June 17, 1892,] 



SCIENCE. 



341 



plates can entirely overcome without a sacrifice of other 

 good qualities. 



The great point in favor of collodion is that it seems to 

 lend itself peculiarly well to the production of color-sensitive 

 plates, and this, coupled with the uniformity of the material 

 that can by proper means be secured and the clearness with 

 which it works, leads me to anticipate that it will eventually 

 rival gelatine for fine, delicate work, and I believe it will 

 come to be highly favored in astronomical work and spec- 

 trographic work. 



Washington, D.C., June 10. 



GLACIAL PHENOMENA IN NORTH-EASTERN NEW 

 YORE. 



BY D. S. KELLOGG. 



Clinton County, the very north-eastern county of New 

 York, offers an interesting field for studying glacial phe- 

 nomena. The rock striae generally are nearly north and 

 south, though in one place at least they are almost east and 

 west. In many places the outcropping ledges are oval mounds 

 with their longest diameters in the general direction of the 

 supposed motion of the glacier. 



There is an abundance of marine shells everywhere in the 

 lower lands. These may be near the present surface and 

 turned over by the plow in such quantities as to make the 

 fields white, or they may be found from 5 to 10 feet under 

 ground. A stratum 2 inches thick underlies much of Platts- 

 burgh village at a depth of 5 or more feet. These are Saxi- 

 cava arctica and Macoma greenlandica. Others undoubt- 

 edly are present in this county. The highest I have yet found 

 are 346 feet above tide-water. 



In Beekmantown ends a tortuous kame, over 50 feet high, 

 which has been traced and mapped north into Chazy, 6 

 miles. Much of this is laid down upon clay of the former 

 lake-bottom. 



The lower slopes of Rand Hill and of Dannemora Moun- 

 tain are covered with deposits of till, which wells of 50 feet 

 do not go through. I have been over much of this surface 

 for a distance of 20 miles north and south and of 6 miles 

 east and west. There are scores of kame-like ridges from 

 5 to 70 feet high, generally running north and south, but 

 sometimes in all directions. These ridges form a large num- 

 ber of swamps, varying in size from half a square mile down 

 to a few rods. The bowlders and cobble stones in these de- 

 posits are largely of sandstone, which crops out in immense 

 surfaces in the northern part of the county, and probably 

 lies underneath much of this till. At Cadyville in the Sara- 

 nac valley, 10 miles from Lake Champlain, the glacier moved 

 across the old valley, making by its deposits a dam 2 miles 

 wide and upwards of 100 feet high. This dam made a lake 

 8 or 10 miles long, 2 miles wide, and in places 100 feet deep. 

 This lake has been entirely emptied out. The Sarauac River 

 has not only cut a channel through this till dam, but has also 

 made a gorge 60 or more feet deep in the sandstone that un- 

 derlay the lower half-mile of the dam. Probably the old 

 buried channel is not far distant. What was once the bottom 

 of a portion of this lake is now known as the " seven-mile 

 run " in the Saranac River. 



The Lake Champlain of the closing glacial period reached 

 up to the lower border of this glacial dam, 500 feet higher 

 than the present lake and 600 feet above the sea. When at 

 its highest level a plateau was formed that extended 2 miles 

 or more out in the lake. After a time the lowering of the 

 lake by the erosion of its outlet left this plateau uncovered. 



Then a second was formed, perhaps 250 feet lower than the 

 first, spreading out several miles. A third lowering formed 

 a third plateau, on which much of Plattsburgh village now 

 stands, and which makes '" The Plains," south. This third 

 plateau in general is from 50 to 75 feet above the present lake, 

 and, like the other two, is composed mostly of sand. Nearly 

 all the time while these plateaus were forming, the outlet of 

 Champlain was south into the Hudson. 



A dam of 60 feet now in the Richelieu would throw the 

 Champlain water into the Hudson, unless there is a lower 

 valley out from the Missisquoi Bay. By erosion of the valley 

 from Whitehall to Fort Edward the lake was lowered until 

 the ice had retreated enough to allow the Richelieu to be 

 made. I have not studied the conditions between South Bay 

 and the Hudson. For a time this may have been one of the 

 southern outlets of Champlain. The Champlain Canal at 

 Fort Edward receives its water from a feeder which taps the 

 Hudson at Glen's Falls. This water from the Hudson flows 

 north now from Fort Edward in the canal, and empties into 

 Lake Champlain. 



Did the pre-glacial upper Hudson flow through into the 

 old river bed which is now Lake Champlain and thence into 

 the St. Lawrence valley ? 



Plattsburgh, New York, June 13. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



In a circular, " American Reports upon Anatomical Nomen- 

 clature," issued last winter by Professor Wilder, as Secretary of 

 the Committee of the Association of American Anatomists, in the 

 third paragraph of the third page, the Chairman of the Com- 

 mittee of the Anatomische Gesellschaf t should be Professor A . 

 von KoUiker, and the chairman of the American division (ap- 

 pointed in 1891 by the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science) of the International Committee on Biological Nomen- 

 clature should be Professor G. L. Goodale. Professor Wilder 

 desires to express his regret for the errors, due in the one case tO' 

 his own misapprehension and in the other to a clerical mistake. 



— Professor Bardeleben has recently delivered an address in Ber- 

 lin on the modern bullet {British Medical Journal, May 21). The 

 modern rifle sends a bullet with a narrow cylindrical form an'* 

 pointed apex, which at a distance of 1.000 metres has the power 

 to pass through several human bodies or to disable two horves. 

 Its line of flight differs but slightly from the line of sight. It has 

 an inner core of lead enclosed in a casing of steel v\hich prevents 

 the lead from becoming deformed and spreading at the point of 

 contact. This change is of much interest for military surgery. 

 The bullet is lighter than any of the lead bullets, but is sent witlTi 

 a greater velocity. On account of its velocity and its small sur- 

 face of contact, it merely punches out a hole causing very little 

 commotion of the neighboring parts. It is more likely to cause 

 fatal hsemorrhage than the old bullet. If the new bullet wounds 

 at all it will have sufficient power to pass through any part of 

 the body. Colonel Boonen-Rivera, in his report on the civil war 

 in Chili, the only war in which Mannlicher rifles have been used, 

 says that the number of dead on the battlefield was four times 

 larger than that of the wounded. The eS'ect of these bullets on 

 bone has been made the subject of a series of experiments. Up 

 to a distance of 400 metres the bone is invariably shattered, and 

 at greater distances either clean perforations or obhque fractures 

 result. In the next war the ratio of recoveries of those who can be 

 removed still living from the field will be larger than formerly. 

 The new projectile is by no means so humane as it is sometimes 

 called, since within similar periods of time and under equal con- 

 ditions it kills and wounds more men than the old bullet. But 

 the wounds which it causes, if they are not of a directly fatal na- 

 ture, open to the surgeon, as a general rule, a far more promising 

 field for exercising his skill and activity than those which were 

 caused by the old bullet. 



