660 NOTE ON BUFO AMERICANUS. 
nations occur at the junction of the Trenton and Hudson River 
formations. 
The above section occurs on the east side of a small open valley. 
On the west side of the same valley the foot of the bare front of 
the hill consists of quartzite, dipping slightly to the north-west- 
ward, as if one side of a very gentle anticlinal of which the rock 
of the Devany quarry is the opposite. The quartzite, although 
hard and generally pure, contains a layer of mica schist ten inches 
thick which becomes pure quartzite a hundred feet to the east- 
ward. Above the quartzite follows gneiss, which continues west- 
ward three miles, in a shallow synclinal, to Great Barrington, and 
there this gneiss is overlaid by a second thick stratum (100 feet 
or so) of quartzite. Here, then, there are two strata of quartzite 
separated by two or three hundred feet of gneiss, the whole over- 
lying the Stockbridge limestone. The gneiss is a very firm rock, 
covering the slopes in some places with blocks like houses in size, 
where upturned through the growth of trees. I had suspected 
that it was one of the older gneisses of New England, until I 
found that it was overlaid by quartzite, and, on tracing further the 
stratification, proved that it belongs unquestionably to the series 
of rocks newer than the limestone. 
From the facts which have been presented it follows that all 
old-looking Green Mountain gneisses are not pree-silurian, and, 
further, that the presence of staurolite is no evidence of a præ- 
silurian age. 
NOTE ON BUFO AMERICANUS.* 
T BY REV. DR. THOMAS HILL. 
Tuts note is intended as a contribution toward the psychology 
of the American toad; simply presenting some evidences of in- 
telligence and of capacity for learning to which I have been 
witness. 
In the summers of 1843-5, an old toad used to sit under the 
door of a beehive every fine evening, and dextrously pick up those 
bees which, overladen or tired, wiisd the doorstep and fell to the 
*Read at the Portland Meeting of the Amer. Assoc. Ady. Sci. 
