692 Scientific News. [June, 
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SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
— The Appalachian Mountain Club has issued its Register for 
1883, containing its by-laws, list of members, etc. A fresh num- 
ber of its journal, Appalachia, was issued in April. Among the ` 
leading articles are Professor E. C. Pickerings’s on mountain ob- — 
servations, A. E. Scott’s on the Twin Mountain range, and Mr. W. — 
O. Crosby’s on the mountains of Eastern Cuba, in which he - 
claims that Cuba has, in Post-tertiary times, been an area of ex- 
tensive elevation, the, reefs fringing its mountains to a height of 
nearly 2000 feet affording indisputable evidence. But he ques- 
tions whether these reefs were formed while the land was actually : 
rising. The reefs in fact are witnesses both for elevation and sub- — 
sidence, “testifying with nearly equal distinctness to both elevation 
and subsidence.” The coast of Cuba is said not to be probably 
rising now, at least not at all points. Hence Mr. Crosby dots 
not agree with Mr. A. Agassiz, who claims that the West Indian - 
reefs, at least that of Alcaran, were formed during the elevation : 
of the sea bottom, but accepts Darwin’s theory as an adequate — 
explanation of the elevated reefs of the Greater Antilles ; and i : 
claims that the upheaval of this portion of the earth’s crust rere 
been interrupted by periods of profound subsidence, during With — 
the reefs were formed. “The subsidence of 2000 feet, 0 Ae : 
El Yungne is a monument, must have reduced the. Greater i : 
tilles to a few lines of small but high and rugged islands; m 
as Mr. Bland has shown, fully accounts for the absence, 1m A 
immense tracts, of all large land animals, although they A 
abundant here in Pliocene and earlier times.” ae 
— An interesting lecture, by M. A. Milne-Edwards, a hee 
deep-sea researches carried on during the recent ie a x 
Travailleur, appears in the Annals de Chimie et de aha ie eao 
other things, the author says, they often came across awa : 
stance, at one time thought so important, called Bathybius, ane es 
verified the conclusion already come to, thi iv a mae 
down from its high pedestal. Bathybius is merely @ id when 
red ar a 
ive in the ak 
830ft.). baer 
Plants alone 
g substances, 
“Therefore the food prepared at the surface, un 
of the sun’s rays, must gradually fall, like eer’ 
the submarine wastes where no plant canlive. — 
