January 15, 1892.] 



SCIENCE. 



hampered the science of astronomy, wiU be utterly demol- 

 ished. All the special excellences which have been claimed 

 for the speech and mental traits of the ludo-European stock, 

 will be found exemplified in as high degree among some of 

 the American nationalities. The singular opinion which has 

 been maintained by writers of no mean distinction, that the 

 descendants of a barbarous community of nomadic herdsmen 

 who, four or five thousand years ago, wandered over the 

 central plains of Asia and Eui'ope, and, moving southward, 

 gradually gained from Assyrian, Egyptian, and Dravidian 

 sources the elements of culture, are endowed by nature with 

 certain peculiar gifts of intellectual and moral greatness which 

 entitle them to subdue, dominate, regulate, and, if they think 

 proper, entirely suppress and exterminate any alien commu- 

 nity that comes in their way, will be found to be as directly 

 opposed to scientific truth as it is to the first principles of 

 humanity and justice. Horatio Hale. 



Clinton, Ontario, Canada. 



THE LAFAYETTE GRAVELS. 



President Chambeelin, accompanied by Professor R. D. 

 Salisbury, has spent the holidays in the south and south- 

 west, examining the beds of gravel and sand called by Dr. 

 Hilgard the '' Orange Sand," but recently renamed by him 

 " Lafayette." The same beds have also been called " Appo- 

 mattox " by Mr. McGee. The party went first into the 

 north-western part of Alabama and adjacent parts of Missis- 

 sippi, where this formation, as well as an older one com- 

 posed of very similar materials, is seen in great force. This 

 older formation is the Tuscaloosa of the Alabama survey, 

 equivalent to the Potomac of the Middle States. From Shef- 

 field they went across to Columbus, Ga,, where they were 

 joined by Mr. W. J. McGee. At Columbus the same two 

 formations are admirably exposed, as well as a third, a di- 

 vision of the Columbia formation of Mr. McGee, the "River 

 Terrace" of the Alabama survey. 



From Columbus the party came to Montgomery, where 

 the Lafayette gravels and sands are to be seen in contact 

 with the sands of the Eutaw division of the Cretaceous. 

 From Montgomery they went to Tuscaloosa, where they 

 vpere met by Dr. Smith and spent a day in examining the 

 beautiful exposures of the Tuscaloosa and Lafayette forma- 

 tions in the railroad cuts at Cottondale, at Box Spring, and 

 in the gullies of the town of Tuscaloosa. Sir Charles Lyell, 

 in describing the geological formations at Tuscaloosa, says: 

 " The lower beds of the horizontal Cretaceous series in con- 

 tact v?ith the inclined coal measures, consist of gravel, some 

 of the quartzose pebbles being as large as hens' eggs, and 

 they look like an ancient beach, as if the Cretaceous sea had 

 terminated here, or shingle had accumulated near a shore."' 



Professor Tuomey afterwards showed that these pebble 

 beds belonged to a much more recent formation, for he traced 

 them southward and found them overlying the Tertiary rocks 

 of the lower part of the State." 



As a matter of fact, both the Cretaceous (if the Tuscaloosa 

 or Potomac shall prove to be Cretaceous, as seems most 

 probable) and the Post-Eoceue deposits are exposed in the 

 gullies cut in the slopes of the hill towards the river in Tus- 

 caloosa. All the large gravel belongs, however, in all 

 probability, to the later formation, which we now call La- 

 fayette, while the underlying stratified clays and cross- 

 bedded sands are of older date, the clays containing many 



1 " Travels In the United States, Second Visit," Vol. II., p. 68 (Harper & 

 Bro.). 



' " First Biennial Report on the Geology of Alabama,'' p. 160. 



plant remains which fix the age as probably Cretaceous. 

 It thus seems that Sir Charles Lyell was mistaken in his 

 identification of the gravel beds as Cretaceous, while Profes- 

 sor Tuomey. though undoubtedly correct in his classiflcatioQ 

 of the gravel and overlying red loam, did not discriminate 

 between these and the underlying laminated clays and cross- 

 bedded sands, which were first clearly distinguished in Ala- 

 bama by Harper and Winchell, and afterwards described in 

 detail by Smith and Johnson in 1883 and following years. ^ 



The age of these later gravels has lately become matter for 

 difference of opinion among geologists. Professor Tuomey 

 thought that they belonged to the Drift, though having but 

 few points of resemblance to that formation at the north. 

 Dr. Hilgard also has always considered them as belonging 

 to the Quaternary, and, more or less remotely, of glacial 

 origin. Messrs. McGee and Chamberlin, on the other hand, 

 consider them much older than the Quaternary, and as 

 probably Plibcene, because of their occurrence beneath beds 

 which these geologists consider the very oldest of the Qua- 

 ternary series. The vigorous manner in which the study of 

 this formation is being pushed in widely-separated parts of 

 the United States, leads us to hope that these differences of 

 opinion will soon be reconciled. 



From Tuscaloosa the party went westward to Vicksburg, 

 Natchez, and other points on the great river, where the same 

 gravel beds are exposed in contact with the overlying Port 

 Hudson and Loess of unquestioned Quaternary age. From 

 New Orleans the party will return to their homes. 



E. A. S. 



ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGES. 



The enthusiasm for the creation of new international lan- 

 guages was at its height a few years ago, but is by no means 

 over. The too well-known Volapiik is probably the best of 

 them, and has set the stone rolling; it tries to combine the 

 peculiar, especially phonetic, features of most European lan- 

 guages. It is doing good work as a medium of commercial 

 correspondence, but probably will never be adopted as a me- 

 dium for conversation, and through the agency of time is 

 subjected, like other languages, to phonetic and many other 

 changes. Some attempts dating from 1891 have adopted the 

 principle of uniting the elements of the Romance languages 

 only into a new form of speech. " Un lingua interna- 

 zional " was composed by Julius Lott in Vienna (Springer- 

 gasse 33) ; " Un lingue commun pro le cultivat naziones " 

 by Dr. Alberto Liptay and " fixed up " for Spanish, French, 

 and German speaking people; another, perhaps the most 

 consistent in its principle, is "Nov Latin," by Dr. Rosa of 

 Turin. A passage taken from Lott's " Suplent folic" reads 

 as follows: " Le doktes inter si pote usare le historlk orto- 

 grafie, ma le homo de komercie ese saep in dubie en use de 

 dublkonsonantes. Sin perdite pro le klarit^ noi pote tolerare 

 le skripzion ; gramatik pro grammatika, etc. In il question le 

 majorite avere le decision." In reading this sort of jargon 

 we cannot help asking ourselves, Would it not be greatly 

 preferable to use plain French or Italian to make oneself 

 understood? 



Another more elaborate "Attempt towards an Interna- 

 tional Language " was written by Dr. Esperanto of Warsaw, 

 Russia, and translated into English by Henry Phillips, Jun. 

 (New York, Holt, 1889. 56 p. 8°). It combines radical 

 elements of the Germanic and the Romance languages, and 

 tends to put into reality the principle, that " a language 



3 BuUetln No. 43, U. S. Geol. Surv., " On the Tertiary and Cretaceous Strata 

 of the Tuscaloosa, Tombigbee, and Alabama Rivers.'' 



