SCIENCE. 



FRIDAY, JULY 17, 1885. 



COMMENT AND CRITICISM. 



An appropriation of fifty thousand dollars 

 was granted by the legislature of Pennsyl- 

 vania, at its late session, to continue the state 

 geological survey for 1885 and 1886, and the 

 governor has signed the bill. The board of 

 commissioners of the survey asked for ninety- 

 two thousand dollars, to which the senate 

 agreed ; but it was reduced by the house to the 

 above sum. It will be expended chiefly on 

 the anthracite regions. A final report by 

 Prof. J. P. Lesley will close the series of 

 reports, giving, in a condensed form, a sum- 

 mary of the whole, — a most diflScult but ex- 

 ceedingly useful and popular volume. 



The legislature made short work of the 

 diflScult and troublesome question of how 

 the large accumulation of printed reports of 

 the survey shall be disposed of, by voting the 

 books to themselves. They reduced the num- 

 ber to be hereafter printed, and disposed of 

 them in practicall}' the same wa}- ; reserving, 

 however, a sufficient number for distribution 

 to public libraries, colleges, and for exchange 

 with other states and countries. The system 

 of selling the reports has been abolished, as 

 the large number of gratuitous copies inter- 

 fered with the sales. The large number of 

 small volumes of these reports, and the 

 manner in which they will be scattered broad- 

 cast through the state, will soon render it 

 diflScult to collect a perfect set ; but the great 

 size of the edition will alwaj's make them 

 cheap. 



The faith of the earlier geologists, that the 

 whole earth was built according to the Euro- 

 pean pattern, has received in other parts of 

 the world many severe contradictions, of which 



No. 128. — 1885. 



our country has furnished a good share. Years 

 ago, the thousands of feet of Appalachian sedi- 

 ments, and the undisturbed position of the typi- 

 cal New-York series, ran counter to beliefs 

 prevalent at that time in England and on the 

 continent ; and later explorations have con- 

 tinued the process of broadening our geologi- 

 cal understanding by bringing to light one 

 example after another of structures and occur- 

 rences that violate the European precedents. 

 The ' great break ' between paleozoic and meso- 

 zoic formations is passed over quietly in the 

 Rocky-Mountain region by a mighty series of 

 strata following conformably from Cambrian 

 to cretaceous. The Laramie controversy be- 

 gan, in good part, in the belief that the deposits 

 in question must be either cretaceous or ter- 

 tiary, and could not be neither or both. And 

 in paleontolog}^ our manj^-toed horses, if the 

 diminutive quadrupeds deserve that name, and 

 the sharp-toothed birds, if those strange-winged 

 creatures ma}^ be so called, confirm the change 

 from Cuvier's teachings to Darwin's. 



In structural geology the contradictions are 

 as marked. The old dispute concerning cra- 

 ters of elevation has new and unexpected light 

 thrown on it in the local upheavals of the 

 Henry Mountains, where lateral intrusions of 

 lava blister up the overlying strata. At a time 

 when the theory of direct vertical elevation by 

 underlift was going out of fashion in some 

 quarters, the enormous upheaval discovered 

 in the horizontal rocks of the Colorado pla- 

 teaus restored it to a firmer place than it ever 

 had. The theory of the ice-cap, or, in other 

 words, the idea that areas of glaciation wei-e 

 limited southward by latitude lines, found its 

 first serious check in the absence of eveiy thing 

 but local ice-action among our Cordilleras, due 

 west of a much lower region that had been 

 heavily glaciated. The attitude of faults that 

 is ' normal ' in some countries is directly abnor- 



