606 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. Xo. 22. 



by certain minor features to which Abbe 

 gives special attention, and whicli indicate 

 an outward movement of the prevailing cur- 

 rents on the north side of each cape, but an 

 inward movement on the south side. The 

 V-shaped bars on the shore of ancient 

 BonnevUle (Monogr. I., TJ. S. Geol. Survey^ 

 57) seem to correspond with the cuspate 

 capes in essential features, but their relation 

 to eddying currents is not clearly brought 

 foward by Gilbert. Penck, in his recent 

 Morphologie der Erdoherfladie, mentions back- 

 set shore currents as of frequent occurrence, 

 and suggests that the V-shaped bars of the 

 Bonneville shore may have been produced 

 by such movements (II., 485, 486), but he 

 does not refer to other examples of this 

 kind. Yet cuspate sand-bar capes of 

 moderate size are certainly not rare, as may 

 be seen by consulting the maps of our coast 

 in the lower part of Chesapeake Bay. 



Dungeness, on the southeastern coast of 

 England, seems to be a similar form; but no 

 other examples are known of so great a size 

 as those of our Carolina coast, nor has any 

 other instance been adduced of so pro- 

 nounced a control exerted by the general 

 oceanic circulation upon the form of the 

 continental shore line. 



THE MIGEATION OF CAPE CAl^AVEEAL. 



In connection with the foregoing, mention 

 may be made of the southward migration 

 of Cape Canaveral, as indicated by the 

 Coast Survey Charts (Nos. XIII., and 159- 

 163). Like the capes further north, Can- 

 averal is a sand-bar cusp, the details of its 

 form indicating a control by two adjacent 

 eddying currents, after the manner described 

 by Abbe. Its history appears to have been 

 in brief as follows : The position taken by 

 the first blunt cusp between the adjacent 

 eddies seems to have been about ten 

 miles south of Mosquito inlet and forty 

 miles north of the present cape ; this 

 being, as it were, a provisional location 



adopted by the currents before much work 

 had been done in shaping the coast by 

 building long bars for the transportation of 

 sand. As an improved and continuous bar 

 grew from north to south, its relation to 

 the general curvature of the Carolina bight 

 was such that it ran past the first-formed 

 cape, and a new location for the cusp was 

 then chosen thirty miles farther south, the 

 outline of the old cape being still faratly 

 traceable inside the newer bar. But a still 

 better adjustment of the currents to the 

 shore brought another bar down from the 

 north, this one running past the apex of the 

 second cape in much the same way that the 

 second bar ran past the first cape ; and 

 thus the third cusp, the present Canaveral, 

 was formed ten miles south of the second. 

 The southward migration of the cape ap- 

 pears to be still continued, as indicated by 

 the arrangement of the sand dunes ; but it 

 is now going on with a slowly progressive, 

 creeping advance, and not by a leap, such 

 as that which shifted the second cape from 

 the first, or the third from the second. All 

 this, however, is based only on a study of 

 the charts. Those who have opportunity 

 for a study of the cape on the ground 

 might make it the subject of fruitful obser- 

 vation. "W. M. Davis. 



Haevaed UK"IVEESITY. 



ANNUAL MEETING OF THE CHEMICAL SO- 

 CIETY (LONDON). 



In the course of his address at the anni- 

 versary meeting of the Chemical Society of 

 London, the President, Professor Arm- 

 strong, after referring to the notable growth 

 of the Society in the twenty years during 

 which he had been a member, stated that 

 the Council had decided to break through 

 the practice which had always obtained and 

 by which the Faraday Lectureship has in- 

 variably been filled by some foreign scien- 

 tist, and had bestowed the Faraday Medal 

 upon Lord Rayleigh ' in recognition of the 



