December 30, 1887.] 



SCIENCE. 



^9 



The elevation of the Zuiii Plateau was attended by the marked 

 bulging or protrusion of limited portions of the Archajan mass 

 carrying up with them the overlying sediments, and forming 

 Mount Sedgwick and other elevations borne upon the plateau. The 

 forms of these granite bosses, as well as the remarkable metamor- 

 phism of the immediately overlying carboniferous sandstone, would 

 seem to suggest very strongly that they may be true laccolites. 

 And this view relieves us of the necessity of accounting for the 

 softening tii situ of the Archffian so near the surface, since these 

 bosses can never have been covered by more than ten thousand 

 feet of strata. There is evidence that the basic eruptions which 

 built up Mount Taylor and the volcanic caps of the mesas were 

 subsequent to some part of the principal erosion of the country, 

 though contemporaneous with a large part of it. 



None of Captain Dutton's conclusions will interest the general 

 student more than those relating to the formation of mountains. 

 He traces a series of mountain forms from the extreme simplicity 

 of structure disclosed in the Zuni Plateau to the comparatively 

 complex structure of the Wasatch and Basin ranges, and finds a 

 generic idea running through them all. It is the idea that was 

 taught us when we were school-boys, that mountains consist of 

 granitic or metamorphic cores, with sedimentary strata upturned 

 upon their flanks. 



" Within the past twelve or fifteen years it has become a widely 

 accepted view among the geologists of Europe and America that 

 the forces which have elevated mountains are derived from the 

 strains set up in the outer envelopes of the earth by the secula 

 cooling and shrinkage of its interior ; but it should be borne in 

 mind that geological science has flourished most in those countries 

 where the best known and most thoroughly studied mountains and 

 ridges are greatly plicated. To the European geologist the Alps 

 and the Jura have always been the most commanding and interest- 

 ing of orographic structures. To the Briton the highlands of Scot- 

 land and Wales have been equally absorbing fields of research, in 

 which the solution of the problem of mountain-building has been 

 attempted. In America geology had its first and most rapid growth 

 in the Appalachian region, and, when it sought fresh fields in the 

 Pacific slope, it first found them in the Coast Ranges and in the 

 Sierra Nevada. All of these regions are more or less plicated ; and 

 it is not to be wondered at that a universal conviction should have 

 grown up that plication and mountain-building are only different 

 names for one and the same thing, or that the process wliich built 

 the mountains folded the strata at the same time. But as soon as 

 the geologists penetrated the vast mountain-belt which lies east of 

 the Sierra and west of the Great Plains, and proceeded to a careful 

 study of the forms there presented, a wholly different state of 

 affairs was revealed. Not a trace of a systematic plication has yet 

 been found there. The terms ' anticlinal ' and ' synclinal ' have 

 almost dropped out of the vocabulary of the Western geologist. 

 The strata are often flexed, but the type of the flexure is the 

 monocline." 



" The Rocky Mountain region discloses whatever it has to tell us 

 about physical geology with marvellous clearness and emphasis, 

 but there is no teaching more clear or more emphatic than the 

 absence of plicating forces from among the agencies which have 

 built its magnificent ranges and hoisted its great plateaus. They 

 have been lifted by vertical forces acting beneath them. The coun- 

 try at large shows no traces of a widespread, universal, horizontal 

 compression ; on the contrary, it discloses the absence of such stress." 



These statements are undoubtedly correct, so far as the paleozoic 

 and later formations, and the existing reliefs of the West, are con- 

 cerned ; and Captain Dutton probably did not intend that they 

 should be applied to the Archaean strata of that region, since these 

 are everywhere as strongly plicated as the rocks of any district on 

 the globe. When these ancient crystalline schists of the Rocky 

 Mountain region were folded up, mountains of the Appalachian 

 type must have been formed. But these were largely swept away 

 by erosion before the beginning of the grand cycle of events which 

 Captain Dutton has outlined. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 

 At a meeting of the Biological Society of Washington, Dec. 17, 

 an interesting paper was read by Mr. C. L. Hopkins on the sense of 



smell in buzzards. This much-debated point was strongly set 

 forth by Mr. Hopkins relating his experience in Florida. It was the 

 uniform testimony of the Florida ' crackers ' that buzzards obtained 

 food by smell. He observed that buzzards never left their roosts on 

 damp, foggy mornings until the ground and shrubbery were dry. 

