1877.] Geology and Paleontology. 627 
ant surgeon U. S. A., published as No. 7 of Professor Hayden’s Miscel- 
laneous Publications. The work forms an octavo volume of 240 pages, 
and contains, in addition to the grammar and dictionary proper, a very 
valuable monograph of the Hidatsa, and of their neighbors at Fort Ber- 
thold, the Aricarees and Mandans. 
Dr. Dalrymple, of Baltimore, has made an exhaustive study of the 
Pamunkey and Mattapony Indians of Eastern Virginia. ‘They are a 
miserable half-breed remnant of the once powerful Virginia tribes. The 
most interesting feature of their present condition is their preservation 
of their ancient modes of making pottery. It will be news to some that 
the shells are calcined before mixing with the clay, and that at least one 
third of the compound is triturated shells. 
The discussion of the subject of reform spelling still continues in The 
Academy of June 2d, 9th, and 16th. The chief value of this discussion 
to the American ethnologist is the aid which a perfect phonetic alphabet 
would render to those who are engaged in collecting vocabularies or in 
perfecting the synonymy of the tribes. — Oris T. Mason. 
_ GEOLOGY AND PALHONTOLOGY. 
ON THE EXISTENCE OF THE ALLEGHANY DIVISION or THE ÅP- 
PALACHIAN RANGE WITHIN THE Hupson VALLEY. — In preparing 
for the last summer campaign of the Harvard Summer School of Geology, 
my assistant, Mr. William M. Davis, Jr., made a preliminary study of the 
district lying between the Hudson River and the foot of the Catskill 
Mountains. From his observations it became evident to both of us that 
there were peculiar disturbances affecting this district which had remained 
unnoticed by the officers of the New York surveys. Last month I vis- 
ited this region along with the Summer School of Geology. A few days’ 
study made it plain to me that Mr. Davis’s observations had given us a 
clew to an important fact in American geology, and that these disloca- . 
tions, consisting of several abruptly folded anticlinals and synclinals origi- 
nally having several hundred feet relief, are in fact the northward extension 
of the disturbances that made the Alleghany division of the Appala- 
chian chain; while the Catskill Mountains similarly are the north- 
ward extension of the slightly disturbed table-land known as the Cum- 
berland table-land in the valley of that stream, and by various names in 
© more northern localities. It will not be possible to give full details 
of this interesting series of disturbances until the sections and maps 
made by the summer school are fully worked up, which cannot be for 
Some months to come. It may be said, however, that this structure has 
n traced about thirty miles along the Hudson River, and that the sev- 
eral anticlinals closely resemble those of Pennsylvania in all their general 
features: they are, however, smaller, more closely packed together, with 
much steeper dips, often running up to 50° of declivity, and are some- 
What more faulted, but in the direction of their steeper dips their rela- 
