132 Personal and Scientific jVetvs. 
Additions to the minerals of Minnesota. While engaged in making in- 
vestigations in northern Minnesota for the state geological survey 
during the past season two or three minerals were observed that, I think, 
have not been hitherto reported from that state. 
Aragonite in rectangular masses composed of many parallel ortho- 
rhombic prisms, all the prisms in the same mass having an equal length, 
was found in Cretaceous shale on the Little Fork river near the Bois 
Fort Indian reservation. 
Long, thin-bladed crystals of cyanite of a grajish-blue color were found 
penetrating mica schist in Twp. 70-21, on Rainy lake. 
Quartz in fine grains and mica in minute shining scales occur in close 
intermixture ; the whole having a feathery radiated structure and existing 
in masses of various sizes and shapes in the coarse granite at the east 
end of Rainy lake. Tourmaline crystals were also noticed. 
H. V. WiNCHELI.. 
Ann Arbor, Jan. /o, 1S8S. 
PERSONAL AND SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
Messrs. Charles Wachsmutii and Frank Springer 
are engaged in the preparation of a work on Crinoids more 
elaborate than anything they have yet attempted. Their He- 
vision of the Palceocrinoidea^ a work recently completed, has 
given these authors an enviable place among palaeontologists at 
home and abroad. The new work, which will bring them even 
greater honor, will be a complete monograph of the paljeocri- 
noidea of the United States and Canada. All known species 
will be amply illustrated, redescribed, and properly classified. 
The principal museimis and collectors, with the most gratifying 
liberality, have sent their type specimens of species and genera 
for examination and use in the preparation of the monograph. 
With even greater liberality museums and collectors are placing 
their undescribed species at the disposal of the authors. The 
drawings and descriptions will therefore be made almost ex- 
clusively from the specimens, and not from published figures. 
There will be at least one hundred new species described in the 
work, and several new genera. The crinoids will be arranged, 
not by formations, but by genera and families, so that the 
received with great interest on account of the depth of the well and its 
remoteness from any similar boring. The fact that no crystalline rocks 
were encountered in descending 2463 feet makes the discovery of such 
rocks in Pawnee county at the depth of 550 feet the more remarkable. 
Ed. 
