Personal and Scientific News. 03 
who left Philadelphica May l(5th for the city of Mexico, for the 
purpose of some scientific worlc there has returned after an 
absence of about a month. 
According to J. B. Tyrrell, in the Canadian Record of 
Science, the gypsum deposits of ^lanitoba, are i)ractically of 
about the age of the Onondaga formation of New York and 
western Ontario. 
The posthumous publication of Prof. A. H. Worthen's, 
volume VIII, of the report of the Illinois geological survey, is 
an event, which geologists will eagerly welcome. Chapter i, 
of which advance sheets have appeared, edited by Dr. Josua 
Lindahl, is devoted to the drift deposits of Illinois, and gives 
expression to views unfavorable to the glacial theory of 
Agassiz. 
According to Mr. James M. Swank the year of 1888 wit- 
nessed the greatest production of iron ore and of pig iron in the 
history of the United States, the latter amounting to 7,268,507 
tons and the former to 12,050,000 tons. At the same time 
there was a shrinkage in the production of Bessemer steel rails 
from 2,101,904 tons in 1887, to 1.386,278 tons in 1888, a de- 
crease of 715,626 tons, which is greater than the total product 
of the United States in 1879, when we made 610,692 gross tons. 
From the Lake Superior region were shipped 5,023.279 gross 
tons of ore in 1888 ; of this the Marquette range supplied 1,921,- 
525 tons, the Gogebic range 7,424.762 tons, the Menominee 
range 1,165,039 tons, and the Vermilion range 511,953 tons. 
An Alaskan Glacier. The most accurate information yet 
obtained concerning these glaciers is that gathered by Mr. 
William P. Blake in 1863. According to him, "there are four 
large glaciers and several smaller ones visible within a dis- 
tance of sixty or seventy miles from the mouth" of the river. 
The second of these larger ones has attracted most attention. 
This "sweeps grandly out into the valley from an opening be- 
tween high mountains from a source that is not visible. It 
ends at the level of the river in an irregular bluff of ice, a mile 
and a half or two miles in length, and about one hundred and 
fifty feet high. Two or more terminal moraines protect it from 
the direct action of the stream. What at first appeared as a 
range of ordinary hills along the river, proved on landing to be 
an ancient terminal moraine, crescent-shaped and covered with 
a forest. It extends the full length of the front of the glacier." 
This glacier has never been fully explored. A number of 
years since, a party of Russian ofhcers attempted its explora- 
tion, and were never heard from again. Mr. Blake reports 
that, as usual with receding glaciers, a considerable portion of 
the front as it spreads out in the valley is so covered with 
bowlders, gravel, and mud that it is difficult to tell where the 
glacier really ends. But from the valley to the higher land it 
rises in precipitous, irregular, stnir-like blocks, with smooth 
