Personal atid Scientific News. 361 
J. J. Stevenson, C. H. Hitchcock, Edwai-d Oiton and John 
Proctor. The constitution requires one hundred members before 
it becomes opei'ative. The annual dues are placed at 1 en dol- 
lars. The original members (styled "fellows") mu?t be mem- 
bers of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science. There will be two meetings each year, one being re- 
quired to be at the same time and place as the annual meeting 
of the Association. Before the adjournment of the session 
thirty-three persons had joined the new society. Correspond- 
ence respecting it should be addressed to Dr. A. Winchell, Ann 
Arbor, or to Prof. J. J. Stevenson, New York. 
At the May meeting of the Royal Society of Canada the 
president. Dr. Bell, read an address giving an account of "the 
Huronian system of Canada,^' in w^hich the author sketched 
the history of the work which has so far been done on these 
rocks in Canada and the United States. After the Canadian 
geological survey had worked on them for 45 years, some Amer- 
ican geologists have begun on the same system. One of them, 
Prof. R. D. Irving, had proposed to separate a part of the sys- 
tem as the only part entitled to be called Huronian, but made 
no provision as to what should be done with the rest. Prof. 
Bell defended the course which had been pursued by the Cana- 
dian geologists, and he was endorsed by remarks made in the 
following discussion by Drs. Selwyn and Dawson, and by Prof. 
Bailey, all of whom urged the inadvisability of attempting to 
divide these rocks. Dr. Bell, in his description dwelt on the 
one great feature of the Huronian — the prevalence of a vol- 
canic character throughout its whole thickness, the crystalline 
schists having been in many instances originally igneous mass- 
es, and the graywackes volcanic ashes. 
Prop. T. E. Bonney notes the occureence among the 
Wealden rocks of England of a hard white sandstone consist- 
ing of grains of quartz cemented by secondary quartz "some- 
times but not always in optical continuity with the original 
grains." Near this also occurs a greenish sandstone consisting 
of well rounded grains of quartz cemented by c/mic^c^oj^/r* quartz, 
"the tiny crystals commonly growing outward from each sand 
grain like a fringe." "This is," he adds, "rare among the older 
rocks, though a case is mentioned by the late Prof. R. D. Irving 
in a cherty Potsdam sandstone from Wisconsin. 
The Texas CtEOLogical and scientific association, with 
head-quarters at Houston, issues a monthly bulletin, under the 
management of E. T. Dumble, secretary. In the August bul- 
letin Mr. W. H. Streeruwitz describes some remains of old 
mines and furnaces in central Texas once worked by the 
Spaniards, which were abandoned because of the hostility of 
the Comanche Indians. These mines, however, were worked 
on a small scale, and they were easily sui)pressed by the natives. 
