Correspondence. 20 3 
Homewood sandstone, 14 inches of fire clay, 2 feet of Brookville coal 
with 23 feet of overlying shale before reaching the Putnam Hill lime- 
stone. This shale just above the coal contains large numbers of ferns, 
Calumite and Lepidodendron stems and some of the tree trunks are still 
standing upright in the shales. Beneath the coal the roots may be fol- 
lowed for ten feet in the sandstone. 
Altogether there are in Ohio some thirty-six formations exposed 
and the class studied twenty-five of these in the field. 
Columbus, Ohio, June 22, 1903. chas. s. mead. 
PERSONAL AND SCIENTIFIC NEWS 
Dr. George P. Merrill is in the west collecting material 
from mining camps for the United States National Museum. 
Professor B. Shimek of the University of Iowa has recent- 
ly returned from an extended tour in Texas and New Mexico. 
Walter Harvey Weed is translating Dr. Beck's treatise 
on ore deposits, from the German, already in its second edition. 
Dr. J. Edward Spurr of the United States Geological Sur- 
vey returned recently to Washington via Butte, Mont., after a 
successful summer's campaign in the mining districts of Ton- 
apah, Nevada. He was accompanied from Butte by his wife 
and two sons. 
A movement is on foot in the state of Nebraska for the 
erection at Lincoln of a special building for the use of the His- 
torical Society and Geological Survey of the State. 
C apt. R. E. Peary is preparing to make another expedition 
to the Arctic regions, having obtained leave of absence for that 
purpose for three years from the Navy department. 
The strike prevailing at Cripple Creek among the min- 
ers has seriously interfered with the re-examination of that dis- 
trict by Messrs. Lindgren and Ransome, and Mr. Lindgren has 
gone to Australia. 
Professor Heinrich Ries of Cornell University spent the 
summer in Texas, where he was engaged in a study of the clay 
deposits of that state. The results will be published as a bul- 
letin of the University of Texas Mineral Survey. 
Walter E. Hobbs of Stonybrook, Mass., died at his home 
recently of tuberculosis contracted through exposure to the 
germs in Colorado. He had made extended travels in the 
west, particularly in the mining states, and was preparing to 
publish his observations. 
Dr. O. P. Hay, of the American Museum of Natural His- 
tory, according to Science, has made a large collection of fossil 
turtles from the Eocene (Bridger) deposits of southwestern 
