SCIENCE. LVol. VII., No. 152 



22 



valley. As we rode up the gorge toward the great 

 peaks, and finally, leaving our horses, climbed up 

 on the principal glacier, 1 saw how greatly, from 

 our previous elevated position, I had underesti- 

 mated distances, heights, and magnitudes. The 

 Katoon River, which from above had looked like 

 a narrow, dirty-white ribbon, that a child could 

 step across, proved to be a torrent thirty or forty 

 feet wide, with a current almost deep and strong- 

 enough to sweep away a horse and rider. The 

 main glacier, which I had taken to be about three 

 hundred feet wide, proved to have a width of more 

 than half a mile ; and its central moraine, which 

 had looked to me like a strip of black sand thirty 

 feet wide, piled up in form to a height of six or 

 seven feet, like a long furnace dump, proved to be 

 an enormous mass of gigantic rocks three to four 

 miles long, and three hundred to four hundred 

 feet wide, piled up on the glacier in places to 

 heights of seventy-five and eighty feet. In short, 

 it was a tremendous glacier, and yet it was only 

 one of eleven which I counted from the summit 

 of the ridge between the Black and the White 

 Berel. Seven glaciers descend from the two main 

 peaks alone. 



We spent all the remainder of the day in sketch- 

 ing, taking photographs, and climbing about the 

 valley and the glaciers, and late in the afternoon 

 returned to our camp in the valley of the White 

 Berel. 



Monday we made another excursion to the crest 

 of the Katoonski ridge, and succeeded in getting a 

 good photograph of the two great peaks without a 

 cloud. 



We returned to the Altai Station, Wednesday, 

 Aug. 5, and two days later started back for 

 Oost-Kamenogorsk. We were overtaken by a 

 storm in the mountains between Bookhtarma and 

 Alexandrofskaya ; lost our way ; our tarantass 

 capsized into a hole about nine o'clock at night in 

 the darkness; and we lay there until morning in a 

 cold rain, without shelter, food, or fire. Shortly 

 after daybreak help arrived from the nearest set- 

 tlement; but it took eight horses and three drivers, 

 two of the latter mounted, to get our tarantass to 

 the next station. Geo. Kennan. 



dinners of the north sea. 



The 7JH.Ii supplement to Trtcrnm h n's initUtri- 

 hnif/m is by Prof. II. Mohn, director of the mete- 

 orologiral institute in Ohristiania, on 'Die strS- 

 mungen des europiiisehen Nordineeres.' The area 

 thus designated lies between Norway, Novaya 

 Zemlia, fJreenland, Iceland, and Scotland, and has 

 been examined by several exploring vessels, espe- 

 cially by Norwegians ; so that tolerably full data as 



to depth, temperature, and salinity, have been de- 

 termined from surface to bottom. On this basis, 

 Professor Mohn has attempted a new style of in- 

 vestigation of its currents, fed on the south by the 

 warm, dense waters of the North Atlantic ; on the 

 north, by the cold, fresher waters from the polar 

 seas. His method is much like that which has 

 been successfully applied to the study of atmos- 

 pheric cm-rents, and it has led him to very inter- 

 esting conclusions. First, the density is examined, 

 and the results graphically exhibited on ten sec- 

 tions. Next follow a series of detailed investiga- 

 tions, summarized in six maps, showing, 1°, 

 surface isotherms ; 2°, contour lines as determined 

 by hydrostatic equilibrium, the North Sea thus 

 appearing five centimetres higher than the ocean 

 east of Iceland ; 3°, the atmospheric pressure for 

 the year, prevailingly low from Iceland towards 

 the North Cape ; 4°, the deformation of the sur- 

 face of wind-formed cm-rents by the deflective 

 force arising from the earth's rotation, which de- 

 presses the central area about fifteen decimetres 

 below the marginal ; 5°, the same, due to both 

 gravitative and wind currents ; and, 6°, the sum- 

 mation of all persistent deforming causes. The 

 currents themselves, as thus deduced, are shown 

 in a larger map ; their correspondence with what 

 might be inf erred from the isotherms establishes 

 the correctness of the work. Finally, the press- 

 ure, temperature, and currents at depths of 500, 

 1,000, and 1,500 fathoms, are discussed and graphi- 

 cally illustrated in three pahs of maps. Taking 

 this with an earlier monograph (supplement No. 

 63) by the same author, we have a very full de- 

 scription of the average physical conditions of 

 these northern waters. The methods employed 

 by Mohn may some day be well applied to the 

 American Mediterranean from the Windward 

 Islands around to the Bahamas. 



W. M. Davis. 



The venerable Professor Vilanova secured the 

 indorsement of the International geological con- 

 gress, at its last session, to the project of a poly- 

 glot dictionary of definitions and technical terms. 

 He himself cannot do more than supply the 

 Spanish -French part of such a work (' Ensayo de 

 diccionario geognifico-geologico,' por D. Juan 

 Vilanova), but he hopes others will take up and 

 supplement his work, until a cyclopaedia of the 

 sciences is produced in which any man can 

 readily find exact statements of the facts in his 

 own language, and their equivalents in all other 

 languages. It is an important work, and the 

 congress and all geologists will doubtless help 

 him to the extent of their power. 



