Personal <hi<1 Scientific News. 201 
much higher than now as is the measure of the greatest depths of the 
submerged canons, less some considerable correction for exaggerated 
coastal deformation, the maximum amount of which in many cases can 
be determined. Accordingly the southern states and the West India 
islands formerly stood from 8,000 to 1:2,000 feet higher than now. with 
the floor of the gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean sea low plains. extend- 
ing and draining to the Pacific ocean. The first Antillean continent, 
deeply sculptured by erosion, existed in the earlier and middle Pliocene 
period, followed by a subsidence, so that the West Indies were reduced 
to a few small islets, and the sea encroached upon the continent to the 
extent of 250,000 square miles. Again, there was another continental 
bridge betweu the two America&during the first half of the Pleistocene 
period, after which time the continent was lost, and marine Pleistocene 
formations were accumulated, followed by terrace epochs and several 
minor oscillations. The Pacific ocean was cut off from the Mediterra- 
nean waters for the last lime in the Pleistocene period, when the Atlan- 
tic currents were admitted. 
The physical phenomena set forth in this long paper were supported 
by the biological, both of land and of water, and again they react so as 
to explain the distribution and extinction of life. The geological bear- 
ings of this paper an- far reaching. Not only do they show the mobility 
of the earth's crust so that quiel but enormous changes of level, ranging 
vertically through two miles and a half both ways, have taken place in 
recent times, but they may lead to the discovery of a real Atlantis. In 
the north they will have a bearingupon the glacial features, and involve 
fundamental conditions not yet considered. So, too. in the distribution 
of animals, we should find much light from the extension of the studies 
already begun in this paper. 
Other papers presented before the Soci ety at this meeting, 
several of them being read by title in the absence of the 
authors, are as follows: 
TJu drumlinoid Jdlls near Cayuga, X. )'. Ralph S. Tarr. A descrip- 
tion of some of the parallel drift hills south of lake Ontario, with some 
inferences concerning their origin. The evidence points toward origin 
by a process of glacial erosion acting upon a preexisting sheet of till. 
Drumlinsin I In ricin/t y of Geneva, A'. Y. I). F. Lincoln. 
Channels on drumlins, caused by erosion of glacial streams. George H. 
BARTON. (This paper, presented last winter before I he Society b\ title 
only on account of lack of time at the last session, was read at this 
meeting. An abstract of it appeared in the A.m. Geologist for last 
.March. ) 
Cenozoic history of a portion of tJu middlt Atlantic slope, N. II. Darton. 
Usi of tin aneroid baromster in geological surveying. Charles W. Rolfe 
Oil and dux in Kansas. Erasmus Haworth. 
Evidences as to the changt of sea-level. N. S. Siiai.kh. 
Tin geological history of .Missouri. Arthur Winslow. 
The Magnesian series of tJu Northwestern States. C. W. Hall and F. 
W. Sardeson. 
TJu Stratigraphy of tin St. Louis and Warsaw formations in southeastern 
loirii. ( ilAlil.Ks 1 1. » (ORO0N. 
Tin Permo- Carboniferous and Permian rocks of Kansas. Chari.es S. 
Prosser. 
Tin Trias and Jura of Shasta county, California. James Pbhkin Smith 
