252 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE, 
was difficulty in accounting for the support of the vast roofs which the size of 
some of the deposits required. He now suggests that these roofs were supported 
by ‘‘stalagmite steeples, rising to meet stalactites pendent from above”—a phe- 
nomenon common in large limestone caves. ‘‘If such a cavern, with all its 
piers finished, were to have its outlet choked, and to be filled with water through 
which insensible currents moved, it would become filled with ferruginous clays, 
and in the end all its piers of calcite would be metasomatized into limonite of the 
variety known as pipe-ore.” Subsequent erosion removing the roof would ex- 
pose the clay as the country surface, and leave the metamorphosed stalagmites 
as pipes of ore standing in the clay and ‘‘ descending with broadening bases to 
the floor.” This explanation seems to us to fit the observed facts perfectly.— 
LEngincering and Mining Journal. 
With respect to the six days of creation corresponding to six geologic periods, 
let me repeat that no such six periods are known to geology. No geologist rec- 
ognizes just six pericds in creation. Lyell treats of four eras, thirteen forma- 
tions and thirty-eight strata; Dana mentions seven ages of rock, five divisions, 
or ages, of geologic time (and very different, indeed, from the six days of Gen- 
esis), subdivided into twenty-three periods. Gray and Adams describe five 
classes, eight orders, and fourteen systems of rocks; Page’s ‘‘Geology” has five 
classes and twelve systems; Steele’s ‘‘ Fourteen Weeks in Geology” has four eras 
or times, seven ages, and twenty-one periods; Figuier and Bristow have five 
epochs and thirteen periods; Denton has eight ages, or eras, and eleven periods; 
Taylor has three eras and nine periods; Dawson has four periods and sixteen 
minor periods; Gunning has ten great periods; Nicholson has three periods 
and thirteen systems or formations; and Newberry has four eras, seven ages, and 
twenty-two periods. Nowhere do we find a trace of any szx geologic perioas. 
—W. FE. Coleman in Western Homestead. 
RAG SUGAR. 
It is said that a German manufactory produces, per day, five hundred kilo- 
grammes of glucose, taken from old linen rags. These rags, composed of . fibers 
of almost pure cellulose, are first carefully washed, then treated with sulphuric 
acid (oil of vitrol) which converts them into dextrine. The dextrine so obtained 
is submitted to a wash of lime water, then treated with a new quantity of sul- 
phuric acid, stronger than the preceding. Next the mass is transformed and 
crystallized into glucose, chemically identical with that which constitutes natural 
sugar, called grape sugar, the same which is found in honey and ripe fruits. 
With this glucoe they make, in a manner as fraudulent as it is economical, rich 
confections, gooseberry jelly and others, according to the choice of the con-_ 
sumer.—Le Technologiste. 
