420 General Notes. [May, 



that the mound-builders may have shaped it to suit their ideas of 

 symmetry. On the right bank of the river, some three miles 

 back, and in the swamp, I was told by the negroes there were 

 two other large mounds similar in appearance to the one de- 

 scribed above. I did not have time to see and examine them. 

 Below New Orleans I noticed two small irregular lumps, bearing 

 evidence of a crater on one side, in one, and in the center in the 



At Southwest Pass there is a mound, or elevated area, called a 

 " salt mound," from the well of salt water in the center. The 

 pilot* told me that when these lumps, or areas, are thrown up, 

 there are, at first, salt wells on them ; the wells are very deep 

 and boil up, apparently from escaping gas ; ultimately the wells 

 fill up and disappear. There are frequent vibrations, and horizon- 

 tal and vertical movements of the land in the passes. On one of 

 the lumps in Southwest Pass there is a well discharging an inflam- 

 mable gas. 



Professor Thomassy examined the Le Bourgeois mound and 

 pronounced it the result of the damming of a subterranean 

 stream. Professor Lyell thinks that they may be caused either 

 by the binding of the stratum of earth deposited in the bottom of 

 the river by its own weight and motion, down the grade of the 

 stream, or by the vertical pressure of accumulations of gas, or 

 by both. 



In one or two works on the antiquities of the mound-builders, 

 there are notices of numerous anomalous mounds, generally of 

 small size, scattered throughout the Mississippi valley. These 

 may be mud lumps similar to the small ones surrounding the Le 

 Bourgeois mound. — M. H. Simons, P. A. Surgeon, U. S. Navy. 



Geological News. — The Geological Magazine for February 

 contains articles upon the occurrence of Spermophilus in Nor- 

 folk, England, beneath the boulder-clay or till, by E. T. Newton; 

 and a Supplement to a chapter in the history of Meteorites, by 

 W. Flight. Mr. Flight notices the principal meteorites found be- 

 tween 1875 and 1 88 1. In the same magazine Mr. H. H. Ho- 



worth concludes his argument for the occurrence of a great post- 

 glacial flood. After reviewing the theories of Pere David, Mr. 

 Kingsmill, Baron Richthofen, etc., and pointing out that they fail 

 to explain the occurrence of the loess at considerable elevations, 

 the character of the loess material and the nature and preserva- 

 tion of its fossils, he proceeds to argue that the loess had its ori- 

 gin in vast outbursts of volcanic mud, a great portion of which 

 was swept away and carried to a lower level by a deluge on an 



immense scale. At a recent meeting of the Royal Institution 



of Great Britain, Dr. W. B. Carpenter spoke upon land and sea 

 in relation to geological time. The conclusion supported was 

 that the deep ocean basins date from the most remote antiquity, 

 and that the subsidences and depressions of existing continents 



