672 



SCIENCE. 



[N.S. Vol. XVII. No. 434. 



It is doubtful, in any case, whether it is 

 advisable to override a fundamental principle 

 of civilized jurisprudence, to wit, that ' every 

 man should have his day in court.' Fraud 

 would be much easier under such a system. 

 While in a mental condition unfitting him 

 to do business but not manifesting itself to 

 the court on casual inspection, or under un- 

 due infliience through fear or other caiises, a 

 man is brought by beneficiaries under his will 

 before a probate court and his will admitted 

 to probate. Then his life is taken by the 

 beneficiaries. No matter what facts they 

 might be able' absolutely to prove, the mouths 

 of his heirs, who have never had a chance to 

 be heard, are closed. They can not attack 

 the probate, so the will stands and the prop- 

 erty goes where neither the law nor the testator 

 wished it to go. On the whole, the sugges- 

 tion seems a dangerous one'. The Colorado 

 probate revision committee considered the 

 remedy suggested much more dangerous than 

 the disease. Junius Henderson. 



CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 

 SNAKE RIVER LAVA PLAINS. 



Russell's latest report on the ' Geology and 

 Water Eesources of the Snake River Plains 

 of Idaho ' (U. S. Geol. Survey, Bull. 199, 1902) 

 is as full of physiographic matter as many of 

 his earlier reports have been. The plains are 

 in southern Idaho, measuring 350 miles in 

 length by from 50 to 75 miles in width; they 

 occupy a broad depression between enclosing 

 mountains, and are built of extensive basaltic 

 lava flows often overlying Tertiary ' lake beds.' 

 The lavas have been ascribed to fissure erup- 

 tions, but Russell follows Lindgren in refer- 

 ring them to volcanic vents within the area 

 of the plains or in the neighboring mountains. 

 Several lava streams issue from the mountain 

 valleys; one of them was so liquid when 

 erupted that after flowing fully 50 miles as 

 a stream from one to three miles wide it could 

 still spread widely on the plains. The vents 

 within the plains are either cinder cones of the 

 ordinary type, from which very fresh flows 

 are traceable, or low broad lava cones of gentle 

 slope, 8 to 10 miles in basal diameter and 

 only 200 or 300 feet high. The more liquid 



flows thin out gradually on the plains to 

 feather edges; others are limited by ragged 

 scarps 20 or 30 feet high. The border of the 

 plains contours around the enclosing moun- 

 tains, converting valleys into bays, spurs into 

 headlands and outlying knobs into ' steptoes ' 

 (p. 34). The most remarkable examples of 

 the latter forms are two dissected rhyolitic 

 volcanoes, of which the highest. Big Butte, 

 rises 2,350 feet over the plains. In one dis- 

 trict of fresh flows, a road between two towns 

 forty miles apart follows the slight depression 

 between the edge of the lava and the mountain 

 slope, turning into every valley and rounding 

 every spur, and thus doubling the straight-line 

 distance, rather than climb the hills or cross 

 the bare lava. Most of the plains are covered 

 with a soil largely Eeolian. Extensive gravel 

 fans are formed where certain streams have 

 had to aggrade their courses on passing from 

 mountain valleys of strong slope to the level 

 plains; here Russell unfortunately introduces 

 the term 'upgrading streams' (p. 133), al- 

 though he has used 'aggrading' in his 'Rivera 

 of North America.' Some fans antedate the 

 lavas and stretch under them, favoring the pas- 

 sage of ground water beneath the plains. 

 Snake River and its larger branches trench the 

 plain where it is lava-covered, and produce a 

 mature topography in the unprotected lake 

 beds further west. Special account is given 

 of short canyons eroded by springs along the 

 border of Snake River canyon. 



THE FAN OF LANNEMEZAN. 



The great fan or ' plateau ' of Lannemezan, 

 with a radius of more than 100 kilom., at the 

 foot of the Pyrenees in southwestern France, 

 together with its smaller neighbors on the 

 west, the fans of Orignae and Ger, have long 

 been noted for the unsymmetrical form of 

 their radial consequent valleys, whose side 

 slopes are with few exceptions steeper on the 

 right than on the left of the stream. It has 

 frequently been siiggested that this systemat- 

 ically unsymmetrical habit might be due to 

 the deflective force arising from the earth's 

 rotation, and the suggestion has as often been 

 doubted because the deflective force must be 

 so small. A thorough study of the problem 



