June 3, 1887.] 



SCIUJ^GU. 



535 



be attributed the difficulty wbicb Dr. Boas encoun- 

 tered in studying our material in comparison with 

 his own from that region. 0. T. Mason. 



Washington, May 30. 



An American dialect society. 

 Keferring to the letter by E. B. in Science of May 

 20, it is certainly possible to establish an Ameri-i 

 can dialect society. Yet I believe it much the better 

 way to have the work undertaken by the American 

 philological association than to form a new society. 

 In my opinion, the advance of philological science 

 will be much more readily promoted by a combina- 

 tion of the various societies now existing than by the 

 formation of others. Philology would be the gainer 

 if the Oriental and Modern language associations 

 could be united with the American under one con- 

 trol. The success of the American association for 

 the advancement of science should teach that in 

 union there is strength, and that a large society at- 

 tracts not only more attention from the public, but 

 brings to its meetings a much larger proportion, as 

 I believe, of its own members. The work of a 

 dialect society is so largely local in its character 

 that it can best be done by a large number of per- 

 sons. That such a work should be done needs little 

 proof. The princij)al question is, By whom shall it 

 be done ? S. C. Derby. 



Columbus, O., May 24. 



The causation of consumption. 



Within the last few years the attention of the 

 medical profession has been more than ever turned 

 to the consideration of the cause or causes of pul- 

 monary consumption. The renewed interest in the 

 etiology of this disease is owing to the discovery of 

 the bacillus tuberculosis. This important event gave 

 origin to two theories; the one holding that the 

 only cause of consumption was the bacillus tubercu- 

 losis, and the other that the disease but furnished 

 a nidus for the bacillus, and that hence its presence 

 was not a cause, btit an effect. This difference of 

 opinion among physicians has not materially altered 

 even to the present day ; and, while the factors of 

 the problem which give rise to this difference of 

 opinion remain unsolved, it is savoring of dogma- 

 tism to say that it is decided that so and so is the 

 cause of consumption. 



As we proceed further in our investigation of the 

 causation of consumption, we find the adherents of 

 one theory placing great stress upon heredity, and, 

 on the other hand, men of the highest authority 

 and standing in the medical profession giving it as 

 their opinion that there is no direct heredity other 

 than that the child of phthisical parents starts in 

 life with a small stox?k of vitality, and is thus ren- 

 dered more liable to the invasion and the destructive 

 influences of any and all diseases. 



At the present state of the inquiry it seems some- 

 what too hasty to say just what the cause of pul- 

 monary consumption may be ; but it certainly ap- 

 pears that this cause is compound, being made iip of 

 at least three several elements : to wit, — 



1*^. The feeble vitality or resisting power with 

 which the given organism enters upon life. 



2° (a). The action of an environment upon this 

 organism detrimental to the maintenance of a good 

 general health ; or (6) in some cases the existence of 

 a state of debility after an acute disease. 



3°. The organism thus influenced being exposed 

 to the action of the bacillus tuberculosis. 



The bacillus tuberculosis is so widely disseminated 

 in the air we breathe, and distributed in the food we 

 eat. that, were it the only or the main cause of con- 

 sumption, we might expect the extermination of the 

 human race within a few years. 



We may plant corn uj)on unsuitable soil, and there 

 will be no growth ; we may plant it upon prepared 

 soil and exclude the sunlight, heat, and moisture, 

 and there will be no growth ; and so the bacillus 

 tuberculosis is deposited in the lungs of every one 

 of us nearly every day, and yet it takes no hold 

 upon the majority, because either the system is re- 

 fractory to it, or our environment is such that it 

 cannot develop. James P. Maesh. 



Green Island, N.Y., May 30. 



The equivalence in tim.e of American marine 

 and intracontinental tertiaries. 

 In a paper published in the May number of the 

 American journal of science, Dr. C. A. White dis- 

 cusses the possibilities of correlating in detail the 

 North American intracontinental and marine ter- 

 tiaries, and refers to the identification by Prof. L. F. 

 Ward of four species of plants from the tertiaries of 

 the Mexican gulf border, with those found in the 

 Laramie group. I am unable to refer to the report 

 of Professor Ward, which has not yet reached this 

 coast, and am therefore unaware whether the ]3lants 

 referred to are from the country east or west of the 

 Mississippi Eiver ; but I would take this occasion to 

 call attention again to the opj)ortunities afforded for 

 the establishment of such correlations, in north- 

 western Louisiana, south-western Arkansas, and the 

 adjacent portions of Texas and the Indian Territory, 

 where the marine formations, still recognizable in 

 detail by their characteristic shells, are indefinitely 

 split up, both horizontally and vertically, into a 

 maze of marine outliers and fresh and brackish 

 water deposits, of the equivalence and continuity of 

 which there can be no possible question. Among 

 these, certain fresh-water deposits on the upper Bed 

 Eiver in Louisiana are extremely rich in well-pre-, 

 served leaves and fruits, of which a collection (de- 

 posited at the University of Mississippi at Oxford) 

 was made by me in 1869. Among my publications 

 setting forth these facts, I have, in a paper read_ at 

 the Indianapolis meeting of the American association 

 for the advancement of science in 1871, pointedly 

 alluded to the probable original continuity of this 

 ' Mansfield group ' of Loiiisiana with intraconti- 

 nental tertiaries, and the further probability, that, 

 by means of remaining outliers, at least a chrono- 

 logical scale for parallelizing these formations might 

 be established along the shallow connecting trough 

 otitlined by the cretaceous shore-lines. While my 

 supposition that the cross-timbers of Texas were 

 also of tertiary age, has since been disproved, I am 

 not aware that any exhaustive examination of the 

 region lying between the Eed and Arkansas rivers 

 in the Indian Territory has been made ; j^et it is 

 there that such direct connection must have existed, 

 if at all within tertiary times. The striking increase 

 of the lignitiferous facies toward the north-western 

 border of the Gulf tertiary area, culminating in the 

 appearance of bands of fresh-water limestone at 

 Mansfield and north-westward ; the fan-like expan- 

 sion, in Arkansas and Louisiana, of the older por- 



