SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
209 
65° Fahr., that in the well on the edge of the yard at 54°, while the tem- 
perature of the air was 44°. Snow has been lying on the ground for five 
days, and disappeared only last night. In thawing it has gone into the 
farmyard well, and discoloured the water ; else probably the temperature 
might have been higher, for the workman considered the water less warm 
than usual. In these wells the water stands at about twelve feet from the 
surface. They are fed by springs from the lower chalk, the water being held 
up by the gault. In such a country as this, the idea of thermal springs 
being fed by faults from below seems improbable, since, though there may 
be faults, it is scarcely possible that open fissures can exist in the soft clays 
of the district.” 
The Bed Pipe- stone Quarry (America). — Dr. Hayden, in a work recently 
reviewed, gives the following admirable description of the above, which 
Mr. G. A. Lebour thinks may be of interest — as it unquestionably is — to 
every reader of “ Hiawatha ” : — u On reaching the source of the Pipe-stone 
Creek, in the valley of which the pipe-stone bed is located, I was surprised 
to see how inconspicuous a place it is A single glance at the red 
quartzites here assured me that these rocks were of the same age as those 
before mentioned at James and Vermilion Rivers, and at Sioux Falls. The 
layer of pipe-stone is about the lowest rock that can be seen. It rests upon 
a grey quartzite, and there are about five feet of the same grey quartzite 
above it, which has to be removed with great labour before the pipe-stone 
can be secured The pipe-stone layer, as seen at this point, is about 
eleven inches in thickness, only about two inches and a quarter of which 
are used for manufacturing pipes and other ornaments. The remainder is 
too impure, slaty, fragile, &c. This rock possesses almost every colour and 
texture, from a light cream colour to a deep red, depending upon the 
amount of protoxide of iron. Some portions of it are soft, with a soapy 
feel, like steatite, others slaty, breaking into thin flakes, others mottled 
with red and grey There are indications of an unusual amount of 
labour on the part of the Indians in former years to secure the precious 
material.” It is remarkable that its age is not yet settled. 
The Physical Relations of the New Red Marl , Rlicetic Reds, and Lower Lias . 
— At the meeting of the Geological Society on January 11 Prof. A. C. 
Ramsay commenced by stating that there is a perfect physical gradation 
between the new red marl and the rhsetic beds. He considered that the 
new red sandstone and marl were formed in inland waters, the latter in a 
salt lake, and regarded the abundance of oxide of iron in them as favourable 
to this view. The fossil footprints occurring in them were evidence that 
there was no tide in the water. The author maintained that the new red 
marl is more closely related to the rhsetic, and even to the lias, than to the 
hunter ; and in support of this opinion he cited both stratigraphical and 
palse ontological evidence. He described what he regarded as the sequence 
of events during the accumulation of the later triassic deposits and the 
passage through the rhsetic to the lias, and intimated that -the same 
reasoning would apply to other British strata, especially some of those 
coloured red by oxide of iron, including the permian and the old red sand- 
stone, and part of the Cambrian. The paper excited a very long discussion, 
which we have not space to record. 
