474 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. V., No. 123. 



president of the United States ought to make 

 inquiiy, and relieve the country of the discredit 

 which must come from the challenged veracity 

 of an official body whose acts and sayings are 

 being closely followed abroad and at home. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*** Correspondents are requested to be as brief as possible. The 

 writer's name is in all cases required as proof of good faith. 



Professor Hastings's theory of the corona. 



I should be glad, with your permission, to make 

 a few remarks with reference to a passage in Profes- 

 sor Hastings's letter in your issue of April 24. Pro- 

 fessor Hastings states that he shows, in his report of 

 the eclipse expedition to Caroline Island, that all the 

 characteristics of the corona may be explained natu- 

 rally and easily by his diffraction theory, with the 

 exception of the occasional filamentous structure. 

 The words which I have italicized convince me that 

 Professor Hastings cannot have paid sufficient atten- 

 tion to the abundant and irrefragable evidence as to 

 the solar corona which is afforded by photographs 

 taken during total solar eclipses. These photographs 

 prove that what Professor Hastings summarily char- 

 acterizes as ' occasional filamentous structure,' con- 

 stitutes the greater portion of the corona. In the 

 photographs of the eclipse of 1871, there were more 

 than a hundred distinct details of this kind, which I 

 measured and drew, when assisting Mr. Kanyard in 

 describing and cataloguing the details of the structure 

 of the corona [Mem. roy. asiron. soc, xli. 657-686). 

 These details were, of course, not all visible on a cur- 

 sory inspection of the negatives; many of them were 

 not perceived till after long study: but, once seen, 

 there was no mistake as to their existence, and none 

 were described that were not visible on at least three 

 of the plates. 



Moreover, since the coronal rays are very various 

 in direction, and are seen in the negatives one behind 

 the other, and at all angles of projection, it is evident 

 that the corona must in reality be far more ' filamen- 

 tous' than it appears in the photographs. To a 

 greater or less extent, the same character is shown in 

 negatives of other eclipses, though somewhat less of 

 it is visible in some of the more recent photographs, 

 probably on account of the greater density of the film 

 in the case of those taken on the extremely sensitive 

 dry plates. 



I cannot enter into the optical points connected 

 with Professor Hastings's theory, but simply wish to 

 point out, that, if it will account for every thing 

 except the 'filamentous structure,' it accounts, after 

 all, for very little. W. H. Wesley. 



Royal astron. society, 

 Burlington House, London. 



The natural gas-wells of north-western Ohio. 



The gas-wells that have been drilled within the last 

 year in Hancock and Wood counties, O., have fur- 

 nished some interesting, and to some degree unex- 

 pected, information as to the geological foundations 

 of the state. They show the presence of several 

 formations that nowhere appear in outcrop within 

 the limits of Ohio. The section furnished by them 

 agrees quite closely, as to its elements and its general 

 lithology, with the New- York scale. 



I have lately examined the carefully kept records 

 and drillings of six of these wells. They agree en- 

 tirely in their main features. All begin in upper 

 Silurian limestone, and all find their main supply of 

 gas in the Trenton limestone. The section furnished 

 by them is as follows : — 



Feet. 



Niagara limestone, gray and blue, dolomitic 200 



Niagara clay, a characteristic bed in central Ohio . . . . 2-4 

 Clinton limestone and shale, high colored ....... 75 



Medina shale, red and blue 50-100 



Hudson River shale, gray and blue 400-500 



Utica shale, dark, almost black, in places 275 



Trenton limestone 300 



Bird's-eye limestone ? 



The Trenton limestone was drilled through in but a 

 single well. 



The Niagara clay contains characteristic fossils, as 

 does also the Hudson-Kiver shale and the Utica shale. 

 The former shows chaetetoid corals, and fragments 

 of Zygospira and Orthis. The Utica shale contains 

 Leptololus insignis Hall, and fragments of the spines 

 of Echinognathus of Walcott apparently. The Tren- 

 ton limestone is crystalline and hard, but it shows 

 the presence of fossils in abundance. 



The gas obtained from the wells is delivered with 

 moderate pressure. It contains a notable quantity 

 of sulphuretted hydrogen. It is used so far mainly 

 for heating and for steam-production. Judicious 

 estimates put the amount yielded each day by three 

 wells in Findlay, the county-seat of Hancock county, 

 at five hundred thousand feet. Edward Orton. 



Columbus, O., June 1. 



A tropical American turtle on Anticosti. 



Professor John Macoun, botanist to the Canadian 

 geological and natural-history survey, has shown me 

 a turtle which was given him by the light-keeper at 

 West Point, Anticosti, in August, 1883. It was found 

 living near the lighthouse, and was the only one seen 

 by the keeper during his twenty years' residence on 

 the island. Mr. F. W. True, to whom I sent the 

 specimen for identification, pronounces it to be a 

 half-grown Chelanoides tabulata (Walbaum) Agassiz. 

 The habitat of the species is tropical South America 

 and the West Indies, whence it was probably brought 

 to Anticosti on some vessel. C. Hart Merriam. 



Abert's squirrel. 



On the 10th of April last, on my return from a 

 five-days' visit to the pueblo of the Zufiis in New 

 Mexico, I drove through an extensive pine-forest, 

 which the road enters a few miles from Fort Win- 

 gate, my destination. 



There were in the ambulance with me, besides the 

 driver, Prof. J. W. P. Jenks of Brown university, cu- 

 rator of its museum, and a fellow-traveller, a friend 

 from Philadelphia. Professor Jenks was eagerly on 

 the lookout for rare things in south-western birds 

 and mammals for his college museum, while his 

 friend was enjoying himself in examining two speci- 

 mens we had taken along the road, and joining in 

 the conversation as best a layman may, when two 

 enthusiastic naturalists formed the odds against him. 



Suddenly the driver stopped the conveyance, and 

 directed my attention to a large gray squirrel that 

 had just scampered up the trunk of one of the lofty 

 pines, and was now sitting, partly hiding, on the 

 lower limb, close to the body of the tree. 



In a moment this magnificent creature was mine, 

 dead at my feet. 



