 

 system is, of course, being steadily dissipated. 

 But progress in astronomy has generations 

 ago passed the point when observations con- 

 fined to the solar system suffice for the estab- 

 lishment of fundamental principles such as 

 these. 



The new statement of the second law takes 

 on especial importance as being, if true, one 



link in the chain of evidence confirming the 

 unity of the universe, the modern idea of 

 which was so interestingly referred to recently 

 by Professor Newcomb. The doctrine of the 

 dissipation of energy necessarily excluded any 

 possibility either of the universe being in- 

 finite and eternal in its extent or of its being 

 one with the solar system. The new state- 

 ment not only is consistent with those ideas, 

 but it is implied by or implies them, which- 

 ever end of the sequence the thinker may 

 prefer to regard as the natural origin. 



Sidney A. Reeve. 



THE JUDITH RIVER BEDS. 



The reader of Professor Osborn's recent 

 note in Science on the 'Age of the Typical 

 Judith River Beds ' would be led to infer 

 that I had either denied or questioned the 

 Upper Cretaceous age of these beds. Since 

 this note places me in an entirely false posi- 

 tion on this question, I wish to offer the fol- 

 lowing brief remarks by way of explanation. 



1. I have never even so much as questioned 

 the Upper Cretaceous age of the Judith River 

 beds. The point I raised was as to their 

 stratigraphic position within the Upper Cre- 

 taceous relative to the Pierre. 



2.' Osborn's statement that since Cope, 

 Cross, White and Dana have referred these 

 beds to the Upper Cretaceous, they therefore 

 overlie the Pierre is unwarranted, since these 

 authorities and American geologists generally 

 have heretofore included everything from the 

 Dakota to the Laramie in the Upper Creta- 

 ceous. Would Professor Osborn place the 

 Dakota, Benton and Niobrara above the Pierre 

 because those same authorities have referred 

 these deposits to the Upper Cretaceous? 



3. All who are familiar with the literature 

 on this subject know that the Judith River 

 beds have been referred to different ages by 

 Hayden, Meek, Leidy, Cope, Marsh, White, 

 Stanton, Cross, Lesquereux, Newberry and 

 others, varying from Lower Tertiary on the 

 one hand, to Lower Cretaceous or Upper Jur- 

 assic (Wealden) on the other, and that, there- 

 fore, Osborn has not ' abundant authority for 

 the statement that among geologists of the 

 United States there has never been any ques- 



