514 



SCIENCE. 



[X. S. Vol. XXI. Xo. 5.35. 



Franklin's ' Autobiography ' after 51, and 

 Irving's ' Alhambra ' at 49. Hawthorne be- 

 gan his series of great romances with ' The 

 Scarlet Letter ' at 46. Mrs. Stowe wrote 

 ' Uncle Tom ' at 41. Mark Twain produced 

 * Innocents Abroad ' before 40, but ' Tom 

 Sawyer ' and ' Huckleberry Finn ' consider- 

 ably later. Lincoln delivered the ' Gettys- 

 burg Address ' at 54, Webster his ' Eeply to 

 Hayne ' at 48. Prescott wrote the ' Conquest 

 of Mexico ' at 47 ; Bancroft's ' History ' oc- 

 cupied him from 34 until 75. Motley wrote 

 the 'Dutch Eepublic ' at 42; Parkman did 

 not begin his series of volumes on ' France 

 and England in North America ' until he was 

 42. The fii-st and the second series of Emer- 

 son's ' Essays ' appeared at 38 and 41, respect- 

 ively. Dr. Holmes wrote the ' Autocrat ' at 

 49, Dr. Hale, ' The Man Without a Country ' 

 at 46. John Fiske did his best work, as Mr. 

 Stedman has done his, after 40. Mr. Howells 

 had scarcely made a beginning of his char- 

 acteristic work before 40 ; Mr. James had made 

 a good beginning, but the most and the best 

 of his works have come later. 



Indeed, if one were to generalize at all 

 from this data concerning works notable in 

 themselves and most charactejistic of their 

 authors, the conclusion for American litera- 

 ture would not be that no work of the first 

 rank had been done by men above 40, but that 

 the period of life conspicuous for superior 

 production was between 40 and 50, and that, 

 as Bulwer-Lytton suggested, real maturity 

 seldom comes before the age of 35. 



Clyde First. 



Columbia University, 

 proucctiox and the modern use of carbonic 



ACID. 



To THE Editor of Science: Referring to 

 Science for January 27, there appears on page 

 151, a brief extract of a paper by John C. 

 Minor, Jr., presented to the New York Sec- 

 tion of the American Chemical Society on 

 December 9. The title of this paper, as given, 

 is the ' Production and Modem Use of Car- 

 bonic Acid.' In the abstract, however, there 

 is no reference to carbonic acid; the paper 

 appears to deal entirely with carbon dioxide. 



and I suppose this is another case of the com- 

 mon misuse of this term. I would suggest 

 that you make some effort to correct this pre- 

 valent error, because if we should want to 

 talk about the real carbonic acid, there would 

 be no way of conveying the meaning intended, 

 unless the chemical symbol be used, because 

 as it is, CO2 has monopolized for itself two 

 names. A. Bement. 



WONT pelee? 

 Although nothing is commoner than in- 

 stances of mistaken etymology, it rarely hap- 

 pens that a single name admits of so many 

 interpretations as does ' Mont Pelee sive Mont 

 Pele.' 



Having gone through iii my own mind all 

 the possibilities of the name, from that of the 

 Hawaiian goddess, with which I started, to 

 that of Pelee = bald, a good name for a bare 

 summit, I have come at last to believe that it 

 is simply the Gallicized form (Pelee) of the 

 Greek Peleus, the son of ^acus and father of 

 Achilles — Mount Peleus has a likely sound 

 and needs no explanation of its gender. The 

 form Pelee for Peleus is found in Littre. 



Harris Hawthorne Wilder. 



Smith College. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES. 

 natural mounds or ' hog-wallows." 

 The paper of Mr. A. C. Veatch reported in 

 Science, No. 530, p. 310, is of much interest 

 to those acquainted with the natural mounds 

 ,or hog-wallows of California and Oregon. 

 Such mounds are especially abundant along 

 the east side of the San Joaquin valley in 

 California, where they cover hundreds of 

 square miles, and extend from the valley floor, 

 where they are most abundant, up the slopes 

 of the foot-hills to an elevation of more than 

 five hundred feet. The underlying rocks vary 

 from Pleistocene gravels, sands and clays to 

 granites, schists and folded paleozoic slates. 

 I have never found them, howevei', in the 

 sandy river bottoms. In height they range 

 from one foot to four feet, and in diameter 

 from ten to more than fifty feet. They are 

 cqunlly al)un(lant in eastern Oregon and in 