 They would then move slowly across the wind until a scent was 

 struck, when they would work up the wind until the carrion was 

 found. Sometimes they would drift down the wind, past their 

 prey, until they struck the scent, which would be followed up, find- 

 ing the object of their search sometimes in the densest scrub. He 

 had on several occasions killed wild hogs m the scrub, and after 

 dressing them, and taking what meat he wished, would see twenty 

 or more buzzards coming down with the wind. On several occa- 

 sions, covered offal had been detected by them. They had also 

 discovered a buried snake. Several other instances were related, 

 which, in Mr. Hopkins's opinion, conclusively proved that buzzards 

 find some of their food by scent, though that did not preclude the 

 possibility or probability that they obtain other food by sight. 



— An interesting event took place at the Perkins Institute for the 

 Blind at South Boston on Dec. 21. It was the celebration of the 

 fiftieth anniversary of the entrance into that institution of Laura 

 Bridgeman, the famous blind deaf-mute. Her first instructor. Dr. 

 Samuel G. Howe, is long since dead ; but his wife, Mrs. Julia Ward 

 Howe, presided at the reception. The phenomenal education of 

 Miss Bridgeman will always remain a monument of pedagogic 

 skill. She lost her sight and hearing when two years old, and her 

 taste and smell are both very defective. She speaks by making the 

 manual sighs of the deaf-and-dumb, and reads the similar motions 

 of the ' speaker ' by feeling the letters as they are formed. She does 

 this with marvellous rapidity, and all the addresses were interpreted 

 to her as they were delivered at the reception. Among the speak- 

 ers were Dr. Edward Everett Hale and Dr. Phillips Brooks. 



— The only railway extending into the Arctic zone runs north 

 from the port of Lulea, in Sweden, at the head of the Gulf of Both- 

 nia, toward the iron-mines of the Gellivara Mountains. The first 

 train to cross the Arctic circle passed over this road a few weeks 

 ago. 



— Mr. J. A. Brashear gave an exhibition at his works, Alleghe- 

 ny, Penn., on Dec. 8, 9, and 10, of the large star spectroscope designed 

 and constructed for the Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton, Cali- 

 fornia. 



— The secretary of the committee for the organization of the 

 American Folk-Lore Society, W. W. Newell, Cambridge, Mass., 

 announces that the society will organize in a meeting to be held on 

 Jan. 4 in Cambridge, Mass. The number of members amounts at 

 the present time to two hundred, and, as the society has thus ob- 

 tained an income sufficient to support a journal, it will begin work. 

 The plan of organizing a society of this kind must recommend itself 

 to all interested in the science of man. The scope of the society's 

 work will be the study of the relics of Old English folk-lore, the 

 lore of negroes in the Southern States of the Union, lore of the In- 

 dian tribes of North America, and that of French Canada, Mexico, 

 etc. Furthermore, the study of the general problems of folk-lore, 

 and publication of the results of special students in this department, 

 will form one of the objects of the society. Our country is partic- 

 ularly adapted to the study of certain problems connected with 

 folk-lore, such as the development of European and African lore in 

 a new environment, and the origin of a new lore in mixed races. 

 The material furnished by such researches is of prime importance 

 for a study of the psychology of nations. It is hardly necessary to 

 emphasize the fact that the collection of the rapidly vanishing re- 

 mains of Indian folk-lore must be carried on vigorously, and on an 

 intelligent plan, else it will be too late. The publications of the 

 society will undoubtedly contain a vast amount of interesting ma- 

 terial, and will amply repay the annual fee of three dollars. Our 

 knowledge of the subject of American lore is still so slight, that 

 almost any one who comes into contact with Indians, negroes, or 

 the less educated white men, can make valuable contributions to 

 this science ; and therefore we would wish that the membership 

 of the new society were thousands instead of hundreds. 



