THE NATURALIST AND COLLECTOR 
4 T 
proved to be a tine specimen of Alice’s 
thrush, T. Alicia , but I was disap¬ 
pointed at not finding- the nest. I 
turned back and circled over the 
g-ronnd and on the side of a small hill 
four rods from the old nest, I flushed 
once more the same bird. Keeping 
my eyes fixed on the spot from which 
she rose, I ag-ain saw her nest, and the 
second and last eg-g- of her set—this 
eg-g was slightly incubated. I placed 
the egg in an envelope and pinned it to 
a tree to mark the spot, then turned 
my attention to the bird, which I 
could not find. After an hour of 
warbler hunting and securing fine 
specimens of Blue Goldenwing and 
Mag’nolia among others, I returned to 
get the egg’ I left on the tree. On 
nearing the spot I again flushed the 
bird that had already returned to her 
nest, and this time I was ready for her 
for she fell at the report of my trusty 
old Parker—a victim to the grand 
science of Ornithology. She miay be 
seen as big as life, if not as natural, in 
my office at the U. of M., and her set 
of eggs in the Museum collection. 
Norman A. Wood. 
Sinking Wells Through Rock. 
N account of the sinking of 
wells in granite and other 
crystalline rocks, where water 
is not generally supposed to exist, 
has been given to the Paris Acad¬ 
emy of Science by M. Norden- 
skjold. Certain pilot and lighthouse 
stations in Sweden have been troubled 
by the lack of a suitable water supply. 
From the fact that water had been 
found in deep bore-holes on rocky islets, 
Nordenskjold concluded that tempera¬ 
ture changes produce shearing stresses 
between surface rock and that lower 
down, forming horizontal fissures into 
which water must percolate from the 
surface. It was believed that this water 
would be fresh, as the water reaching 
iron mines extending far under the sea 
is never saline. Acting on this theory, 
a well was last year sunk in the island 
of Arko to a depth of 100 feet below 
sea level, when a horizontal fissure was 
encountered, from which was obtained 
a daily supply of 4,400 g-allons of per¬ 
fectly fresh water. Similar wells in 
other localities yielded water at a depth 
of 110 to 120 feet. The rock in each 
case was granite, gneiss or diorite, and 
the wells—2£ inches in diameter—were 
bored by diamond drills. 
A Curious Feature. 
°HAT is pronounced by Prof. 
Heilprin one of the most 
interesting features of the 
earth’s surface, on account of its unique 
development and extraordinary persis¬ 
tency, is the discovery of Dr. J. VV. 
Gregory, of the British Museum, in Eas¬ 
tern Africa. It appears to be a great 
crack or break in the earth’s crust, re¬ 
sembling the lunar rifts that have so 
mystified astronomers. This remarka¬ 
ble depression communicates with the 
basin of the Red sea, and even the Dead 
sea and the Valley of the Jordan, and 
rnn.s southward almost to the Cape as 
a deep and narrow valley, occupied 
partly by the sea, and by salt steppes 
and old lake basins, and a'series of 
over twenty lakes, only one with an 
outlet to the sea. For 150 miles or 
more, from the Great Nyanza to beyond 
the first degree of south latitude, could 
be traced a parallel-sided valley, from 
20 to 25 miles wide, with steep walls, 
800 to 1,000 feet high. 
B Y PLACING a film of spores un¬ 
der the solar spectrum—thus 
producing a photograph of the 
spectrum in living and dead bacteria 
—Prof. II. Marshall Ward has shown 
that the rays of sunlight that kill 
microbes are the blue and violet. 
