July 4, 1884. 



SCIENCE. 



27 



diminished in defiance of all theories ; and Mr. Huxley- 

 is equally unable to establish any consistent relation 

 between the take of salmon, and the proportion of 

 grilse present in succeeding years; a large take be- 

 ing sometimes followed by scarcity, and sometimes 

 by abundance of grilse. Mr. Huxley's sympathy with 

 manufacturers has grown with his experience; and, 

 while he acknowledges the importance of the rivers, 

 his confidence in the power of legislation has dimin- 

 ished with experience, but he still insists on the ne- 

 cessity of it. The two points brought out by the 

 continued experiments of Mr. George Murray of the 

 British museum, are, that the fungus may attack fish 

 with whole skins, and otherwise perfectly healthy, 

 and that an excess of lime in the water is not a pre- 

 disposing cause of the disease. 



— The Popular science monthly states that Pro- 

 fessor John Trowbridge of Harvard university has 

 written a text-book for schools, which D. Appleton 

 & Co. have in preparation. It is entitled ' The new 

 physics,' and admirably carries out the principles of 

 the new education, in requiring the pupil to become 

 familiar with the properties of matter and the phe- 

 nomena of force by performing experiments for him- 

 self. 



— A new series of science text-books, each of which 

 is the work of an able specialist, is being brought out 

 by D. Appleton & Co. The ' Physiology,' by Roger 

 S. Tracy, M.D., sanitary inspector of the New- York 

 city health department, and the ' Chemistry,' by 

 Prof. F. W. Clark, chemist of the U. S. geological 

 survey, are now ready. Before Sept. 1, will be 

 issued the 'Zoology,' by C. F. Holder, and J. B. 

 Holder, M.D., curator of zoology of the American 

 museum of natural history of New York; and the 

 ' Geology,' a new elementary book, by Professor Jo- 

 seph LeConte of the University of California. Other 

 volumes are to follow soon. 



— In his 'Historical account of the Taconic ques- 

 tion in geology,' which Dr.T . Sterry Hunt contributes 

 to the recent Transactions of the Royal society of 

 Canada, we find the most complete and systematic 

 of Dr. Hunt's many contributions to this much 

 controverted section of geological history ; and even 

 those who do not accept his conclusions must feel 

 grateful for this clear and concise statement of the 

 grounds upon which they rest. The introductory 

 chapter is devoted to an explanation of the classifi- 

 cation of the older rocks of eastern North America, 

 proposed by Eaton in 1832, the abandonment of 

 which is regarded as having materially retarded the 

 progress of American geology. The second chapter 

 is a brief history of the geological survey of eastern 

 New York by Emmons and Mather, and an explana- 

 tion of their divergent opinions concerning the age 

 of the rocks east of the Hudson River and Lake 

 Champlain. Dr. Hunt accepts the name of Ordovi- 

 cian, proposed by Lapworth in 1879, for the rocks 

 called Cambro-Silurian of late years, and includ- 

 ing the Chazy, Trenton, Utica, and Hudson-River 

 groups of this country. The older rocks of eastern 

 Pennsylvania are discussed in the third chapter; and 



the argument for the Taconian or pre-paleozoic age, 

 of the major part at least of the primal, auroral, and 

 matinal of Rogers in the great Appalachian valley, 

 seems to be greatly strengthened by the comparison 

 of the stratigraphy of this valley with that of the 

 Kishacoquillas, Nippenose, and other anticlinal val- 

 leys of central Pennsylvania. Typical Potsdam and 

 calciferous are said to be wanting in this state. The 

 gneisses and schists south-east of the great valley are 

 referred to the Laurentian and Montalban systems; 

 and the rocks of South Mountain, to the Arvonian 

 and Huronian. In the fourth chapter, Dr. Hunt 

 traces the distribution of the Taconian system be- 

 yond the original areas in Massachusetts, New York, 

 and Pennsylvania, and cites many new facts sustain- 

 ing his view of its distinctness from the paleozoic 

 above, and the eozoic below. The occurrence of 

 Scolithus and other fossils in the Taconian is as- 

 serted ; and of especial interest, in this connection, 

 is the discovery by Powell and Walcott in the Grand 

 Canon of the Colorado, below the base of the Cam- 

 brian, of over ten thousand feet of uncrystalline 

 rocks holding Stromatopora-like forms. The next 

 two chapters are devoted to the upper Taconic of 

 Emmons, the Quebec group of Logan, including the 

 Potsdam and calciferous ; and the memoir concludes 

 with a general sketch of the paleozoic history of 

 North America. 



— Mr. E. J. Maumene has published the result of 

 his investigations into the existence of manganese in 

 wine. In Cosmos les mondes for May 17 he gives 

 thirty-one instances in which he detects manganese 

 in the state of a double tartrate of the protoxide of 

 manganese and potash. 



— ' The records of the geological survey of India,' 

 part ii., for 1884, contains a note on the earthquake 

 of the 31st of December, 1881, by Mr. R. D. Oldham. 

 This earthquake was felt over a large portion of the 

 Indian peninsula and Bengal, occasioning consider- 

 able damage in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. 

 Mr. Oldham has been enabled to trace the earth- wave 

 with much certainty over a large area, to add con- 

 siderably to our knowledge of seismic phenomena, 

 and to construct a good map showing the area of 

 disturbance. 



— The renewal of the Damoiseau prize by the 

 French academy, for the revision of the theory of 

 the satellites of Jupiter, is announced for the year 



1885. 



— Dr. Hyades, a member of the French meteoro- 

 logical mission to Cape Horn, attached to it for the 

 purpose of observations on natural history, has pub- 

 lished a contribution to Fuegian ethnography, which 

 is interesting as supplementary to the observations of 

 Mr. Bridges, the missionary of the South-American 

 missionary society. Dr. Hyades refers in terms of 

 high appreciation to Mr. Bridges' study of the Galgan 

 language, of which he has compiled a manuscript 

 dictionary, which he has had completely to recast 

 twenty times before bringing it to perfection, and 

 which certainly ought to be published. Some speci- 

 mens of the vocabulary and of the grammatical struc- 



