THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE IN THE PAST YEAR. 133 
heretofore attending the development of this industry have been overcome. The 
introduction of new methods has also greatly encouraged the prospect for the 
manufacture of soda, which, if as represented, is another material event. And it 
may be said that the production of glucose has kept pace with its remarkable 
development in the past. The prospect now is that this industry, so unfortu- 
nately delayed in our own city, will be in operation here in the near future. 
A very interesting experiment has recently been made, both as to economy 
in operation and in comfort and safety to life in coal mines. It was made before 
«the British Iron and Steel Institute, by Mr. Moseley, and proposes to do away 
with the use of gunpowder and other explosives in breaking down coal in the 
mine, by which the igniting of fire-damp and other dangers attending present 
methods may be avoided. The substitute proposed is the employment of caustic 
lime consolidated into cartridges by a hydraulic pressure of forty tons. These 
cartridges are confined in the bore holes in such a manner that when water is 
forced in contact with them, the force generated by the expansion of the lime 
breaks the coal from the roof in ten or fifteen minutes. The coal is broken off 
in mass, with a greatly reduced wastage, fire-damp incapable of ignition, and the 
mine, instead of being vitiated, as by explosives, is improved in atmosphere. The 
experiments show the method to be very successful, and it has been introduced in 
both England and Belgium. 
Students of geology will remember that in the tracings of the moraine of the 
ice period, a gap has existed in its southern boundary, covering a portion of the 
Appalachian range in Pennsylvania. Prof. H. C. Lewis announces that he has 
succeeded in closing that gap for a distance of four hundred miles — in fact com- 
pleting the line from Cape Cod, to the Mississippi Valley. 
And it is a curious fact that coincident with this announcement of the comple- 
tion of the Hne of the moraine and the apparent final verification of the glacial theory, 
there should come from a very eminent source a substantial denial of the hy- 
pothesis. This is to be found in a volume just issued by Prof. J. D. Whitney, 
whose name is permanently connected with the geology of the Pacific coast. The 
work is entitled, "The Climatic Changes of Geological Times," is from the 
Cambridge press, and based on observations made in the great cordilleras of 
North America. 
The theory of the book is that there has been a constant diminution of pre- 
cipitation from the pliocene to the present time, which is claimed to be shown 
even within historic time by the shrinkage of lakes and rivers in South America 
and the interior basin of Asia. But an outline even cannot be given of an argu- 
ment that covers 400 quarto pages. The point referred to is made, that only in 
western Europe and northeastern America was the glaciation so extensive as to 
demand the assumption of conditions considerably different from the present. 
The environments of individual glacier districts are discussed, and particularly 
those of Greenland, Scandinavia and the Ural. Precipitation is now large in 
Scandinavia and Greenland and small in the Ural, which accounts for the exten- 
sive glaciation in the two former and the absence of glaciers past and present in 
