April 20, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



625 



ascension and declination. After finding the 

 positions for the epoch 1872.0, the precession 

 and secular variation were computed and tabu- 

 lated. William S. Day, 



Secretary of Section. 



SECTION OF GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 



At the meeting on March 19, 1900, Mr. G. F. 

 Kunz presided, and forty-nine persons were 

 present. 



The secretary announced that this section and 

 the Biological section had been requested to 

 nominate candidates before April 20th, for the 

 grant of the Newberry Research Fund, the 

 grant this year being restricted to those work- 

 ing in botany and geology. Authority was 

 granted to the chairman and secretary of the 

 section to make" such nominations to the coun- 

 cil. 



The chairman announced the course of lec- 

 tures on ' The Principles of Geology ' to be de- 

 livered at Johns Hopkins University in April, 

 under the G. H. Williams memorial lectureship, 

 by Professor W. C. Brogger, of Christiania ; also 

 the receipt of the program of the International 

 Oeological Congress, at which the Academy 

 would be represented by Professor J. J. Steven- 

 son. 



The chair announced the death of Doctor 

 Oliver P. Hubbard, one of the earliest members 

 of the Academy. On motion of Professor R. 

 E. Dodge, a committee of three was appointed 

 to draft resolutions on the death of Dr. Hub- 

 bard, and the chair appointed Dr. Julien and 

 Professor Stevenson such a committee. 



Professor Stevenson presented the following 

 minute upon the life of Dr. H. B. Geinitz, whose 

 death was announced at the February meeting. 



Professor Dr. Hans Bruno Geinitz, for many 

 years an honorary member of this Academy, 

 died January 28, 1900, in the 86th year of his 

 age. 



His work as a geologist began very early, for 

 in 1837, when only twenty years old, he pub. 

 lished a paper on the ' Muschelkalk. ' From 

 that time until within a few weeks of his death 

 brief notices, memoirs and volumes appeared in 

 rapid succession. There seemed to have been 

 no limit to his capacity for hard work. He 

 studied the Cretaceous, Triassic and Carbonifer- 



ous in detail, and his works on the coal fields 

 of Saxony and Germany were marvels, when 

 published, almost half a century ago. His 

 papers on paleontology, vertebrate and inverte- 

 brate, and paleobotany are numerous and im- 

 portant. 



He was put in charge of the Royal Mineralog- 

 ical Cabinet at Dresden in 1846 and retained 

 the position until 1898. The collections in- 

 creased rapidly, so that, in 1857, the Royal 

 Cabinet became the Royal Museum which in 

 later years was one of the chief attractions for 

 foreign visitors. In addition to his other 

 labors, he was professor of mineralogy in the 

 Royal Polytechnic school of Dresden from 1850 

 to 1896, serving meanwhile upon numerous 

 government commissions. 



Professor Geinitz was a typical student, car- 

 ing little for things of this world, devoted to 

 geology and his family. He was genial, sincere, 

 a tender father, a generous friend. By his 

 death German science has lost one of its most 

 conscientious workers and Saxony one of its 

 most respected citizens. 



Dr. Alexis A. Julien and Dr. Theodore G. 

 White were unanimously elected chairman and 

 secretary, respectively, of the section for the 

 ensuing year. 



Dr. Henry B. Kiimmel, Assistant State Geol- 

 ogist of New Jersey, read a summary of the in- 

 formation thus far collected in regard to the ge- 

 ology of ' The Palisades ' of the Hudson river, 

 illustrated by numerous views, many of them 

 taken by Mr. Prince, of Orange, N. J. Most of 

 the details of the paper will be found in the 

 1897 Report of the State Geologist of New Jer- 

 sey. Observers are nearly all agreed that the 

 Palisades are an intrusive trap sheet which has 

 cooled at great depths. The basal contact is 

 observable at 19 localities, in 15 of which the 

 trap is unconformable upon the sandstone and 

 shales beneath, and is penetrated by tongues of 

 the latter, and in three is apparently conform- 

 able. The altitude of the lower contact increases 

 from the south to the north, where it reaches 

 200 feet elevation. The upper contact is seen 

 in six localities. At three of these, dikes pen- 

 etrating the overlying shales occurred at the 

 contacts, in twothe contact is unconformable 

 and in one conformable. In every instance the 



