832 The American Naturalist. [September, 
ornithological clubs, which met at intervals during the meeting. 
The one excursion which the local committee arranged to come 
off during the session, that to the regions of the gas wells, north- 
east of the capital city, was well attended. To the many mem- 
bers who had not seen the extraordinary phenomena which 
these localities display, the excursion was of great interest. Per- 
haps the most effective scene was that witnessed at Anderson 
after nightfall, when the gas-jet was turned into the water of the 
White River. The extraordinary pressure threw the latter into 
a boiling caldron of flame and fluid. 
— Among the various official acts of the Association there is 
only one to which we take exception: that is the abolition of the 
Committee on the International Congress of Geologists. This 
committee has been a useful one. It has furnished to the Congress 
the only complete synopsis of the geological formations of North 
America in existence. This work is already somewhat behind the 
times, so rapid is the progress of discovery, but the committee was 
expecting to supply such deficiency from time to time to the suc- 
ceeding meetings of the Congress. But it has done more than this. 
It has suppressed at their inception various crude and unscientific 
products of the official geology of the country. It refused to 
adopt Director Powell’s scheme for revising the colors of our 
geological maps, as compared with those hitherto in use through- 
out the world. It declined to insert in its reports the great dis- 
covery of the “ Agnotozoic” (!) era, which was to occupy a position 
between the “ Azoic” and the Paleozoic. It declined to adopt 
some innnovations in nomenclature desired by the same authority, 
regardless of the law of priority. For these and similar 
reasons the committee incurred the displeasure of the geological 
autocrat at Washington, and he determined on the control or 
abolition of the committee. Failing in the former, he determined 
on the latter, and he has succeeded. This was partly due to 
the weakness of some of the members of the committee them- 
selves, who wearied, prematurely as it appears to us, of the per- 
petual antagonism to which they were subjected. And now we 
suppose that the Geology of America will be “ officially ” ICE 
structed and presented brand new to the Congress of 1892, 10 
Washington, if any is ever held. 
