Personal and Scientijic News. 327 
Darwin noted, in his narrative of the voyage of the Beagle, that gla- 
ciers in the fjords of southern Chile reach down to the sea level within 
nine degrees of latitude from where palms flourish. Prof. W. O. Crosby 
tells me of his observations of fine orchards of cherries and other fruits 
cultivated close to the limits of the large local fields of ice and neve in 
Norway, one of which has an area of about 500 square miles. In the 
Alps the glaciers end only a few hundred feet from productive fields and 
gardens of flowers. Still more like the condition of North America and 
Europe during the recession of their Pleistocene ice-sheets is the vast 
fertile plain of India, enjoying a tropical climate, while within a short 
distance along its northern side, and farther west and east for an extent 
of 1,500 miles, runs the almost impassable Himalayan range, with val 
leys bearing glaciers and summits crowned with perpetual snow. 
The jjroximity of the very cold Himalayas does not bring frosts to the 
neighboring tropical jjlain. In like manner the ice-sheet still lingering 
on northern Ontario, New York, and New England, did not cause a very 
frigid climate to prevail in the winters, nor nights of frost in the sum- 
mers, on the windward low region of the Laurentian lakes whence the 
ice had recently retreated. Warren Upham. 
Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 10, tsm. 
PERSONAL AND SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
Thomas James Slatter, F. G. S., a geologist of Evesham, 
England, died on August 1st. 
Dr. Herman Credner has been promoted to a full profes- 
sorship of geology and paleontology at Leipsic. 
Mr. H. p. Parmelee, a geologist of Cripple Creek, Colorado, 
is spending a few months in Charlevoix, Michigan. 
Dr. W. S. Strong, of the University of Colorado, has ac- 
cepted the professorship of physics and geology in Bates Col- 
lege. 
Dr. Charles R. Keyes, state geologist of Missouri, and Mr. 
H. Foster Bain, assistant state geologist of Iowa, recently 
spent a few days in Minneapolis. 
Dr. F. W. Sardeson, who has been engaged during the past 
year in the study of paleontology at the University of Frei- 
burg, has returned to his home in Minneapolis. 
Mr. W. N. Merriam, of Milwaukee, and Mr. J. Paukk 
Channing, of New York, have returned from an extended ex- 
amination of mineral lands in northern Minnesota. 
Dr. H. J. JofrNSTON-LAVis, in the September number of the 
Scottish Geograi)hical Magazine, presents an article on the 
geology, agriculture and economics of Iceland. 
Henry B. Kummeix, Ph. D. (University of Chicago, 1895),. 
has been appointed assistant geologist on the New Jersey Ge- 
ological Survey. His address is Trenton, N. J. 
