May 19, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



799 



records of the voices of distiuguished living- 

 men, and that the trustees have expressed 

 their willingness to receive, under special re- 

 strictions and with very careful selection, such 

 records, which will be for posterity only and 

 will in no circumstances be available for con- 

 temporary use. 



A GEOLOGICAL excursion to Syracuse, jST. Y., 

 for the purpose of examining the glacial- 

 marginal channels, first explained by Gilbert 

 and later more fully described by Fairchild, 

 was made on April 15-17 ; professors and 

 students to the number of twenty-five from 

 six institutions, Harvard, Colgate, Syracuse, 

 Cornell, Kochester and Eutgers, participating. 

 Professors Davis, Hopkins, Fairchild and 

 Lewis were present. The weather was in- 

 clement, high wind with snow squalls blowing- 

 cold all three days; but the chamiels were of 

 repaying interest. They were examined in 

 three north-sloping spurs of the upland or 

 plateau country, and found to recur repeatedly 

 in systematic sequence; but the deltas ex- 

 pectably associated with them in the inter- 

 mediate valleys seemed to be deficient in vol- 

 ume, as if much reduced by subsequent 

 erosion. 



It is stated in Nature that the president of 

 the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries has 

 appointed a departmental committee to in- 

 quire, by means of experimental investigation 

 and otherwise, into the pathology and etiology 

 of epizootic abortion, and to consider whether 

 any, and, if so, what, preventive and remedial 

 measures may with advantage be adopted with 

 respect to that disease. The chairman of the 

 committee is Professor J. MacFadyean, prin- 

 cipal of the Royal Veterinary College. 



The Congress on Quackery, which was to 

 have been opened in Paris on May 8 under 

 the presidency of Professor Brouardel, has 

 been postponed till April 30, 1906. 



Lieutenant Peary has chartered at St. 

 John's the sealer Erik to convey coal and 

 stores to Greenland and act as auxiliary vessel 

 to his projected Arctic expedition. 



The Boston Society of Natural History an- 

 nounces subjects for the two annual Walker 

 prizes in 1906 as follows: 



An experimental field study in ecology. 



A contribution to a knowledge of the nature of 

 competition in plants. 



A physiological life history of a single species 

 of plant. 



Phylogeny of a group of fossil organisms. 



A studj' in stratigraphy. 



A research in mineral physics. 



A study on entectics in rock magmas. 



A study in river capture. 



A REGION that is new to both geologists and 

 topographers is described by Professor Israel 

 C. Russell in a preliminary report on the geol- 

 ogy and water resources of central Oregon, 

 recently published by the United States Geo- 

 logical Survey. No description of the phys- 

 ical features, water resources or geology of 

 this region is in print, and the only map that 

 Professor Russell found available for use dur- 

 ing his reconnaissance, which took place in 

 the summer of 1903, was a map of the state 

 of Oregon, drawn to a scale of 12 miles to the 

 inch, published by the General Land Office. 

 The route followed by Professor Russell and 

 his assistants led from Burns, Oregon, west- 

 ward through the western part of Harney 

 County, across the southeastern and central 

 portions of Crook County, by way of Prine- 

 ville and Sisters, thence southward through 

 the northwest portion of Klamath County to 

 Fort Klamath, and thence westward across the 

 Cascade Moimtains to Medford, in Jackson 

 County. The region examined includes the 

 extreme northern part of the Great Basin 

 (an area of about 210,'000 square miles situ- 

 ated principally in Oregon, Nevada, Utah 

 and southeastern California, from which no 

 streams flow to the ocean) and a part of the 

 drainage area of Deschutes River and of its 

 principal tributary. Crooked River, which 

 joins it from the east. 



Dr. Joseph Hyde Pratt's annual report to 

 the U. S. Geological Survey on the production 

 of asbestos shows that the, principal changes 

 to be noted in the asbestos industry at the 

 close of 1904 were the increase in the pro- 

 duction in the United States of the amphibole 

 variety, the development of the Grand Canyon 

 chrysotile asbestos deposits, and the increase 

 in the demand for the chrysotile variety. The 

 many new uses which have been devised for 



