JANUARY 11, 1884.] 
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 
*,* Correspondents are requested to beas brief as possible. The 
writer's name is in all cases required as proof of good faith. 
Sense of direction. 
I HAVE been much interested in the different meth- 
ods of preserving the relative situation of places, as 
given in late numbers of Science, and will venture 
to add my own experience. 
I refer all objects to two rectangular co-ordinate . 
axes which agree with the cardinal points. In all 
places where I feel at home, these lines are conscious- 
ly present, and all roads running north and south, or 
east and west, coincide with, or seem to be parallel 
to, these axes. All places which I have visited, from 
Massachusetts to Nebraska, are, with few exceptions, 
connected together in one system. 
The principal origin of this system is in the north- 
west corner of a schoolhouse in Hamilton county, O. 
There, when a boy, I sat under the direction of a 
teacher to study geography. With face toward the 
north, I looked through a window along the meridian. 
I could at pleasure see east or west, or, if need be, 
south, through opposite windows. A thorough course 
in geography fixed in my mind the axes of my sys- 
tem, which have been present with me ever since, 
a secondary origin going with me everywhere. All 
places with which I am familiar form parts of this 
system, and any new place visited is immediately 
referred to its proper location. 
Now for the exceptions. There was another school- 
house, where I attended sometimes, at which I was 
turned a quarter round. East was north, south was 
east, etc. I account for the anomaly in this way: 
in going to the schoolhouse where my system was 
fixed, I went east, along a road from which I turned 
to the left into the south or front door of the school- 
house; but, in going to the second school mentioned, 
I went through fields into a road along which I passed 
toward the south some distance, and then turned 
toward the left into the west or front door of the 
schoolhouse. [I lost the direction of my axes of refer- 
ence in crossing the fields; so that the west side of 
the new schoolhouse seemed to coincide with the 
south of the old, and thus unconsciously my axes 
were turned aquarterround. No plan I could adopt 
had the least effect in changing the apparent position 
of the cardinal points. Many a laugh was raised at 
my expense because of my promptness in pointing in 
wrong directions; and to this day, after nearly half 
a century, if I wish to think of directions from that 
schoolhouse, I am obliged to change my first decisions 
through an angle of ninety degrees, 
‘Washington City is another place which is entirely 
out of my system. [I entered the city after nightfall. 
Somewhere between Baltimore and Washington, I 
lost my co-ordinate axes, so that, when I came to con- 
sider directions, Pennsylvania Avenue was turned 
half round, east was west, west, east; and I had not 
and have not the least sense of north or south. No 
study of maps, and no thinking over the subject, has 
the least effect in arranging things properly. 
Boston is another place which is not in my regular 
system. In that city and vicinity, Washington Street 
_takes the place of my usual east and west axis, and 
the street that leads to Mount Auburn is the other 
axis; but these are not in my mind coincident with 
my principal axes. 
Mistakes made at different times have been quite 
a study to me. Once, in a city which is regularly 
laid out, going along the west side of a street toward 
the south, I crossed the street, and turned toward the 
north upon the opposite side, and went into an office 
SCIENCE. 31 
at my right hand. Coming out, and wishing to con- 
tinue my course toward the south, I really went north, 
and spent several minutes before I could convince 
myself of my error. Possibly the mistake arose in 
the following manner. I lost my axes in passing 
from the street-crossing to the sidewalk, and turned 
north when I supposed I turned south; going into 
the office toward the right, Iseemed to go west; com- 
ing from the office, I seemed to be going east; and 
turning to the right, I was to my mind going south. 
It is my custom to travel with a map before me; 
and, on visiting a city for the first time, I secure a 
plan and study the direction of the principal streets, 
obtaining correct knowledge of the points of compass, 
I then carefully classify my acquisitions, and com- 
monly have no difficulty in finding my way without 
a guide. Mitton L. Comstock. 
Knox college, Galesburg, Ill. 
Barn-owls in southern Ohio. 
Until recently barn-owls have been of rare or 
accidental occurrence in this part of the Ohio valley. 
In the records of the birds in the vicinity of Cincin- 
nati, there were only three specimens noted; and in 
the record of the birds of Franklin county (Indiana), 
there has been a vacancy under the head of this 
species. On Oct. 25, 1883, I was pleased to have a 
friend bring me a fine male of this species, killed 
within a half-mile of this town. Soon after this a 
number of specimens were taken near Cincinnati, at 
Glendale, where they had taken up their quarters in 
the town-hall; and others were killed near Jones 
Station, O. In all, this makes fourteen specimens 
that I know to have been taken within fifty miles of 
Cincinnati. A. W. BUTLER. 
Brookville society of natural history, 
Brookville, Ind. 
Phosphates in North Carolina. 
The successful exploration last spring, under the 
direction of our board of agriculture, of the large beds 
of phosphatic nodules embedded in marl in New Han- 
over and Pender counties, started the search for phos- 
phates in North Carolina again. Stray coprolites had 
frequently been found; but these nodules, forming 
beds four to five feet thick, and extending through 
the country for twenty miles or more, suggested an 
origin different from that of the true coprolite. 
Phosphatic rock has recently been discovered in 
the up-country, which corresponds exactly to the 
water-worn nodules entering into the calcareous con- 
glomerate of the lower Cape Fear. 
In the latter region, about Wilmington, and twenty 
miles above, we find the nodules embedded in, and 
forming the lowest layer of, a ground and hardened 
eocene marl. The nodules show the same fossils, 
but differ from the marl in the large amount of sand 
they contain. They vary in composition from fifteen 
to fifty-two per cent of phosphate of lime, neighbor- 
ing fragments having often very varied composition, 
of all shapes, but mostly kidney and egg shaped; 
perforated; color, gray to greenish black; specific 
gravity, 2.6 to 2.7. Freshly broken or rubbed, they 
give the odor of burnt powder characteristic of such 
phosphates. 
Higher up the country, in Sampson, Duplin, and 
Jones counties, we find the eocene marl above, and 
the phosphatic rock below, in distinctly separate lay- 
ers. Here the formation is such as to leave little 
doubt that the rock is phosphatized marl (according 
to Holmes’s theory), and not true coprolites. It is 
found in large indented slabs, six to eighteen inches 
thick, and weighing sometimes several tons, or in 
