1032 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 287. 



This plan was adopted by Sir Henry Bessemer, 

 a half century ago, and with, as he thought, 

 excellent results ; but no one knows precisely 

 to what extent the reduction of resistance oc- 

 curs. The Bessemer train seems to have been 

 a more perfect illustration of the principle of 

 construction proposed than is the modern ex- 

 ample. 



A speed of 78 miles an hour is reported from 

 Baltimore ; but this is, of course, little to the 

 purpose. The same weight of train could prob- 

 ably have been forced up to the same speed by 

 a plucky engineer if constructed in the usual 

 way. In fact, speeds of equal and greater 

 magnitude are, and have for years been, made 

 on the East and West Coast Railways of Great 

 Britain and the record is held in our own coun- 

 try at above 100 miles an hour with the com- 

 mon form of train. What is wanted is an ac- 

 curate comparison, by experts, of resistances at 

 equal speeds of the ordinary train and of the 

 same size and weight of train encased with the 

 cigar-shaped shell devised by Bessemer. Obvi- 

 ously, the more perfectly the cylindrical spindle 

 is approached in the exterior conformation of 

 the train, the less will be the air-resistance. 

 This, at high speeds now coming to be not un- 

 usual, will no doubt prove of real value if the 

 improvement of Bessemer can be effected with- 

 out too much loss of comfort, convenience and 

 safety. Bessemer fitted his engine with a co- 

 noidal ' bow,' as the seaman would call it, and 

 also coned the rear of the train, as well as provid- 

 ing against breaks between adjacent cars. The 

 train was fairly cylindrical. He ran it at enor- 

 mous speeds, for the time, until it was finally 

 'ditched.' 



K. H. Thurston. 



CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 



TOPOGRAPHIC TERMS. 



H. M. Wilson, of the U. S. Geological Sur- 

 vey, has compiled a very useful ' Dictionary of 

 Topographic Forms ' {Bull. Amer. Oeogr. Soc. , 

 xxxii, 1900, 32-41), containing definitions of 

 some 260 words, and ' intended to include all 

 those terms employed popularly or technically 

 in the United States to designate the component 

 parts of the surface of the earth.' Besides a 



majority of English words, there are many taken 

 from Spanish and French, and a few from other 

 languages, making an interesting and charac- 

 teristic polyglot vocabulary that has naturally 

 grown up in different parts of the country. The 

 definitions are terse and appropriate in nearly 

 all cases. Escarpment is very properly lim- 

 ited to ' an extended line of cliffs or bluffs,' in- 

 stead of being allowed to include the body of 

 an unsymmetrical ridge, as is the practice of 

 some English writers. Interfluve is of relatively 

 new coinage, equivalent to doab of northern 

 India, meaning ' the upland separating two 

 streams having approximately parallel course.' 

 The printer seems to have suppressed a few 

 words, such as 'the low alluvial land about,' 

 at the beginning of the definition of delta which 

 reads ' the mouth of a river which is divided 

 down stream into several distributaries.' Bot- 

 tom, as well as bottom land, should be defined 

 accordihg to its use in the Southern States, as 

 a narrow flood plain. Cascade is not ' a short, 

 rocky declivity in a stream bed, ' but the dashing 

 water on such a declivity. Upland might ad- 

 visedly be used for surfaces intermediate in 

 altitude between lowland and highland, instead 

 of serving as a synonym for highland. Land- 

 slide deserves definition in the active sense of a 

 sliding mass, as well as in the passive sense of 

 a mass that has slid. Several words have a 

 more general use than is indicated ; for exam- 

 ple, dome and meadow are well known in the 

 east as well as in the west. Malpais is perhaps 

 by accident referred to French instead of to 

 Spanish origin. 



It is to be hoped that geographers in different 

 parts of the country may contribute supplements 

 to this fundamental list, and that it may be re- 

 published in more extended form in a year or 

 two. Adjectives and perhaps verbs also might 

 then be added to the nouns that now appear 

 alone. The following terms are offered for con- 

 sideration, some being taken from Whitney's 

 ' Names and Places ' (1888) : — Slough, towhead, 

 ford, reach (used in Wilson's definitions, but 

 not defined), meander, bend (perhaps kink also, 

 from Alaska), narrows, shut-in (Mo.), dismal 

 (N. C), barrens (Tenn.), glen (N. Y.), intervale 

 (N. H.), falls (in the Maryland sense of a cas- 

 cading stream), river (in the Florida sense of a 



