122 Scientific News. | February, 
the progress of the operation. This method has been tried thus far on 
Richmond earth, in which the diatoms are heavier than the adherent 
matter, but it is pene to be generally applicable. 
Curro SCHEELITE. — This new mineral which occurs in different 
parts of California, wed which resembles scheelite in which a part of the 
lime is replaced by oxide of copper, was first described and named by 
Professor Whitney. Mr. Hawks, in describing it to the San Francisco 
Microscopical Society, stated that when first discovered it was thought to 
be a mechanical mixture of scheelite with some copper mineral, but that 
a careful examination under the microscope showed it to be perfectly 
homogeneous. The decision of the microscope was subsequently con- 
firmed by the discovery of crystals of the mineral, which proved it to be 
a distinct and new species. 
SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
— On the 28th of December, 1876, died at the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, F. B. Meek, long connected with 
the Institution as a volunteer assistant in the department of palæon- 
tology. 
Mr. Meek was of Irish extraction, his parents having settled in 
Indiana some sixty years ago, and shortly after his birth removed to 
Kentucky, where young Meek received a common school education, and 
was known when quite young for his ability as a writer, his retiring dis- 
position, and for exhibiting a marked interest in geology and kindred 
branches of science. On arriving at his majority he entered into com- 
mercial pursuits in which he was not successful, and afterward for a 
time earned his daily bread as a painter of portraits and such other sub- 
jects as the necessities of his surroundings offered to him. He was also 
connected for a time with some local museum of curiosities of the old- 
hioned kind. At a later date his geological predilections were favored 
by a connection with some of the earlier geological surveys in the West, 
while his scientific career may be said to have fairly been opened by 
his employment as a draughtsman and assistant on the survey of the 
State of New York. The discovery which first brought him into prom- 
inence was his identification, independently, of Peruvian rocks in Amer- 
ica, a fact which was discovered nearly simultaneously by several better- 
known geologists. His undivided attention to palæontology and his 
almost unrivaled abilities in delineating the fossils which he studied, 
joined to great caution and what appeared to be an intuitive capacity for 
recognizing the relations of the remains he described, soon placed him 
in the front rank of American paleontologists. The progress of geo- 
logical discovery in the West, which has culminated at the present day in 
the great surveys of Hayden, Powell, and Wheeler, under government 
auspices, is in large part due to the abilities of Mr. Meek, for without 
