28o 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 280 



be expected that it would pass a vote morally condemning its own 

 acts. In the next place, the opposition, or, more properly speaking, 

 the true friends of education in New York, began their attack by 

 first selecting a candidate whose reputation, experience, and force 

 of character were not equal to the tremendous work of reforming 

 the present vicious system of instruction. The large results of the 

 investigation of Mr. Jasper's records will appear next year, when he 

 will be confronted by a rival candidate as well as his own record. 

 The public, has now been informed of the sad situation, and will 

 be prepared for serious work when the next two years close and 

 another election of superintendent takes place. When Mr. Kiddle 

 withdrew, and Mr. Jasper took the New York schools in hand, the 

 change was noticed at once. The teachers were all put in the po- 

 sition of wheels contributing to a nicety to the general movement, 

 and the product was a machine-made pupil. The perfect exami- 

 nation was very much on a par with Showman Forepaugh's trick- 

 elephant. If one teacher undertook to feed the starved minds of 

 the little ones, then there was trouble with the machine, and the 

 teacher was subdued." Every word of this is true, and is in full 

 accord with the position that Science has taken in this important 

 matter. If the Public Education Society does its full duty, the sit- 

 uation will be materially altered before another election takes place. 



The London publishers and printers are getting more and 

 more excited over the provision of the Chace international copy- 

 right bill, which requires a foreign book copyrighted in this country 

 to be printed from types set up in the United States. The print- 

 ing and allied trades section of the London Chamber of Commerce 

 has sent a resolution to the Chamber of Commerce, asking the 

 government to obtain by diplomatic means the withdrawal of the 

 objectionable provision, and, if this is not done, demanding that a 

 similar law be passed in England. What the English publishers 

 and printers desire is an opportunity to make all books written or 

 compiled in Great Britain and sold in the American markets. That 

 is something that the Congress of the United States will never 

 agree to, if the passage of an international copyright act is post- 

 poned a quarter of a century. England may prevent books printed 

 in America from being sold in Great Britain, but will never suc- 

 ceed in dictating in what shape a law shall be passed by the Con- 

 gress of the United States until the former raises a generation of 

 abler diplomatists than she has lately sent abroad. 



An item published in the Washington papers last Satur- 

 day, entitled ' The Army Ahead,' in which it is represented that 

 competitive tests of the ' indications ' work of the Signal Office, to 

 determine the relative merits of military and civilian officers in the 

 performance of this work, had been made, is likely to mislead any 

 one who has not read the description of the present condition of 

 affairs in the Signal Office, published in the last issue of Science. 

 The predictions for February were made by Lieutenant Dunwoody, 

 and those for March by Prof. Cleveland Abbe. The percentages 

 of verifications for each month have been computed by Professor 

 Marvin, who found the record as follows : Professor Abbe, indica- 

 tions 75.42 per cent, storm-signals 62.50 per cent, cold-wave sig- 

 nals 53.99 per cent; Lieutenant Dunwoody, indications 80.55 per 

 cent, storm-signals S9.29 per cent, cold- wave signals 86. 11 per cent. 

 It should be remembered, that years ago, when the weather reports 

 became most popular and there were nothing but compliments for 

 its predictions. Professor Abbe, then in thorough practice, prepared 

 the indications for a long time. Of late he has been engaged in an 

 entirely different line of scientific work, and it was not to be ex- 

 pected that he would be as successful in preparing indications as 

 an officer who had lately been engaged in that service. General 

 Greely's purpose in putting Professor Abbe upon this duty at all 

 was to train civilians for it in case Congress, as seemed more than 

 probable, should transfer the weather bureau to a civil department. 



THE CRENITIC HYPOTHESIS AND MOUNTAIN- 

 BUILDING. 



The facts derived from the study of metamorphic rocks and vol- 

 canic phenomena make it evident that there are two types of mo- 

 tion which take place in the deeper-buried materials of the earth's 

 crust. One of these classes of movements occurs when volcanic 

 ejecta creep horizontally towards the vent, or when the materials 

 which afford the support of mountain-arches undergo massive 

 movements towards the base of such folds in the rocks. -In these 

 cases of horizontal movements we have translations of extensive 

 bodies of matter for considerable distances. The other class .of 

 movements taking place in the crust are in a vertical direction. 

 They are brought up in part by the action of water, and in part by 

 the action of igneous forces. The operation of these agents leads 

 to a very extensive transfer of material in a vertical path, from the 

 deeper-buried to the more superficial strata. I propose in the fol- 

 lowing pages to consider the general effect of this upward move- 

 ment of matter upon mountain-building. 



The simple inspection of most mountain-built districts will show 

 the observer that there has been a very extensive movement of ma- 

 terials from lower to higher levels in the crust in such areas. Tak- 

 ing a considerable surface of mountainous country, where by chance 

 the bed-rocks are exposed to view, we almost always find in 

 such regions numerous veins and dikes. Thus, in the anticlinal 

 districts of New England, especially where those portions of the 

 surface are exposed along the seashore, we are often able to ascer- 

 tain, that, on the path traversed by a straight line a mile in length, 

 the addition to the material in the more superficial rocks has beea 

 sufficient to produce a considerable extension of their area. In 

 some sections having this length, I have been able to prove that 

 the increase in the horizontal section, due to the introduction of the 

 materials derived from below, amounts to as much as from ten to 

 twenty per cent of the original area ; or, in other words, on a line a 

 mile in length, the dikes and veins occupy from one-tenth to one- 

 fifth of the distance. Besides the distinct intrusions of matter in 

 the form of dikes and veins, there have in many instances been 

 large contributions to the more elevated parts of the crust through 

 the interstitial contributions of crystalline material. Thus in some 

 of our highly metamorphosed rocks, where the materials have as- 

 sumed the crystalline structure, a progressive growth of the horn- 

 blendic and other aggregations has been observed ; so that, besides- 

 the contributions of matter which we may reckon from a study of 

 dikes and veins, there is often a large but incomputable element of 

 crystalline growth, serving to extend the rocks, which is not readily 

 to be taken into account. 



The immediate causes of this transfer of material from the 

 deeper-lying to the more superficial parts of the earth's crust are 

 now tolerably well known. In large measure it is due to the pe- 

 culiar effect of temperature upon the water which was enclosed in the 

 sedimentary rocks at the time of their formation, or which may have 

 penetrated into them from the surface. The process of burial be- 

 neath sedimentary formed accumulations acts in all cases to lift 

 the temperature of all the rocks which are subjected to such cover- 

 ing. Where these rocks contain the waters of deposition, they are 

 likely in time to be brought to a high degree of heat. The tem- 

 perature to which they attain, and the pressure to which they are 

 subjected, enable them to dissolve a large share of the materials 

 with which they come in contact. Moving upward in the chan- 

 nels which may be opened by chance riftings of the superimposed 

 strata, these waters, deprived of their power to retain the materials 

 in solution by the loss of temperature in their upward journey, and 

 the relinquishment of pressure which comes about at the same 

 time, lay down deposits in the upper portions of the crust. In a 

 similar manner the descending pluvial waters obtain in the deeper 

 parts of the crust a store of dissolved materials, which, on their re- 

 ascent, is likewise deposited in the higher rocks. Thus the move- 

 ments of water below the drainage-level of the country inevitably 

 operate to bring from below and deposit in the upper parts of the 

 crust large amounts of mineral matter. 



The nature of the forces which urge dike-stones from the deeper 

 to the more elevated parts of the crust are not so clear as those in- 

 volved in the formation of veins. It seems not unlikely that it is to- 



