1883.] Geology and Paleontology. 867 
From a paper by M. Smicroff, published in the /svestia, it is 
evident that the climate of the Caucasus is quite continental. 
The average annual mean temperatures are 5° 4’ Cels. at Alex- 
anderpol, 8° 5’ at Stavropol, 12° 6’ at Tiflis, and 14° 3’ to.84? 5° 
at Bakou, Lenkoran, Kutais, Poti, and Redut-kaleh, but the yearly 
range of the average diurnal temperature is in most cases from 
which temperatures lower than —20° are not found runs from 
the Crimea to the Caucasus range, and along the northern slope 
of the last towards Khiva, Tashkend, and Peking. The greatest 
range of temperature observed was 60° 4’ at Stavropol, while at 
Redut-kaleh it is reduced to 41° 6’. Large though this range is, 
it is small compared with that of Yakutsk, which varies from +33° 
8’ in summer to —-62° in winter. 
M. Balkashin, in the /evestia, concludes that the Kirghiz are a 
federation of several nomad tribes that formerly ranged from 
Southern Russia to Lake Baikal, and were mingled together by 
Genghiz Khan and his successors. 
M. Grigorieff, in the /zvestia, shows that Henriette island is 
the land sighted by Hedenström and Sannikoff from New Siberia 
in 1810, and that Bennett island was seen by Sannikoff from the 
northern coast of New Siberia in 1811. Thus the discoveries of 
the ill-starred Jeannette are reduced to ni. 
GEOLOGY AND PALONTOLOGY. 
A NEW PLIOCENE FORMATION IN THE SNAKE RIVER VALLEY.— 
In 1870 the Smithsonian Institution submitted to me for deter- 
mination a series of specimens of fishes which had been obtained 
by Mr. Clarence King, then in charge of the U. S. Geological 
Survey of the 4oth parallel, in the south-western part of Idaho 
Territory. Asa result of my examination I published descrip- 
tions of eleven species of fresh-water fishes,’ and three of Astaci. 
The first specimens derived from this formation were sent by Dr. 
J. S. Newberry to Dr. Leidy, who described two species of fishes. 
Subsequently Professor Condon, of the University of Oregon, 
discovered the formation with some of its fossils on Willow creek, 
in Eastern Oregon, fifty miles north-west of the original locality. 
In 1880 I sent Mr. J. L. Wortman to this region, and he obtained 
twenty-two species from these and other localities, of which ten 
were new to science. He also procured bones of two species of 
‘On Cretaceous and Tertiary Reptilia and Fishes, by Professor E. D. Cope, No- 
vember, 1870, Proceedings Amer. Philos. Society. 
