September 26, 1884.] 



SCIENCE. 



329 



Owing to the intense heat which had prevailed 

 throughout the entire meeting, there was but a com- 

 paratively small attendance upon the final session of 

 section E on Thursday morning. A large proportion 

 of those down on the programme for papers had 

 already left town ; and almost the only communica- 

 tions of real interest which appeared were those of 

 Professors Julien and Bolton, regarding the results 

 of their examination of various sands. Starting 

 some time since with a study of the so-ca led ' mu- 

 sical sands ' occurring on the Manchester beach, they 

 have been gradually led to extend their researches to 

 sonorous sands from many other localities, both 

 American and foreign; and finally to include within 

 them a study of all ocean, lake, and river sands, 

 whether sonorous or not. So far from being rarities, 

 as they were considered some years ago, sonorous 

 beach-sands are found to have an exceedingly wide 

 distribution. Already seventy-four American and 

 thirteen foreign localities are known, and the number 

 is constantly increasing. The loudest sound may be 

 produced by suddenly bringing together two divided 

 portions of the sand enclosed in a bag. When sud- 

 denly compressed between the hands, musical notes 

 are emitted, the pitch rising as the quantity is di- 

 minished. The conditions of sonorousness, Professor 

 Julien considers to be perfect dryness, uniformity of 

 grain ranging from 0.3 to 0.5 mm. in diameter, and 

 freedom from dust. Any sand satisfying these Condi- 

 tions, no matter what be its nature, he thinks may 

 be musical. Sonorous sands, when wet, generally 

 become quicksands. The microscopic study of a 

 large number of sands of all kinds showed that a 

 great variety of minerals participated in their compo- 

 sition. No such thing as a pure quartz sand was 

 discovered. 



In place of the regular session Thursday afternoon, 

 the section was treated to an excursion over the 

 Reading railroad, under the guidance of Professor H. 

 Carvill Lewis. Various points where different for- 

 mations occur were visited, and the complications of 

 the local geology about Philadelphia were explained 

 as far as understood. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The semi-annual scientific session of the National 

 academy of sciences will be held in the court-house, 

 Newport, R.I., Oct. 14, 1884, at 11 o'clock, a.m. 



— An interesting study of the bed of the Delaware 

 River has just been published by the U. S. coast-sur- 

 vey. It is the report of Henry Mitchell on the meth- 

 ods which have been followed, and the results which 

 have been reached, in recent surveys of what is 

 termed ' the estuary of the Delaware,' from Philadel- 

 phia to a point fifty-two miles below. He uses the term 

 'estuary;' because farther down the stream, there 

 is a submerged delta, with numerous channels, ' not 

 unlike the passes of the Mississippi, or more like those 

 of the Ganges after its issue upon the Bay of Bengal.' 

 The laborious character of this survey may be under- 

 stood by the statement that seven hundred and thirty- 



four cross-sections have been measured, with widths 

 varying from one to five miles, and including many 

 thousand soundings. Professor Mitchell speaks in 

 terms of high praise of the skill with which this work 

 was performed by Mr. J. A. Sullivan of the coast- 

 survey. The point of greatest physical importance 

 is that of the mean depth of the estuary, the bed of 

 which varies so little that the generalized result is 

 best expressed by a horizontal straight line. The 

 fluctuations are chiefly due to inequalities in the 

 nature of the soil. The grand mean of all the sound- 

 ings is 18.64 feet. The brief report of Mr. Mitchell 

 includes many interesting comments upon the forma- 

 tion of an estuary, to which we can only make this 

 brief allusion. 



— Besides those whose names we previously pub- 

 lished, the following gentlemen signed the request 

 to the British and American associations, to consider 

 the formation of an international congress. The list 

 is striking as revealing the great extent of the inter- 

 est felt in the undertaking. The names referred to 

 are: George J. Brush, James D. Dana, James Hall, 

 J. E. Hilgard, J. S. Newberry, Charles A. Young, 

 Charles E. Bessey, William J. Beal, Edward S. Morse, 

 William A. Rogers, Robert H. Thurston, John Trow- 

 bridge, J. Burkitt Webb, N. H. Winchell, De Volson 

 Wood, Charles C. Abbott, William Ashburner, W. O. 

 Atwater, N. L. Britton, Robert Brown, jun., W. H. 

 Chandler, Alvan G. Clarke, E. W. Claypole, Joseph 

 Cummings, George Davidson, A. E. Dolbear, Louis 

 Elsberg, S. F. Emmons, J. Fletcher, S. A. Forbes, 

 Simon H. Gage, James T. Gardiner, S. A. Gold- 

 schmidt, William H. Greene, Horatio Hale, William 



B. Hazen, Angelo Heilprin, S. W. Holman, Horace 



C. Hovey, Alexis A. Julien, Joseph Leconte, J. 

 Loudon, N. T. Lupton, George McCloskie, B. Pick- 

 man Mann, H. N. Martin, Alfred M. Mayer, T. C. 

 Mendenhall, William H. Niles, James Edward Oli- 

 ver, Edward Orton, Richard Owen, A. S. Packard, 



D. P. Penhallow, W. H. Pickering, William H. Pike, 

 Edmund Baynes Reed, Ira Remsen, John D. Runkle, 

 I. C. Russell, William Saunders, B. Silliman, Eugene 

 A. Smith, Francis H. Smith, Q. C. Smith, M. B. 

 Snyder, Ormond Stone, W. Hudson Stephens, Albert 

 H. Tuttle, Warren Upham, Lester F. Ward, M. E. 

 Wadsworth, Charles D. Walcott, Leonard Waldo, 

 Robert B. Warder, Sereno Watson, Charles Whittle- 

 sey, Burt G. Wilder, Alexander Winchell, Henry S. 

 Williams, Jacob L. Wortman, Arthur W. Wright, E. 

 L. Youmans, Joseph Zentmayer. 



— Dr. Edward Channing received in 1883 the Top- 

 pan prize of Harvard university, and the essay which 

 won this distinction has just been printed as one of 

 the Johns Hopkins university studies in history. The 

 theme was the town and county government in the 

 English colonies of North America. The author is 

 led to compare the Massachusetts system of local 

 government with that of Virginia, and to show that 

 both are survivals of the English common-law parish 

 of 1600. The essay concludes with a tabulated state- 

 ment of local government in England, Massachusetts, 

 and Virginia; by glancing at which, the reader may 



