232 Scientific Intelligence. 



presence of water, by treatment with dilate solutions of certain 

 electrolytes and by electrolysis. Some of these effects have been 

 known for many years, but the authors find that the extraction 

 of the alkali of ground feldspar can be made practically com- 

 plete in the laboratory by properly combining these modifying 

 factors. As a result the Department of Agriculture has applied 

 for a patent covering the fundamental principles of the extrac- 

 tion of potash from finely ground feldspathic rocks by process of 

 electrolysis, so that any officials or citizens of the United States 

 may use such methods without the payment of royalty. J. b. 



12. Minerals from Lyon Mountain, Clinton County, A 7 ! Y. 

 by Herbert P. Whitlock. Pp. 55-96, with 11 plates. Re- 

 printed from N. Y. State Museum, Bulletin 107, Geological 

 papers. — The species described in this paper occur as secondary 

 minerals with the magnetite deposits of the Chateaugay mines at 

 Lyon Mountain. The most interesting species is calcite, of 

 which a number of complex forms are described and figured. 

 Other species included are pyrite, quartz, hematite, albite, 

 amphibole, zircon, epidote, and titanite. 



13. Synopsis of Mineral Characters alphabetically arranged 

 for Laboratory and Field Use; by Ralph W. Richards. 

 'First Edition. Pp. v, 99, with 17 figures. New York (John 



Wiley and Sons). — This little book of one hundred pages, with 

 flexible covers — in a form suitable for the pocket — contains a 

 list of the more important mineral species in alphabetical order, 

 with their prominent characters well selected and arranged. 

 The vocabulary also includes names of prominent rocks and 

 descriptive mineralogical terms. The work should prove valu- 

 able to many persons who desire to have beside them a digest of 

 the larger mineralogies, so as to be aided in the immediate 

 identification of species. 



14. Crystallized Native Copper from JBisbee, Arizona; by 

 A. H. Petereit (communicated). The cut, shown on page 233, 

 represents one of ten specimens of native copper from Bisbee, 

 that were exhibited at the recent meeting of the American Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science, which was held at the 

 Museum of Natural History, New York City. 



The crystals are beautifully grouped on a limonite matrix. 

 Some of them are one inch long and numbers of them stand free 

 and either terminated in a sharp point or like the head of a nail ; 

 some are also twinned. They are either of a bright copper-red 

 color, or are coated with native silver. Hundreds of these deli- 

 cate crystals are grouped on a single specimen, and from a very 

 beautiful whole. They all come from a single pocket in the cele- 

 brated Copper Queen Mine, at Bisbee, Arizona. 



