Personal and Scientific JVewg. 271 
propriatiou. With the facilities which this will afford the survey 
will attain a degree of efhcienc}' which cannot fail to bring great 
and lasting benefits to the state. We fear, however, the survey 
may encounter the stumbling-block which so many others have 
found fatal. From such large annual appropriations there have 
come generally revulsions which have swept away not only the 
present and future but all the accumulated past results. A mod- 
erate or even a small annual fund is in the end productive of 
larger and more substantial results than the large appropriations 
which come from spasmodic efforts, and are apt to cease before 
their plans are wrought out to completion. 
The government investigation of artesian conditions be- 
tween the 97th meridian and the Rocky mountains — Senate Docu- 
ment No. 222. containing the Report of the Preliminary Recon- 
noissance of the Artesian Investigation — has just been published. 
The volume contains 382 octavo pages with numerous maps, 
plates, and pictures illustrating the geology and occurrence of ar- 
tesian water. 
The reports of the numerous geologists, engineers and field 
agents contain a mass of information upon the subject treated 
such as has never before been presented in this country, and of 
such a nature as to render the report one of the most practical 
and valuable contributions to North American scientific literature. 
How such an immense amount of data could have been collected 
in a period of a few months can only be explained by the fact 
that Col. Rich. T. Hinton. the special agent in charge, has dis- 
played rare administrative ability, for utilizing and collecting the 
knowledge already possessed by our western geologists, as well 
as pushing investigation with great rapidity and good taste. 
Prof. David S. Jordan, president of the Indiana State 
university, has accepted the presidency of the Leland Stanford 
university of C alif ornia. It is a pleasure to record the growing pref- 
erence of the higher institutions of learning for science-bred men 
for their chief administrators. It is to be hoped that Indiana 
State university will not now fall from the ranks, but will be able 
to fill president Jordan's place with some other scientist. The ap- 
pointment of Pres. Jordan will result in the building up of a 
great institution on the Pacific coast in which there will be no 
cramped opportunities for the scientific men who ma}- be chosen as 
his colleagues and aids. 
Mr. R. D. Oldham DISCUSSES (in the Geol. Mag. for January) 
the origin of the Himalayas, showing that the range did not exist 
in pre-Tertiary times and has been developed from S. E. to N. \\\ 
The area of elevation forming this now loftiest range on earth, co- 
existed with an area of depression to the south of it and these two 
have become more and more marked as Tertiary time has gone l>v. 
"In Eocene time the X. W. Himalayas did not exist. In Sewalik- 
Pliocene times there was a mountain range whose hydrography 
