Personal and Scientific J Jews. 137 
443 to 460 feet— Beaiitifu! clear, white sand. 
460 " 470 " — Dark peat-like muck, intei-calated with clear, white, beach sand. 
475 •• — Beach sand with no sign of marine matter. 
The boring is still going on. I will let you know the final result. 
John Brvsox. 
ijog Baxter Ave.., Loidsvillc, h'y. 
The Taconic at Boston. Prof. H^att writes to one of the editors of the 
Geologist as follows: I have just received your interesting pamphlet 
(^The Taconic Question') and read it. Although I withdrew from the com- 
mittee because I was unable to pay proper attention to this very inter- 
esting question, I had made up my mind with regard to the matter, and 
had adopted in the arrangement of the collections at this society and at 
Cambridge by permission of Mr. Agassiz the nomenclature which you 
proposed. Whether this nomenclature is absolutely true or not has been 
a secondary question in m}' mind. 
It seems to me very evident that the terms, as employed by you, w'ill 
do justice to all three of the original discoverers of the oldest systems of 
fossiliferous rocks. They afford a basis of compromise which ought to 
satisfy all parties interested in doing justice to these three original inves- 
tigators, and they possess also a certain simplicity and appropriateness 
which does not appear in the use of other terms. 
Verv trulv vours, Alpiieis Hyatt. 
PERSONAL AND SCIHNTIFIC NEWS. 
The degree of Doctor of Science was conferred re- 
cently on Prof. E. W. Chiypole, one of the editors of the 
Geologist, by the University of London, liis alwa mater. 
Mr. C. C. Nutting, assistant professor of zoology 
and curator of the museum in the State University of Iowa, is 
spending his vacation in the Britisli West Indies. He is fairly 
luxuriating in the wealth of tropical life — marine and terrestrial 
— in that land of sinishine, 
Mr. Nutting has been experimenting with success in killing 
branches of corals, both Madreporaria and Alcyonaria, with the 
polyps fully expanded. He has also succeeded in transferring 
them from one strength of alcohol to another without undue 
shrinkage. The museum and the zoological laboratories of the 
imiversitv will be gainers by his season's work. 
In the course of an in\'Estigation of the superficial 
deposits of northeastern Iowa tmdertaken some years ago, Mr. 
W. J. McCice brought to light several curious relations among 
the phenomena, including the bipartition of the drift and the 
intercalation of a forest bed between its members, the existence 
