June 25, 189T.] 



SCIENCE. 



999 



Hill. As the hill is approached the veins be- 

 come larger and finally culminate in this eleva- 

 tion, which is about 300 by 250 feet in diameter 

 at the base. The veinstone of which it is mostly 

 •composed rises in prominent and bold crop- 

 pings. With one or two unimportant excep- 

 tions, the material of which this, as well as the 

 other veins, is formed consists wholly of tourma- 

 line and quartz, with which the tin ores are lo- 

 cally associated. The larger veins, and the Ca- 

 jalco in particular, are very irregular in size, 

 sometimes appearing to be mere bunches in the 

 granite. A few hundred feet northeast of the 

 hill the vein has narrowed to six or eight feet, 

 and it is here that the large body of tin was 

 first discovered and the main shafts sunk. A 

 slide prepared from one of the smaller veins, 

 which in the hand specimen appeared to con- 

 sist wholly of tourmaline, showed bunches of 

 tourmaline crystals radially arranged and im- 

 bedded in interlocking quartz grains. 



T. Wayland Vaughan has a paper on the out- 

 lying areas of the Comanche Series in Oklahoma 

 and Kansas, in which he describes numerous 

 localities in the region indicated, and sup- 

 ports Mr. Hill's conclusion in regard to the Cre- 

 taceous age of the deposits. He concludes that 

 the supposed ' Jurassic ' of Marcou ' ' has been 

 proven not only not Jurassic, but that it be- 

 longs to Cretaceous beds above his so-called 

 Neocomiun, which is far above the base of the 

 American Cretaceous." 



W. G. Mixter has an extended article on 

 eleetrosynthesis, or chemical union, affected by 

 means of electricity, but not, as distinguished 

 here, that brought about by the heat of the 

 electrical discharge. The special apparatus em- 

 plo3'ed is described, and the eudiometric obser- 

 vations made with a mixture of hydrogen and 

 oxygen, of carbonic oxide and oxj'gen, methane 

 and oxj'gen, ethylene and oxygen, acetylene and 

 oxygen. A comparison is made in several cases 

 between the number of molecules oxidized and 

 those of oxygen consumed, and it is concluded 

 that the same electrical current causes the 

 oxidation of a different number of molecules of 

 the gases, the variation being as one to two, 

 while the oxygen consumed varies as one to 

 seven molecules. In conclusion the author 

 regards the molecular change involved in elee- 



trosynthesis "to be analogous to those occur- 

 ring in synthesis effected by heat or light where 

 combination takes place at a temperature far 

 below that at which the gaseous molecules dis- 

 sociate." W. Lindgreu describes monazite 

 from the gold-bearing gravels near Idaho City, 

 in Idaho, where its occurrence is analogous to 

 that observed at other points, as in the eastern 

 United States, Brazil, the Ural Mountains, etc. 

 It doubtless forms an original constituent of the 

 granite of the Idaho basin. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



The last meeting of the Academy until Oc- 

 tober took place in the lecture room of the De- 

 partment of Physics, Columbia University, June 

 7th. Professor William Hallock described ' A 

 New Method for Projecting Views of the Moon. ' 

 A hemisphere about 6 or 8 feet in diameter had 

 been prepared and had been whitened. Using 

 this for a screen, Dr. Hallock projected upon it 

 views of the moon with a powerful arc-light 

 lantern, adjusting the distances so that they 

 just fitted the spherical surface. The natural 

 features of the moon were reproduced with ex- 

 traordinary vividness and lost all the flattening 

 that is unavoidable with plane surfaces. The 

 only drawback is the lack of sharp focus on the 

 edges of lunar photographs. Adopting a sug- 

 gestion of Professor Rood, Dr. Hallock had 

 gone off at one side of his spherical screen, 

 while a view of the moon was projected upon it, 

 and had photographed it, thus securing a view 

 of half the lunar surface, as if it had been taken 

 at a point in space at right angles to the line 

 connecting the moon and the earth. It gave a 

 fairly true picture of one quarter of the moon 

 from this point of view. Professor Rood had also 

 suggested the value of projecting photographs of 

 diversified topography of the earth on suitably 

 inclined screens, with the object of reproducing 

 their true relations in space, so as to aid topo- 

 graphic mapping. Such projections when 

 viewed from above would give a bird's-eye 

 view of a landscape in its true relations. Dr. 

 Hallock will communicate a full account of 

 these devices to an early issue of Science. 



Miss F. R. M. Hitchcock next presented a 



