1897.] Botany. 151 
Mahon” as a bowlder in the bed of the Satlej River near Wangtu in 
the N. W. Himalayas. It is regarded as a product of contact action. 
Its original form is thought to have been diabasic or basaltic. 
In the pre-Cretaceous, Cretaceous and Eocene beds of northwestern 
Oregon, Diller”! finds glaucophane schists, sandstones, limestones, ba- 
salts, tuffs and shales. 
The granophyres of Strath, Skye, according to Harker” are filled 
with gabbro inclusions where they intrude a great mass of volcanic ag- 
glomerate. They are denser and darker than the normal granophyres 
lying north of them, in which no basic inclusions are known. The 
gabbro debris in the grease) is more or less dissolved, those frag- 
ments that have most nearly disappeared being represented by isolated 
grains of augite, hypersthene, altered olivine, magnetite and occasionally 
plagioclase. The pyroxenes have suffered greater or less change into 
hornblende and the olivine into pilitic amphibole. The new rock formed 
differs from the normal granophyre in its structure, in that it appears 
to contain nests of secondary minerals. Other fragments besides gab- 
bro were also noticed in the same rock. 
In the course of an article on the mineral deposits of the Central 
Alps, Weinschenk™ describes the granite, gneiss, aplite, lamprophyre, 
mica-schists, quartzite, amphibolite, serpentine and other rocks of the 
Hohen Tanern. 
BOTANY? 
The Metric System in Botany.—The recent appearance of two 
very important works on North American botany, viz., “ Gray’s Syn- 
‘optical Fora of North America, Vol. I, part I” and “Britton and 
Brown’s Illustrated Flora of the Northeastern United States and Can- 
ada, Vol. I,” in which the English units of measurement are used 
throughout, suggests the necessity of some missionary work among 
American botanists. Can it be possible that the botanists of this coun- 
‘try are the most conservative of our scientific men? We take part 
from time to time in the action of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, in which in vigorous and logical sentences 
1 Min. Magazine, XI, p. 141. 
"17th Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Survey, Pt. 1, p. 14-16. 
- ™ Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., Mey.) te p. 820 
®© Zeitschr. f. Kryst., XXVI, 
* Edited by Prof. C. E. Bessey, vadai of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska. 
