372 Scientific Intelligence. 



3. Relations between the Cambrian and Pre- Cambrian forma- 

 tions in the vicinity of Helena, Montana ; by Charles I). Wal- 

 cott. Smithson. Misc. Coll., G4, No. 4, 1916, pp. 259— :i() I , 

 pis. 39-44, text figs. 10-13.— When Professor Rothpletz of the 

 University of Munich attended the International Geological Con- 

 gress in Canada in 1914, he made it a point to visit Helena, Mon- 

 tana, and since then has published his conclusion that the Belt 

 series held by all American geologists to be of pre-Cambrian age 

 is actually of Lower Cambrian time. Such a conclusion from one 

 of Europe's foremost geologists could of course not be neglected, 

 ami as Walcott has done more than any other in the interpreta- 

 tion of Proterozoic strata it is but natural that he should reply to 

 Professor Rothpletz' publication, lie says: "The Rothpletz 

 failure to find any evidence of an unconformity at the base of the 

 Cambrian is most natural as he unknowingly identified the Cam- 

 brian limestones as the pre-Cambrian Helena limestone and hence 

 did not recognize and probably did not see at all the Helena 

 limestone which is beneath the unconformity. . . The Rothpletz 

 view of considering all of the pre-Cambrian sedimentary forma- 

 tions of North America corresponding to the Belt series as of 

 probable Cambrian age is without evidence to support it" (297- 

 298). 



Plates 40-43 are splendid illustrations of the very significant 

 unconformities in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River 

 between the Archeozoic, Proterozoic, and Paleozoic, and nothing 

 of equal grandeur has ever been published before. c. s. 



Obituary. 



Professor Charles S. Prossek, head of the department of 

 geology in Ohio State University and author of many papers and 

 books on geological subjects, died suddenly on September 12 at 

 the age of fifty-six years. 



Professor Josiaii Royce, from 1892 until his recent retire- 

 ment, professor of philosophy in Harvard University, died on 

 September 14 in his sixty-first year. 



Professor Gustav Scuwalbe, the distinguished German 

 anatomist of the University of Strassburg, died in July. His 

 work was concerned particularly with the study of the Lower 

 Paleolithic human remains; it led to the establishment of Homo 

 neanderthalensis as a distinct species. 



Professor Karl Sciiwai:zsciiild, the eminent German astron- 

 omer, has died recently. 



Prince Boris Galitzin, the seismologist and professor of 

 physics in thl Imperial Academy of Sciences in Petrograd, died 

 in May last. 



