Personal and Scientific Xexcs. 205 
Greger, is an energetic and intelligent collector, and to him is due the 
discovery of a number of new and interesting collecting localities. 
Louisiana, Mo., July 14th, 1893. R. R. Rowley. 
PERSONAL AND SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
Although the State of Iowa is almost wholly covered 
with a mantle of drift, or products derived from the drift, 
still examples of glacier planing and scoring are not numerous 
and the few that are known are limited in extent. Professor 
Calvin was able to show to Mr. McGee, at Iowa City, the only 
glacier markings that he, as author of the Pleistocene History 
of Northeastern Iowa, has seen within the limits of the area 
covered by his memoir. Professor Calvin now reports another 
exposure of glacial planing at the old woolen mill on Clear 
creek, a few miles west of Iowa City. Quite recently the 
stream cut around the end of the dam at the old mill, carrying 
away a portion of the bank, which there consists of loess to a 
depth of twenty or thirty feet, resting on a bed of sand, peb- 
bles, and small striated boulders. In this way the underlying 
Devonian rocks were exposed over a considerable area, and the 
surface affords the best example of glacial planing and scor- 
ing yet seen within the limits of Iowa. The planed stratum 
at the old mill, like that at Iowa City, consists of very fine 
grained, compact, brittle limestone, that, while worthless for 
any economic purposes, still resists the solvent action of per- 
colating surface waters to an unusual degree. In general the 
indurated rocks of Iowa have the surface in contact with the 
superficial materials eaten away or corroded to a depth some- 
times of several inches, and thus the effects of glacier action 
have been ver} T generally obliterated. 
South American Paleontological Exploration. — M. Alide 
Mercerat, formerly assistant paleontologist at the Museo Pub- 
lico de La Plata (Argentine Republic), has just returned to 
Buenos Ayres from his exploration in Patagonia, undertaken 
more especially in view of paleontological researches. M. 
Mercerat started at the end of September last, stopping at 
chubut and the Toras island. II is Patagonian exploration 
extended from the Kin Santa-Cruz to the Strait of Magellan, 
comprising all the region between the Atlantic coast and the 
Cordilleras of Chili. The results of this journey are so inter- 
esting, and important in the finding of great deposits of fos- 
sil vertebrates, that he proposes to return again and resume 
his explorations in the spring of 1894. For the present he has 
just sent to Paris a description of a very curious fossil reptile 
found in the Lias of Patagonia, which he calls Scaphosaurus 
