Geology and Natural History. 239 



certain dates or one date only as the point of departure in priority. 

 The chaotic condition preliminary to a cosmos is fairly upon us. 

 Exactly when and how and where from this confusion an orderly 

 arrangement can arise it is at present impossible to tell. 



Certain it is that all botanists would do well to preserve, 

 throughout the present and the coming days of disorder, that 

 freedom from prejudice which characterized all of Alphonse 

 DeCandolle's work. If everyone, who rushes in fearlessly to take 

 a hand in changing the names of plants, would bear in mind the 

 cautions given in the Phytography, it would save many from 

 mortification when the time comes for exact and enduring work 

 to be sifted from that which is hasty, superficial and ephemeral. 



G. L. G. 



SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. 



I. Geology and Natural History. 



1. Minnesota Geological and Natural History Survey. — A 

 notice of the publication of the memoir of E. O. Ulrich on the 

 Bryozoa of Minnesota, constituting a part of volume III of the 

 final Quarto Report of the Minnesota Geological Survey, is given 

 in the last volume of this Journal. More recently, the following 

 parts of the same volume have been issued: 



Sponges, Graptolites and Corals from the Lower Silurian of 

 Minnesota, by N. H. Winchell and Charles Schuchert. 42 

 pp. 4to, with 2 plates. 



The Lower Silurian JBrachiopoda of Minnesota, by N. H. 

 Wixchell and Charles Schuchert. 144 pp. 4to, with 6 plates. 



Prof. Winchell's Twentieth Annual Report for the year 1891, 

 published during the current year, contains a paper by him on 

 the Crystalline rocks, containing " some preliminary considera- 

 tions as to their structure and origin," and another of 70 pages on 

 the Mesabi Iron Range ; Field observations on certain granite 

 areas by N. S. Grant; a paper on the abandoned strands of Lake 

 Superior, 110 pages, with many illustrations, by A. C. Lawson ; 

 on the Diatomacese of Minnesota in interglaciai peat, by B. W. 

 Thomas, with a list of species and notes by H. L. Smith. 



2. Paleontology of New York, Volume VIII, Part 2, Fascicle 

 1, by Prof. James Hall, assisted by J. M. Clarke. 176 pp. 4to. 

 — This new part of Vol. VIII contains a continuation of Pro- 

 fessor Hall's "Introduction to the Study of the Genera of the 

 Palaeozoic Brachiopoda." The names of the accepted genera and 

 subgenera here discussed and described are Spirifer, Gyrtia, 

 Gyrtina, Syringothyris, Spiriferina, Ambocoelia, Metaplasia 

 (n. g.), Whitfieldia (n. g.), Hyattella, Dayia, Hindella, Meristina, 

 Merista, Meristella, Charionella, Pentagonia, Gamarospira, 

 Athyris, Gliothyris, Actinochonchus, Seminula, Spirigerella, 



