Personal and Scientific Neivs. 65 
Hamilton, where the waters broke through the front of the Terminal 
Moraine, the southern ridges are very conspicuous, ending in the beach 
prolongations of Coney Island. Between this point and Jamaica, the 
beaches are less marked as the sub-glacial streams were not so great, but 
at the latter place where the floods came through from Flushing bay, on 
the Sound, we have the great Rockaway Beach formation, and so on 
until the east end of the island is reached, although the beaches on the 
east end are not so prominent as on the west end, as the gulf stream 
sweeping round the end of the island wears them away, carrying the 
detritus to the westward and sometimes filling in the mouths of old 
channels or inlets. From the front of the terminal moraine to the sea the 
plain is full of dry depressions, swamps and marshes representing old 
water channels, as the streams rising from the front of the ice-sheet or 
under it never flowed in a direct course to the ocean, but divided and sub- 
divided and ramified in such a way as to form the ridges or beaches in 
question. These beaches have generally been held to be of marine ori- 
gin, but this idea is being abandoned. Of course, along ihe ocean front 
these beaches have been somewhat modified by the action of marine 
currents, but their original formation was not due to this cause. This 
can be easily seen by anyone familiar with glacial or sub-glacial forma- 
tions. Near the front of the ridge or terminal moraine the old channels 
are generally dry, but toward the bay or bays they become swampy and 
marshy where the channels have been kept open by the inflowing tides. 
The theory of oscillation has been brought into account for these phe- 
nomena on the south side of Long Island and in fact along the whole 
sea-coast, but this also is being abandoned. There are extensive marshes 
along the north side as well as the south side of the Island, and the same 
streams that formed one formed the other, as during the glacial age they 
were all connected. 
The stratified drift south of the terminal moraine offers a field for inter- 
esting study, as the phenomena connected with it, as yet, are very im- 
perfectly understood. The writer has prepared a paper describing it as 
studied on Long Island, and attention is only called to it here that others 
might take up the same thought. 
John Bryson. 
Lojdsvillc, Ky., 'June ij, 1888. 
PERSONAL AND SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
At the last meeting of the Minnesota Academy of Nat- 
ural Sciences, at Minneapolis (June 1 1 ), a paper by Mr. W.J. 
McGee was read, on "The field of geology and its iDromise for 
the future," and "On some theories of the origin of the gran- 
