446 E. Suess— Origin of the Alps. 
00000018 gram of ammonia. A litre of water obtained by 
melting the clear portion of a block of Jamaica Pond ice, con- 
tained ‘04 milligram of ammonia, and a litre of water obtained 
by melting the cloudy porous portion of the same block yielded 
precisely the same amount, viz: at the rate of 0-000004 gram 
of ammonia in 100 ¢. ¢. of the water. By distilling off from a 
water of deep wells in this neighborhood, that had been slowly 
boiled down in a copper still to four-fifths of its original volume 
for the express purpose of expelling ammonia. Both the 
melted ice and the purified well waters had to be distilled anew 
in glass vessels in order to obtain water that was completely 
free from ammonia, but the proportion of impure distillate to 
be thrown aside was no larger, in the one case than in the other. 
I am indebted to my assistant, Mr. D. S. Lewis. for his 
skillful codperation in this research, and to my friend Mr. F. P. 
Pearson, chemist of the Merrimack Print Works, for a number 
of samples of acids. 
Bussey Institution, Jamaica Plain, Mass., September, 1875. 
Art. LIV.—Abstract of a Memoir on the Origin of the Alps ; 
y Prof. Epwarp Susss, of Vienna. 
AccoRDING to the views of the early geologists, still widely 
accepted, the origin of mountains is to be ascribed to the eleva- 
tion of a molten or semi-molten mass which has thrown up the 
this it has been customary to speak of a middle zone, erabracing 
the isolated central masses, with parallel subordinate zones to 
e north and south. The folding and banded arrangement rs 
the outer chains has been ascribed to a mighty pressure WIC 
* Die Entstehung der Alpen, 168 pp. 8vo. Wien, 1875. 
