34 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VII., No. 153 



gain on descent to the level of 700 metres, to 13°C. 

 ( 23 .4 F.). The amount of heat lost by the air during 

 its passage across the mountainous region by radia- 

 tion, and contact with the snowy peaks, cannot be 

 determined. It is, of course, much greater in winter 

 than in summer, and depends also on the speed with 

 which the current of air travels. 



Owing to the width of the mountain-barrier, the 

 main result is complicated by local details ; regions 

 of considerable precipitation occurring on the west- 

 ern slopes of each important mountain-range, with 

 subsidiary drier regions in the lea. The last of these 

 regions of precipitation is that of the Rocky Moun- 

 tain range properly so called, in descending from 

 which a further addition of heat is made to the air, 

 which then flows down as a dry and warm current 

 to the east. George M. Dawson. 



Ottawa, Canada, Dec. 81. 



The Taconic controversy in a nutshell. 



The New York geologists encountered a great group 

 of metamorphic, apparently successive and conform- 

 able strata, extending from the Hudson River east- 

 ward into New England (1836-42). 



Emmons claimed they were all older than the Pots- 

 dam, and named them all Taconic. His colleagues of 

 the New York survey, and their friends of the Cana- 

 dian survey, regarded them all later than the Pots- 

 dam, and applied to them the terms of the New 

 York system up to the Medina (1842). 



Fossils were discovered in some of the eastern 

 bplts of this metamorphic series, and announced by 

 Hall and others in 1842, rather indicating the whole 

 series was post- Potsdam. 



Emmons re-examined the whole, and called atten- 

 tion to an unconformable overlying of the Hudson 

 River and calciferous upon the older slates of the 

 true Taconic, and distinctly re-asserted the pre- 

 Potsdam age of the Taconic system, from which he 

 figured primordial fossils (1844). He was supported 

 by Billings and Barrande. and by Colonel Jewett of 

 Albany, but as time passed he was ostracized from 

 geological circles. 



The authority of Barrande, however, was sufficient 

 to convince the opponents of Emmons on the New 

 York and Canadian surveys, and they expressed a 

 willingness to abandon the use of the conflicting term, 

 ' Hudson River group' (1862). 



The Canadian geologists, however, fertile in the 

 invention of devices of stratigraphic nomenclature, 

 renewed the content by two flank movements, — one 

 the Huronian phalanx, aimed at the lower strata ; 

 and the other, the 'Quebec coffin,' aimed at the 

 overlying strata, thus rallying the whole discomfited 

 cohort (1856-61). Emmons died in the midst of this 

 movement. 



As time pas-od, the term ' Hudson River group,' 

 besmirched and hesitating, was re habilitated by 

 being shifted to new ground, — that of the Lorraine 

 shnles (1877). 



In Wales, Barrande had discovered the ' primordial 

 zone ' in Sedgwick's ' Cambrian ; ' but, as the Sedg- 

 wiekian term was then under as strong a ban in 

 England as ' Taconic ' was in America, Barrande's 

 term was adopted in England, and also transferred 

 to the equivalent strata in America. 



Ghradnally, in other places outside the Hudson val- 

 ley, tb<' primordial fauna came to light, the strata 

 baking other Canadian names, — St. John's and 



Acadian ; these terms becoming current in the 

 United States. 



Finally the existence and fossiliferous character of 

 a great series of strata, occupying exactly the posi- 

 tion, claimed by Emmons, and mapped by him under 

 the term ' Taconic,' lying below the Potsdam sand- 

 stone, has been demonstrated, and is admitted by all 

 geologists. 



The term 'Quebec' not being approved, and 

 ' Huronian ' seeming to collide, the later English 

 term, 4 Cambrian.' is applied in America to this very 

 horizon to which Emmons had given the name 



' Taconic' 



Some of the opponents of Emmons, re enforced 

 lately by active, younger men, revive the fossilif- 

 erous character of some of the eastern belts as 

 new matter, adding many interesting and valuable 

 details, and begin again to fire at the old fort, long 

 ago abandoned by Emmons, insisting that Emmons 

 is still intrenched there (1872-85). 



It seems to me that any fair minded geologist, find- 

 ing primordial fossils in the strata mapped by Em- 

 mons as Taconic. lying below the Potsdam, would at 

 once admit the strata to be Taconic ; just the same as, 

 if he found non-Taconic fossils in an area not claimed 

 as TacojjHc, except by a mistake in a preliminary 

 definition (corrected by its author), he would at once 

 admit those strata were not in the Taconic, and were 

 not intended to be so described. 



The same mistake was made by Emmons at first 

 as by his, opponents. None of them imagined they 

 had to deal with two different and unconformable 

 formations. The strata were all either Taconic or 

 Hudson River. Emmons approached them from one 

 side, the primordial, and his opponents from the op- 

 posite direction. Each had evidence to support his 

 claim ; and, viewed from his own stand-point, each 

 was right. It is unfair to Emmons, and to American 

 geology, to insist that this preliminary mistake 

 should consign to oblivion the great fact that in 

 America, and by an American geologist, was first 

 discovered the primordial zone of geology. 



If the Taconic is to ' lose its identity' because a 

 portion of the original described strata prove to be 

 post-Potsdam, what shall become of the Hudson 

 River, by the same reasoning, if it be treated with 

 honesty, when nearly all the strata covered originally 

 by it prove to be pre-Potsdam ? If the strata can 

 fairly be divided between the conflicting claims, as 

 the structural geology of the region seems to require, 

 it would be for the honor of American geology to so 

 divide them. It seems, however, that the extreme 

 anti-Emrnons partisans will not grant such a division, 

 but insist on the utter destruction of every thing that 

 smacks of Taconic. N. H. Winchell. 



Relics from an Indian grave. 



On the Conejo plateau in Ventura county, Cal., and 

 about fifteen miles from the coast, a conical hill rises 

 to the height of a hundred feet, with a base of several 

 hundred feet. On the south side of this elevation, 

 and stretching more than half around it, is the re- 

 mains of an old Indian town. At the top of the hill 

 is a circular depression, indicating the spot where 

 once stood the ' sweat.' or council-house, of the tribe 

 that occupied this site. Near the centre of the 

 crescent-shaped village is the place where the dead 

 were buried. Early last month the writer examined 

 this burial place, which yielded about a hundred and 



