EDITORIAL NOTES. 



323 



sure, as a hot iron bar ; but breaks, with a 

 clean fracture, when sudden weight is ap- 

 plied. When, therefore, a plate of iron or 

 a stone is placed on ice, it sinks in, and the 

 ice, by the pressure, rises over and covers it, 

 as if the ice were so much pitch. A volume 

 of ice can thus be pressed forward by the 

 simple weight behind it, though the outer 

 line of the ice-stream may be on a level, and 

 the upper portion be pushed on faster than 

 the bottom, which is kept back somewhat by 

 friction against the earth. The great forces 

 producing glacier motion are gravitation, in 

 the passage down slopes, and heat, which, 

 by varying the size of the ice crystals, makes 

 a greater pressure on those portions which 

 absorb the most heat. The surface receives 

 more heat than its base. 



Judge E. P. West has been making a 

 scientific excursion up the Missouri River, 

 and in a recent communication speaks of an 

 important discovery at Weston, Mo. He 

 says : 



"On the 8th day of September, 1875, Dr. 

 Parr opened one of the numerous mounds near 

 Weston, and was rewarded by finding in it 

 a human skeleton buried horizontally at full 

 length, and near the head a vase or vessel of 

 antique pottery of the capacity of about one 

 gallon. The vessel contained within it the 

 bones of a fish and some shell beads. It was 

 broken in several places, but remained 

 around the cast of clay within, and with 

 great patience and skill was reconstructed by 

 Dr. Parr, and it now exhibits its original 

 form and markings as distinctly as if it had 

 never been broken. It is what is known as 

 the basket type of pottery, i. e. the marking 

 on the outer surface has the appearance of 

 the vessel having been molded in a basket 

 made of grass or small willow twigs for that 

 purpose ; and from this fact it has been in- 

 ferred that pottery of this type was so fash- 

 ioned ; but, from an examination of numerous 

 specimens of this class, and especially from 

 the vase found by Dr. Parr, I have reason to 

 believe that this style of pottery was not so 

 molded, and that the surface marking is only 

 one mode of ornamentation, traced with great 



patience upon the vessel. The frontal bone 

 of the individual found by Dr. Parr is of the 

 true type of others I have found in the Mis- 

 souri bluff mounds and described in former 

 articles. It is a type well and strongly mark- 

 ed, and not to be mistaken by those who have 

 once seen it. But what gives to Dr. Parr's 

 find its chief interest is the fish bones found 

 in the vase." * * " It has been the 

 custom of barbarous and semi-barbarous peo- 

 ple to inter with their dead the means of 

 subsistance on their long journey to their 

 supposed future abode in another state of 

 being ; and they select for this purpose those 

 articles of food they are habitually accustom- 

 ed to using. The accustomed food of such 

 a people is that which is most accessible to 

 them. During the lacustrine time fish was 

 more accessible than terrestrial animals, for 

 the former must have been very abundant 

 while the latter was probably very scarce. 

 Time moved on, the lacustrine era ended, 

 conditions changed, and terrestrial animals 

 became more plentiful, and more accessible 

 than fish, and, consequently, became the ac- 

 customed food of our modern tribes, as fish 

 had been the principal food of the lake shore 

 dwellers, or mound-builders of the Missouri 

 River bluffs. Our modern tribes would nev- 

 er have thought of burying a fish with their 

 dead, and it is probable that the older lake 

 shore dwellers rarely, if ever, used terrestrial 

 animals for this purpose." 



The American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science held its annual meeting this 

 year in Montreal, Canada. This Associa- 

 tion holds the same position to science in 

 this country as the British Congress of Sci- 

 ence does in England. The meeting for this 

 year was an important one, and the next 

 number of the Review will contain a full 

 digest of the proceedings and papers. 



The Germans will send out four parties to 

 observe the transit of Venus over the Sun's 

 disc, December 6, 1882. This transit will 

 be visible in a greater or less degree to a 

 large part of the world, except to Eastern 

 Europe, and to Asia, and wholly visible to 



