February 17, 1893. J 



SCIENCE. 



9' 



pied by the older Miocene, is usurped by a Ions; synclinal valley, 

 which is overwhelmed by deep sands. Upon the maps this syn- 

 cline is easily followed by Sandy Creek and the upper waters of 

 Shoal River. Prom the bend of the latter the syncline crosses to 

 the Yellow River and takes the whole valley of Black- water north 

 of Otaheite. 



The great roll, or anticline, forming the southern and western 

 limits of this syncline, may be easily followed westward from 

 Alum Bluff, by Abes Spring — crossing Choctawhatchee at Knox 

 Hill — and forms the hi^h rid^e upon which Defuniak is located. 

 It is cut through by Shoal River at the high hills or bluffs between 

 the Wise Bridge and Christmas Bluff, and by Yellow River at 

 Hickman Bluff, above the railroad, and subsiding below the same 

 southward to Daw's Bluff and northward to Oak Grove, whence 

 fifteen or twenty miles of the river is in the trough of the syn- 

 cline, the very region where the older Miocene should be found, 

 if continued west of EconHna River. 



Wilton County, West Florida, is traversed by some consider- 

 able streams, which have removed in places the superficial 

 Orange Sands, and cut deep into fossiliferous beds, on Yellow 

 River, Shoal River (lower part), Alaqua, and Blairs Creek or 

 Euchee. 



Christmas Bluff — an almost inaccessible locality in the vicinity 

 of Taylor's Mill, to the north of Mos'jy Head, is perhaps tlie best 

 for the amount nf the exposure — there being sixty feet from the 

 water to the Orange Sand of the ridge above — twenty feet of 

 the top being calcareous and full of the finest shells. The lower 

 forty feet of the bluff seem to be without fossils, at least none 

 were discovered at the brief visit of 1889. The compact sands of 

 this lower part of the bluff strongly resembled those at the base of 

 Silas Bluff on Conecuh River, and still more the sands at the head 

 of Ten-mile Creek, and on Econfina in Calhoun County, Fla. In 

 the la-t, however, were impressions of fossils, which connected it 

 with the Chattahoochee Formation. 



At no one of the many localities exposing fossils could all the 

 phases of these formations be seen. Alum Bluff comes the nearest 

 to this requirement; yet it is best to study them where more 

 widely parted and where each may have scope for a grander dis 

 play. 



Such typical localities may be found on the two neighboring 

 creeks, Alaqua and Euchee, south of and very near to Defuniak 

 Springs. 



The phase seen near Euchee Ana consists of a sandy ferruginous 

 clay, calcareous in spots, having innumerable shells and casts of 

 the small Mactra congesta, mixed with or finished off at the top 

 with a good deal of silicified wood and lignitic matter. This is 

 the counterpart of the topmost layers at Alum Bluff and of the 

 lowest bluff at Abes Spring on Chipola. 



The Alaqua phase, on the other hand, has the larger shells — 

 Conchs Cardiums, Areas P^ctunculus, etc., in good variety, ard 

 a fine state of preservation. This is the formation of the upper 

 bluffs at Abes Spring. In fact, Chipola River affords the finest 

 opportunity for the study of all the phases of the Miocene with 

 exception perhaps of the Wakulla rocks. There is at the Abe 

 Spring lowest bluff more than 100 feet longitudinally of the 

 Euchee phase, above that more than a mile of the Alaqua pha?e, 

 culminating in a 60-foot bluff at the Darling hhde. and anove 

 that for eight miles are the Red Ortholax beds, and grav allied 

 calcareous sands up to "Look and Trimble" shoals of the more 

 indurated Chattahoochee form. 



The .Vlaqua phase the writer learned from Mr. N. H, Darton . 

 whom he met in Florida soon after the discovery, to regard as 

 equivalent to his Chesapeake. The more complete studies oi Dr. 

 W. H. Dall, it appears, led him later to (he same conclusion. 



The younger Miocene, of the Alaqua type at least, is perfectly 

 and largely developed on the bluffs of Yellow River, from the 

 Alabama line to Milligen in Florida, the most northern of these 

 beds being the low shell landing at Oak Grove, six miles south of 

 the line. 



