

NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 615 
the direction in which they start. Mr. Endicott asks if any one have ever 
known them to turn to the left? In answer to his enquiry, I would like 
to have it distinctly understood, that in both the cases mentioned above, 
the holes turned to the left. I have sometimes found a nest of grass and 
sticks, but not usually. Mr. Wood says the eggs are about seven in 
number. have found as many as eleven eggs in a nest, but never more 
than that.—C. E. WILLIAMS, Utica, N. F. 

GEOLOGY. 
Io DRIFT. — Since my announcement, at the late meeting of the 
American Association for poe Advancement of Science, at Chicago, of 
adjacent parts of Dakota and Minnesota, the red quartzite boulders of the 
drift of Western Iowa, I have had the additional pleasure of following up, 
to its original home, much of the granite also, which és profusely scat- 
tered in the Iowa drift. 
These observations of granite in situ, were confined to the immediate 
Vicinity of the Minnesota river, and indeed to the bottom of its valley 
Fo d 
ese rocks, prone evidently ‘belonging to one continuous mass, are 
quite variable in texture and proportions of composition, even within a 
Short distance. pie prevailing. color is reddish, from the great prepon- 
derance of feldspar of that color. Hornbl lende is always present, and 
~- 
rocks. 
Slightly tortuous ditch 
hundred feet deep. Thus, as one travels over the prairi 
region, he sees nothing of these rocks in situ, but in the bottom -of the 
valley. he finds add large exposures 0 f granitic rocks as characteris- 
tic as those of New England. As might be inferred from the great pre- 
Ponderance of aaia ppr hornblende, these rocks readily disintegrate, 
limestone, and at the mouth of the 
red feet in 
ordinary soil, like 
e Organ moun untains. 
