108 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 82. 



action in Iceland, as illustrative of the Ter- 

 tiary condition of western Scotland. Not 

 from central vents, like Vesuvius and Etna, 

 but from fissures, have the Icelandic lavas 

 been chiefly poured forth ; the volcanic 

 cones there are generally low, and yet from 

 these little monticules great floods of lava 

 have issued, forming wide volcanic plains. 

 Plateaus are thus built up, suffering more 

 or less dissection as they grow, sometimes 

 assuming the form of vast domes with gen- 

 tle slopes to all sides. Great volcanic 

 plateaus of similar structure once existed 

 where dissected remnants now form Skye, 

 Mull and other island outliers west of Scot- 

 land or further north in the Faroes. Cor- 

 relations of this kind between regions of 

 similar structure, but in different stages of 

 geographical development, are particularly 

 instructive to the study of physiography. 



THE GEOGRAPHY OP SILESIA. 



Prof. Joseph Partsch, of the University 

 of Breslau, has lately prepared a volume on 

 Silesia (Schlesien: eine Landeskunde fiir das 

 deutsche Volk auf wissenschaftliche Grund- 

 lage; Breslau, Hirt, 1896. 420 p.) to 

 which the special student of European geo- 

 graphy may refer with much advantage. 

 It treats, among other topics, of geological 

 structure, evolution of the land surface, 

 drainage, climate, plants, animals, popula- 

 tion, and Silesia as a seat of war. The plan 

 of the more strictly geographical chapters 

 is similar to that followed in the same 

 author's work on Greece jointly with IS'au- 

 mann ; that is, each subdivision is directly 

 described for itself, rather than in its sys- 

 tematic relation to other geographical areas 

 of similar structure, but perhaps in different 

 stages of geographical development. The 

 chapter on the evolution of the land surface 

 is essentially a geological history of the re- 

 gion ; not limited to the evolution of the 

 existing surface forms, but beginning with 

 the fundamental gneiss. The importance 



of northern drift as a factor in determining 

 surface form even so far south as to the 

 Beskiden (Carpathians) in latitude 50° is 

 for some reason more surprising than it 

 should be to us, who have plentiful glacial 

 drift in latitude 40°. 



NOTES. 



Boule's work on the glaciation of Au- 

 vergne, noted in Sciekcb, April 17, 1896, 

 from his brief report in the Comptes rendus, 

 is now more fully described in the Annales 

 de Geographie, v., 1896, 277-296, with excel- 

 lent illustrations and several maps. This 

 article would lead the scientific tourist to 

 many points of interest in the neighborhood 

 of the great volcanic slopes of the Cantal. 



W. F. Ganong describes a delta at the 

 outlet of Lake Utopia, New Brunswick, 

 formed when its outflow of clear water is 

 reversed to inflow of muddy water at time 

 of flood in the neighboring Magaguadavic 

 river (Occasional papers, No. 2,* New 

 Brunswick Nat. Hist. Soc). 



W. M. Davis. 



Haevakd University. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 A STUDY OP THE BASQUES. 



One of the memoirs published last year 

 by the Anthropological Society of Paris was 

 by Dr. CoUignon, on the Basques. The 

 thorough manner in which that investigator 

 does his work is well known to all students 

 of the ethnography of France, and the 

 present memoir is a good example of it. 

 He begins by referring to the obscurity 

 which has reigned concerning both the 

 physical type of the Basques and the affini- 

 ties of their tongue. His own personal ob- 



* Protest should be entered against the publication 

 by the Council of the above-named Society of such 

 stray leaves as this ' Occasional paper, No. 2. ' There 

 are to-day plenty of regularly established mediums of 

 publication in which two-page essays may be issued, 

 thus avoiding the serious difficulty of preserving and 

 protecting loose sheets. 



