400 The A)iieric((n Geologist. December, 1896 
The Gkological Society of America will hold its ninth 
winter meeting in Washington, D. C, beginning Tuesday, l)o- 
oeniber 29, 1896. The Council will meet on that day at 8:30 
a. m., and the Society will be called to order at 10 a, m. The 
building in which the meetings are to be held has not yet been 
announced. Willard's hotel is selected as headquarters. 
The Transvaal GOLD DEPOSITS, traced and surveyed in the 
vicinity of Johannesburg, are estimated by Dr, George F. Beck- 
er to contain .$3,500,000,000 oi" the precious metal, or nearly as 
much as the entire volume of gold coin in the world. The 
chief vein, of great width and depth, outcrops along a crooked 
course of thirty miles. It is being mined at the rate of about 
$100,000,000 jH^arly, much exceeding the highest annual pro- 
duct attained in 1853 by California. 
The Academy of Science, St. Louis. At the meeting of 
the Academy of Science of St. Louis, on the evening of Nov. 
16, 1896, Dr. Charles R. Keyes, the state geologist of Missouri, 
read a paper entitled "How shall we subdivide the Carbonif- 
erous? " and professor J. H. Kinealy exhibited a chart for de- 
termining the number of square feet of low-pressure steam 
heating surface required to keep a room at 70'-' F.. and gave a 
description of the method of making the chart. Two active 
members and one life member of the Academy were elected. 
William Trelease, Recording Secretary. 
Mr. J. B. WooDwoRTH, in the Proceedings of the Boston 
Society of Natural History (vol. xxvii, pp. 163-183, with five 
plates, November, 1896), discusses the fracture system of 
joints, especiall}'- describing the feather-fracture observed on 
joint planes in the slates of Cambridge and Somerville, Mass. 
For these argillaceous strata destitute of slaty cleavage, yet 
hitherto commonly called slates, Mr. Woodworth adopts the 
namepeZ/ife*-, which implies no structure other than that of 
original stratification. Some of the larger fractures of the 
earth's crust, as the long curved series of the volcanic islands 
skirting the western shore of the Pacific ocean, and also the 
volcanic belts of the Hawaiian islands, are shown to be anal- 
ogous to the joints of rock formations. w. u. 
The Inland Educator, a monthly journal devoted to the 
profession of teaching, published at Terre Haute, Ind., has is- 
sued in its department of science, which is conducted by Dr. 
Charles R. Dryer, a series of papers by Mr. Frank B. Taylor 
on the glacial geology of the great Laurentian lakes, already 
referred to in the October American Geologist (p. 236), and 
a paper by Mr. Frank Leverett in the last August number 
(vol. Ill, pp. 24-32), on the glacial deposits of Indiana. Each 
of these articles is illustrated by maps, and embodies the ma- 
tured stud}'^ of a wide range of careful field observations. 
Eight to ten morainic belts, crossing Indiana in looped courses, 
some of them partially overlapping others, are mapped by Mr. 
