DYNAMICAL GEOLOGY 
87 
This hole in the plain is not a novelty by any means. The loca¬ 
tion of Coon Butte is well within the field of the San Francisco 
Mountains, one of the large volcanic areas of the continent. With¬ 
in plain sight of the Butte are 400 similar phenomena most of 
them associated with small ash-cones. A few miles east of the 
Butte is another hole in the plains known as the Zuni Salt Lake. 
It is an exact replica of the hole Gilbert saw. Like the latter it 
has all around it a wall of non-volcanic materials. 
But Zuni crater presents some tell-tale features which the 
Coon Butte does not show. On the floor of the excavation rise 
two small ash-cones, about 300 feet high, one with as perfect a 
crater as that possessed by Vesuvius. Certainly the last mentioned 
hole is not the efifect of impact of a falling star. If it is, one 
may well look askance at the 400 other similar holes in the vicinity. 
Coon Butte is not by any means a unique phenomenon even in its 
own neighborhood. 
The well known mathematical law of probabilities is strongly 
against the supposition that a giant meteor would especially 
select a restricted volcanic field on which to alight, or that it would 
thus attempt to disguise its origin and identity in a finest company 
of volcanic craters in all the world. The Falling Star hypothesis 
clearly needs further elucidation and substantiation. 
Keyes. 
Major Telluric Stresses Initiated by Diminishing Rate of 
Barth's Rotation. For quantitative determination of the larger 
effects of diastrophic movements the varient centrifugal and tan¬ 
gential pressures induced by changes in rate of the earth’s revo¬ 
lution seem to offer most promising results. Recent curious ex¬ 
periments in geotectonics appear to indicate in no mistakable 
terms that the grander relief features of our globe are all readily 
reducible to the same, simple tangential forces. 
In view of the fact that the immediate cause of the great earth- 
wrinkles is usually approached from the astronomical side the 
contractional hypothesis takes form on the assumption of a cooling 
globe. It is premised that the earth passes through the same 
process as does the desiccating apple. For a period of three 
centuries this idea widely prevails. Beginning with Descartes 
