590 General Notes. [June, 
feet. The newly enthroned peak is named Mount Clarke. The 
upper limit of trees upon it is 5900 feet. Above 6500 feet 
patches of snow are found on the lee side of the main range, at 
6500 feet. 
AmErica.—Science states that several expeditions to Alaska are 
projected during the coming season. Gen. Miles, who commands 
in the military district, desires to acquire a knowledge of Cook’s 
inlet and the Tananah course and watershed, and it is hoped that 
a party under Lieut. Ray will be sent for the purpose. The party 
under Lieut. Abercrombie were unable to pass beyond the glacier 
alleged to obstruct the Copper or Atna river, about sixty miles 
from the sea. A party under Lieut. Allen left for the Copper 
river, June 30, and hope to cross the divide between that river and 
the Yukon basin and descend the latter. Lieut. Stoney is reported 
to have a new expedition nearly organized to continue his inves- 
tigations of the Kowak river. 
Evurope.—M. Rabot has explored Lake Enara and the valleys 
of the Pasvig and Talom, in Finland. The country is an im- 
mense forest, with lakes and peat bogs scattered everywhere, and 
the only means of communication is by rivers which abound in 
cascades and rapids. Lake Enara, drained by the Pasvig, is a 
veritable inland sea, with hundreds of islets covered with magni- 
ficent pine trees. The country around it, level and little broken, 
forms a rie fewest between the plateau of Finmark and the hills 
of Russian Lapland 
GEOLOGY AND PALAONTOLOGY. 
THE ORIGIN OF FRESH-WATER Faunas.—Professor W. J. Sollas 
gives to the world, in No. v, Vol. 111, of the Scientific Transactions 
of the Royal Dublin Society a review of the causes which have 
originated and limited the fresh-water faunz of the world. Three 
causes are admitted as proven: (1) the difference in chemical 
` composition of the medium; (2) the severe character of the fresh- 
water climate; (3) the necessity for the suppression of a free 
larval existence. Although the first cause is doubtless a powerful 
one, it is not sufficient to alone account for the facts, as seems to 
