June 18, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



947 



ward at Frog portage, 500 miles from its 

 mouth, and running to the Nelson. Altoge- 

 ther, this is a most interesting and valuable 

 contribution to the natural history of rivers. 



THE PLATEAU OF WEST VIRGINIA. 



A REPORT by M. E. Campbell and"W". C. 

 Mendenhall, dealing primarily with the 

 ' Geologic section along the New and 

 Kanawha rivers in "West Virginia ' (17th 

 Ann. Rep. U. S. G. S., Pt. II., 1896, 479- 

 511), includes a brief account of the physi- 

 ography of the plateau thereabouts, with 

 a number of excellent illustrations from 

 well selected points of view. The river 

 canyon, for such it truly is in spite of its 

 occurrence east of the 100th meridian, is a 

 full thousand feet deep, with forested walls 

 descending at angles of 35° or 40° to a 

 narrow valley floor. Where the river cuts 

 down upon harder sandstones it has not yet 

 developed a graded channel ; elsewhere it 

 has narrow belts of flood plain, now on this 

 side, now on that. The canyon is sharply 

 cut in a Tertiary peneplain that was well 

 smoothed for a number of miles on either 

 side of the river, but further away the 

 upland is interrupted by knobs and ridges 

 that rise distinctly above it. The dissec- 

 tion of the peneplain was permitted by a 

 broad arching uplift late in Eocene time, 

 its present altitude being 2,600 feet near 

 Hinton, but of less amount to the south- 

 east and northwest. The river fortunately 

 maintained its antecedent course across the 

 broad arch, and thus opened the important 

 highway through a region that would other- 

 wise be difficult to traverse. Agriculture has 

 lost much in the conversion of the smooth 

 peneplain into a dissected plateau, but min- 

 ing has made corresponding gains in the 

 exposure given to numerous coal beds on 

 the valley sides. 



CRATER LAKE AND MT. MAZAMA, OREGON. 



An account of Crater Lake, by Diller 

 (Amer. Journ. Sci., III., 1897, 165-172) 



notes that the Mazamas, a society of moun- 

 tain-climbers of Portland, met at the lake 

 last summer and gave their name to the 

 vanished cone, now replaced by the superb 

 caldera. So far as I know, this is the first 

 instance of giving a special name to a van- 

 ished volcano, although the habit of naming 

 extinct lakes is now common. Besides the 

 evidence from truncated lava beds and 

 headless valleys, which points so unequivo- 

 cally to the loss of the Mazama cone, 

 Diller adds evidence from glaciation. Not 

 only are there moraines in the valleys two 

 to five miles down from the river, but the 

 topmost rocks of the rim are planed off 

 and striated on the outer slope, while the 

 clifis turned toward the lake have angular 

 and broken faces. The ice, therefore, came 

 from a higher source than any now pres- 

 ent, and, judging by the extent of the 

 glaciation, Mazama was in the glacial period 

 a rival of Shasta and Eainier for the su- 

 premacy of the range. It was still active 

 during the presence of the ice ; for on the 

 northeastern rim a glaciated lava flow 

 covers two layers of pumice separated by a 

 sheet of rhyolite, and all these lie on an 

 older glaciated surface. It is suggested 

 that the heavy deposits of waste that 

 occupy the lower radial valleys were 

 washed down by floods that were caused 

 by eruptions from the snow-capped moun- 

 tain. The caldera is explained by the 

 withdrawal of the deep lavas, followed by 

 a great cave-in of the upper cone. An 

 edition of the Crater lake topographical 

 sheet, published by the Geological Survey, 

 has been printed with a number of excel- 

 lent photographic views on the back. 



W. M. Davis. 

 Harvard University. 



CUEBENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 



Two of the lectures at the National Mu- 

 seum, reprinted in the last Smithsonian Re- 