Twenty miles north-west of Oak Grot-e, and across the deep 

 sands of the synclinal valley of Black Water, the great anticlinal 

 roll reaches Conecuh River. At Roberts, on the head of Silas 

 Creek, the bluff washed out by the waste-way of the null is filled 



with rafts of the same Alaqua fossils. The clay and wood and 

 lignitic matter of the upper part of this wash-out bluff seem iden- 

 tical with Coal Bluff, six miles to the south-west. No fossils are 

 found at the Silas Bluff, though so near; and there is no reason 

 to doubt that the loiver strata of Silas are identical with the out- 

 crop at Dixon's Chalk Hill, six miles further north, and 100 feet 

 higher hypsumetrically, — that is the same as the older underlying 

 Grand Gulf quartzitic clays and rocks, — neither should it be 

 doubted that these are equivalent to the calcareous clays of the 

 Chattahoochee formation — in time. That these in precise mode 

 and form did not pass this far west is in perfect harmony and 

 accord with the geological history of the region. 



Ill In time of the older Miocene, all of Florida above water 

 was an archipelago of small Eocene islands, located where now 

 are the counties Suwanee, Fayette, Columbia, Alachua, Levy, 

 Marion, Hernando, Citeus. Pasco, and Sumter,— or rather parts 

 of them, — and there were probably a comparatively deep strait 

 and strong current bstween them and the Eocene rocks of the 

 same age in Georgia. Dr. Dall has shown by the fossils that this 

 c'lanael of tha older Mlosen^ period was a warm-water sea. 



In this warm-water channel was laid the Wakulla rocks of the 

 county of that name, of Jefferson, of Leon, and of Jackson, 

 underlying the Chattahoochee beds. 



Now observe upon a map how the Eocene of Jackson and 

 Holmes extends southward to Orange Hill in Washington 

 County, which rises boldly above the waters of the low country 

 a height of some 200 feet. In Miocene time this must have been 

 a notable promontorv, jutling out into the shallow seas. It is 

 not probable that the warm currents of the great bight of 

 Georgia, either at ebb or flow, had much force to the westward 

 of Orange Cape, and the cold waters of the Mississippi embay- 

 ment, as reasoned by the same authority, reinforced by the 

 rivers of Alabama, creeping along through estuaries, were very 

 unfavorable to mollustan life. For which reasons, when by 

 position and continuity, the rocks of Wakulla and of Chattahoo- 

 chee shall have been traced westward of Orange Hill, it is not to 

 be expected the fossils of Weelaumee and of the Red-beds will be 

 found therein. 



There remain now only two other formations, not collated and 

 accounted for — the Pascagoula clays and the Euchee phase of 

 the younger Miocene. 



So far as known, the Euchee stops abruptly at Daw's Bluff 

 below MiUigeu. This part of Santa Rosa County is depressed, 

 whether bv subsidence or by denudation does not as >et appear. 

 Bv position it might be assumed that the Euchee is to the east 

 the equivalent of the Pascagoula of the west. But the fossils 

 are not the same; neither is it probable that the circumstances 

 of genesis were the same in both. Proximity to the Great River 

 rendered the laying down of every phase of the Grand Gulf 

 unique on this continent. 



Both the Pascagoula and the Euchee were estuary so far as 

 they agree, and it is possible the small Madras to the east were 

 the represejntatives of the still less marine Guathcdons vf the 

 %vest. It IS said the living Guathodon cyrenoides uf our coast is 

 not at present found east of .Mobile Bay, but the writer has lound 

 then in Kitcheu-middens on Choctawhatchee Bay, in the waters 

 of which they and the oysters are now both said to be wanting. 

 If not exactly equivalent, both these stand in the several regions 

 to which they belong as the youngest known formations of this 

 Miocene group. 



THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE UNIVERSITY SETTLE- 

 MENT MOVEMENT. 



BT FREDERIC A. C. PERRINE, D.SC, BOSTON, MASS 



Op the social work in our great cities by philanthropists and 

 churchmen, there is undoubtedly a considerable proportion unfor- 

 tunately carried on in such a casual manner as to afford only 

 pain to one trained in habits of scientific investigation and scien- 

 tific caution in action. Many charitably-aimed movements have 

 been proven to b- the greatest practical failures and, in spile of 

 the hiu'h-minded intentions of their progenitor.-, stand ccn- 



