FEnHi ARY 10, mOo.] 



SCIENCE. 



225 



gation will be presented in the forthcoming 

 ' Contributions to Hydrology in the Eastern 

 United States.' 



Some Erratic Boulders in Middle Carhonif- 

 erous Shale in Indian Territory: Mr. J. A. 

 Taff. 



Mr. Taff described the occurrence of erratic 

 boulders of limestone, dolomite, chert and 

 quartzite, of Silurian, Ordovician and prob- 

 ably Cambrian ages occurring in Middle Car- 

 boniferous shales several thousand feet above 

 the base of the Carboniferous section in the 

 Ouachita Mountains from the west end almost 

 to the Arkansas line, a distance of nearly a 

 hundred miles. The boulders range in size 

 from an extreme length of sixty feet to small 

 fragments and are promiscuously distributed 

 in the shale. Some of them are angular while 

 others are round as if water worn. No rocks 

 in the Ouachita Mountains can be compared 

 with the erratic boulders except probably some 

 of the Ordovician cherts which occur 10,000 

 feet beneath the boulder bearing shale. The 

 Arbuckle Mountains lie southwest of the Oua- 

 chita range in southwestern Indian Territory 

 and trend nearly S. 60° W. almost at right 

 angles to the bearing of the folds of the Oua- 

 chitas. The Arbuckle uplift extended south- 

 eastward beneath the Cretaceous will pass 

 twelve to fifteen miles south of the west end 

 of the Ouachita Mountains. The identity, 

 lithological and paleontolog'ical, of a large 

 part of the Ordovician and Silurian strata, 

 in the Arbuckle uplift, with the erratic boul- 

 ders in the Carboniferous shale of the Oua- 

 chita ^fountains, and the local relations of 

 the uplifts press toward the conclusion that 

 the erratics had their sources in a range or 

 group of mountains in the region now occu- 

 pied by southern Indian Territory and north- 

 ern Texas. The size of the boulders and 

 their disposition in the marine shales show 

 that without any reasonable doubt they were 

 floated by the medium of ice from a moun- 

 tainous land into a Carboniferous sea now 

 occupied in part at least, by the Ouachita 

 Mountains. The hypothesis of ice transpor- 

 tation is supported by the occurrence of cer- 

 tain scored or striated chert and limestone 

 boulders found with other erratics in the 



shale. The cause of the scorings found in 

 the chert boulders is a problem now receiving 

 further study. A fuller discussion concern- 

 ing the occurrence and characteristics of these 

 erratic boulders will be published at an early 

 date in some geological journal. 



Geo. Otis Smith, 



Secretary. 



THE BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



The twenty-third regular meeting of the 

 Botanical Society of Washington was held 

 Saturday evening, October 16, 1904. The fol- 

 lowing papers were presented: 

 Vitality of Buried Seeds: Dr. J. W. T. Duvel. 



A review was given of the results of the 

 germination tests of 112 different samples of 

 seed which had been buried in a heavy clay 

 soil for one year. The seeds were buried at 

 the three different depths of 6-8, 18-22 and 

 36-42 inches. 



The majority of the seeds retained their 

 vitality better the deeper they were buried. 



With but few exceptions, the seeds of culti- 

 vated plants had either decayed or germinated 

 and afterward decayed, at all depths. 



Weed seeds, in some cases, retained their 

 vitality remarkably well. The results indi- 

 cate that the preservation of the vitality of 

 weed seeds when buried in the soil is directly 

 proportional to the noxiousness of the plants 

 producing them. 



Drug Plant Investigations in the Department 

 of Agriculture : Dr. Rodney H. True. 

 The present organization of this line of 

 investigations includes two different lines of 

 work. Field investigations are now being- 

 carried on in Vermont, at Washington, D. C, 

 in South Carolina and in Texas, where areas 

 of land of from four to twenty acres are re- 

 served for use in this connection. 



In South Carolina experiments on a com- 

 mercial scale are in progress, several thousand 

 pounds of drugs having been marketed last 

 fall. 



The laboratory investigations are carried on 

 chiefly at Washington in three laboratories : 

 the laboratory of histology, where questions of 

 structural and plant physiological nature are 

 under investigation; the laboratory of phar- 



