SCIENCE. 
163 
of the inoculation. This latter was sometimes performed 
with a knife, sometimes with a needle, always with careful 
precautions and close subsequent examination. Such ex- 
perimental limbs as permitted it were cut and preserved 
like herbarium specimens, and are exhibited with the 
paper.” 
The organism found answers fairly to the description of 
Pasteur’s butyric vibrion. They are usually oblong, 
rounded at the ends, mostly connected, two together. 
Their motions are not rapid, consisting of turning in every 
direction, and sliding irregularly forward. They are found 
within closed cells, in the open spaces, and in immense 
numbers in the viscid exudations from the diseased bark 
and leaves. The most conspicuous alteration observed 
in the tissues is the disappearance of the starch grains from 
the cells. The cell walls are left intact, and the protoplas- 
mic portions remain until after the starch is mostly absorbed 
and appears to suffer little change until death ensues. The 
disease is , par excellence, one of the bark. The leaves die 
in consequence of this, or are themselves invaded, either 
primarily or secondarily, by the destroyer. The progress 
of the disease is always slow, but the leaves of an affected 
limb often turn black quite suddenly, perhaps according to 
meteorologic conditions. In diseased bark, before change 
has taken place visible from without, and while the leaves 
are still green and fresh, an active fermentation occurs. 
This continues until desiccation or the exhaustion of the 
fermentable substances puts an end to the process. The 
products of this fermentation are Carbon dioxide and 
Butyric acid, or a closely similar substance. From the fact 
that virus from the Pear affects the Apple tree, and vice 
versa, the speaker argued that the disease was similar in 
each. The experiments tended to show that the virus is 
harmless upon the epidermis of healthy plants, nor does it 
penetrate through the breathing pores. The speaker ex- 
hibited drawings of the cells of a healthy plant and a dis- 
eased one, showing that the starch in the latter was gra- 
dually absorbed. He obtained the virus from diseased 
trees, where it is exuded, and placed it in distilled water. 
Upon the dead leaves and branches the virus dried and 
looked like varnish. When redissolved it retains its vita- 
lity. The simple puncture of a bark of a tree with a needle 
which had been dipped in the virus would be sufficient to 
cause its death. Prof. Burrill exhibited a small vial con- 
taining about a teaspoonful of the virus in solution, which 
he said was sufficient to destroy a whole orchard. 
The Griffith Award. 
The committee appointed to examine the specimens of 
adulterations of commercial articles, and to award the prize, 
a fine objective, offered by Mr. E. H. Griffith, for the best 
mounted specimens, reported that C. M. Vorce was the 
only contestant and that his exhibits of coffee and butter 
were fine ones. He was therefore entitled to the prize. 
President Smith presented it to him in a brief speech, 
and he accepted, regretting that there had been no other 
contestants. 
A resolution offered by Prof. Burrill, that the president 
and vice-presidents elect of the society be appointed a com- 
mittee to report upon some plan for uniformity in size and 
naming of eye-pieces and tubes, was adopted. 
The report of the treasurer Mr. George E. Fell, showed 
$266.06 on hand, and $450.75 due the society, of which the 
treasurer regarded $114.69 as being very certain of being 
paid, making total assets $380.81. The report -was adopted. 
Prof. Griffith renewed his offer of a ]/ z inch objective or 
its equivalent for the best mounted slides showing adulter- 
ations in commercial articles, accompanied with the best 
Thesis upon the specimens submitted. His offer was ac- 
cepted with thanks. 
The Society then adjourned to meet at such time and 
place as the Executive Committee may determine upon. 
The Soiree, which was given in the evening at Merrill 
Hall, by the members of the American Society and the 
local microscopists, was in every way successful, and gave 
great satisfaction. 
PRESERVATION OF FOSSIL INSECTS AND 
PLANTS ON MAZON CREEK. 
By J. W. Pike, Vineland, N. J. 
Mazon Creek is a branch of the Illinois River, which it 
joins at Morris, Grundy Co., 111 . It has carved its channel 
down into the blue shale, which lies above the Morris coal 
seam, and exposed the ironstone nodules which contain the 
fossil plants and insects. 
Scientific interpretation rests upon comparison. We 
compare this coalbed with other deposits of carbon, and 
with those now forming, and ascribe it to an ancient swamp 
or wet land surface. The shale above is compared with 
other clay-beds and with the mud of bays and lakes, and 
we conclude that it is the product of a subsidence and of 
deeper water. The fringing swamp had advanced upon 
higher ground, and from it floated the fern leaves and in- 
sects that were buried in the accumulating clay of the 
deeper basins. Leaves that sink upon the mud of a lake 
will rest flat upon the upper layer, and are buried under 
the layers that follow. So, too, the leaves in the Mazon 
shale are conformable to its lines of stratification. Over 
the shale are beds of sandrock. Compare them with beds 
of sand and clay now being formed over the peat and clay 
of the sinking Atlantic coast. It becomes clear that the 
beds of coal, shale, and sandstone on the Mazon are the 
product and record of a subsidence in the carboniferous 
period. 
Metamorphism . — The shale immediately around the fos- 
sils was transformed into clay-ironstone nodules by the 
deposition of ferrous carbonate. The concreting force 
has emanated from the fossils, because the nodules take 
their general shape. The iron deposit has not merely filled 
the spaces between the particles of clay, but has crowded 
them apart and thickened the strata, making them concavo- 
convex above and below the fossils. Specimens exhibited 
show the continuity of the strata from the soft outlying 
shale through the nodules, their thickening and resulting 
convexity, the conformability of the leaves, etc. 
These biologrical records, like primitive human inscrpi- 
tions, were written in nature’s picture-language, only they 
are incomparably more perfect. Like the cuneiform of the 
Assyrian tablets it was done upon soft clay, but the clay 
was hardened automatically by the writing itself, and not by 
baking. Like the castings of the founder who surrounds 
his models with moist sand, these are casts ; but they are 
casts of the delicate structure of f^rns and insects, moulded 
in fine clay by the gentle touch of moving water. These 
inscriptions were not carved on the exposed and crumbling 
surface of monuments, but were sealed up in the concre- 
tions, and lay buried in the clay, beyond the reach of wear 
and decay, during the incalculable periods of the Permian, 
Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous and Teritiary. After the ages 
of ice and prairie lakes, the waters of the Mazon dug their 
channel through lake deposits, ice drift, carboniferous sand- 
stone, and into the blue shale. The fossil bearing nodules 
were washed out of the softer shale, mingled with granitic 
gravel and strewn in the river bed. Exposure to the air 
changed the blue ferrous compound to ferric or red oxide. 
These nodules spontaneously divided into halves, disclo- 
sing these exquisite pictures of the ferns, insects and creep- 
ing things of the carboniferous lowlands. Per-oxidation 
continues till the iron separates from the clay. Thus the 
half of a nodule, with a fern pictured on its surface, may 
become a geode — a hard red brown shell of iron enclosing 
the clay in an ochery form in its interior ; or it may, in the 
process, crack and crumble into flakes and fragments. The 
collector, therefore, must now anticipate the denuding 
forces, and dig the concretions out of the shale of the riv- 
er’s banks and bottom, and crack them for himself. 
CAVES IN JAPAN. 
By Prof. Edw. S. Morse. 
Mr. Morse described a number of artificially-constructed 
caves which he had examined in various parts of Japan, 
giving sketches of them upon the black board. 
These caves varied considerably in their design, but 
agreed in their general proportions, and were evidently in- 
tended as receptacles for the dead. They were excavated 
