404 



SCIENCE. 



166. Notice of a fern indigenous to California, but hereto- 

 fore considered as an introduced hot-house species. — 

 Mrs. Leander Stone. 



167. Scheme for aiding the Euler's transformations of co- 

 ordinates. — J. D. Warner. 



168. The temporal process of the malar bone in the ancient 

 human crania from Madisonville. — Frank W. Langdon. 



169. Buffalo drives on the Rock river in Wisconsin. — 

 — Stephen D.Peet. 



170. The Emblematical Mounds on the four lakes of Wis- 

 consin. — Stephen D. Feet. 



171. Fossil teeth of Mammals from the Drift of Illinois. — 

 Wm. McAdams. 



172. On comparison of yard and metre by means of rever- 

 sible pendulum. — C. S. Peirce. 



173. Exhibition of a curious stone relic. — G. W. Holstein. 



174. Some Phenomena in the conjugation of the infusorium 

 Actinophrys Sol. — J. D. Cox. 



175. On the errors to which Self-registering clinical ther- 

 mometers are liable. — Leonard Waldo. 



176. Note on the chemical examination of maize residue 

 from the manufacture of glucose. — C. Gilbert Wheeler. 



177. The Temperature of North German Traps at the time 

 of their extrusion. — H. Carmichael. 



178. Recent existence of sword-fish, shark, and dolphin in 

 the fresh water pond near Buffalo, N. V. — Wm. Zim- 

 merman. 



179. Antiquity of Man in America. — W. De Haas. 



180. Progress of Archaeological Research. — W. De Haas. 



181. The Mound Builders. An inquiry into their assumed 

 southern origin. — W. De Haas. 



182. Four years' observation with the Lysimeter, at Fram- 

 ington, Mass. — E. Lewis Sturtevant. 



The next annual meeting of the Association will 

 take place at the City of Montreal under the Presi- 

 dency of Dr. J. W. Dawson, Principal of McGill 

 College. The election of Dr. Dawson will be a wel- 

 come announcement in all scientific circles, and the 

 meeting for 1882 will doubtless be one of the most 

 memorable in the annals of the Association. 



We commence this week with the publication of 

 a series of the papers read at the Cincinnati meet- 

 ing or abstracts prepared by the authors. Those who 

 have not forwarded their communications are request- 

 ed to do so as soon as convenient. We shall be will- 

 ing to prepare suitable illustrations, if a request for the 

 same is made at once, to afford time for their pre- 

 paration. 



REPORT ON THE GEOLOGY AND RESOURCES 

 OF THE BLACK HILLS OF DAKOTA. By 

 Henry Newton, E. M., and Walter P. Jenney, 

 E. M., Washington, D. C, 1880. 



The report on the B.ack Hills issued six years after 

 the death of its leading observers, to whose name at least 

 it may prove an appropriate monument, comprises the 

 geology, palaeontology, mineral resources, lithology and 

 related subjects of interest of that boss of rocks whose 

 circular uplift commands the outstretched plains of cen- 

 tral Dakota. 



To the fames sacra atiri may at least be attributed 

 one important service in this connection, as it. was a tran- 

 sient disturbance with the Indian settlers, caused by the 

 appearance of gold hunters on their domain, that imme- 

 diately led to the survey. 



The Black Hills had been assigned to the Sioux, and 

 this unauthorized irruption raised the question how far 

 the United States Government might permit a violation 

 of their contract with the Indians, and how much bene- 

 fit in mineral wealth would accrue to the new explorers 



and settlers if their incursions were tolerated. To an- 

 swer more especially this latter question, and to make 

 substantial contributions to general knowledge, the United 

 Slates Government instituted a survey of this interesting 

 and unknown country, and to Messrs. Jenney, and New- 

 ton, was intrusted its management and direction, under 

 the auspices of the Department of the Interior. 



After six months spent in this wild and inhospitable 

 region, members of the survey returned, richly pro- 

 vided with means for a more deliberate examination of 

 its character, and scientific aspects in the laboratories and 

 cabinets of the east. 



A delay — one of the innumerable hitches incident to 

 congressional apathy or pre-occupancy — in the appro- 

 priation of monies for the printing of their report, in- 

 vited Mr. Newton to revisit the hills in the spring of 1877 

 to complete his observations, mend or extend his theories, 

 and here he contracted typhoid fever, of which he died — 

 a loss to science, to society and education. 



The work begun under his vigorous and intelligent 

 supervision naturally halted, and although many of its 

 various parts were long since completed, it is only now 

 that in a compiled form they appear in print. 



Mr. Gilbert edited the work and undeitook the dif- 

 ficult and thankless task of deciphering, compacting and 

 evolving from the disjecta membra of Mr. Newton's 

 notes, the part devoted to the discussion of the geology, 

 physical and stratigraphical of these hills. It is not diffi- 

 cult to detect the mind and pen of the author of the 

 "Geology of the Henry Mountains," and whether or not 

 the essay would form an exact reproduction of Mr. New- 

 ton's views, it is itself a valuable monograph, instructive 

 and suggestive. 



The Black Hills cover an area of 850 square miles, 

 rising from the level and uninhabited wastes about them 

 to an altitude at their highest point of nearly 8000 feet, 

 thickly covered with dense and primeval forests of pine, 

 whose condensed shadows from afar hides all else, and 

 for long marches distinguishes these highlands to the ap- 

 proaching traveller. 



The Black Hills, briefly, are an uplift of conformable 

 stiata, displaying their consecutive beds in symmetrical 

 succession, from a central axis or elevation, disintegrated 

 and channelled, sculptured ana modified bysubserial and 

 aqueous erasion. The simplicity and perfection of their 

 stratigraphical structure render them comparatively easy 

 of exposition, and make them a capital example of prim- 

 ary sedimentation, possibly to become classic in future 

 illustrations of geological principles. 



The formations, as they are crossed from the centre of 

 the group outward to the circumference, and similarly 

 disposed on every side — i. e., sloping inward to the cen- 

 tre — are the archaean, Potsdam sandstone, carboniferous, 

 shales and limestone, red beds — Trias, Jura — cretaceous 

 and then beyond, upon the plains Tertiary. The central 

 area is a divtrsfried region aboundiug in park-like ex- 

 panses, wild and rugged chasms, peaks, isolated pyramids, 

 picturesque gorges, table-lands and a net-work of enfil- 

 ading streams pouring outward east and west to swell 

 the waters of the Cheyenne and Belle Fourche rivers. 

 This is the archa-an area or axis, upon whose flanks re- 

 pose the higher strata, and in whose gulches and stream 

 beds were found the traces of gold which first brought 

 these hills to scientific notice. This axis lies generally 

 north and south, is slightly arcuate, with its convexity 

 pointing eastward, and is composed of schists, quartzites, 

 gneiss rock, granite, trachytic intrusions and associated 

 metamorphic slates. The granite and quartzites form 

 salient ridges, and the trachyte sharp peaks in the land- 

 scape. Next out-cropping underneath the carboniferous 

 is the Potsdam, uncontormably bedded upon the upturned 

 edges of archaean slates, carrying characteristic fossils and 

 made up of basal conglomerate, sandstone locally altered 

 around trachytic cones to quartzite, and calcareous beds. 

 This rock has undergone extensive removal along with 



