Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/437

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FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.
425

Cave, Tennessee. Pp. 39—Richmond, Charles W.: Birds collected by Dr. W. L. Abbott in Madagascar, with Descriptions of Three New Species. Pp. 20.—Rotch, A. Lawrence: On obtaining Meteorological Records in the Upper Air by Means of Kites and Balloons. Pp. 8—Rutter, Cloudsley: A Collection of Fishes obtained in Swatow, China, by Miss Adele M. Fields. Pp. 36.—Schuchen, Charles: On the Fossil Phyllopod Genera Dipeltis and Protocaris of the Family Apodidæ. Pp. 9, with plate.

Revue Diplomatique et Coloniale (Diplomatic and Colonial Review). Bimonthly summary of external politics. Henri Pensa, Director. Vol. 1, No. 1, March, 1897. Paris: Bureau des Revues, 19 Rue des Saints Pères. Pp. 64. 12 fr. .50 a year.

Sands, Manie. The Opposites of the Universe, Part IV. Ethological and Egological Opposites. A Discourse about Conduct. New York: Peter Eckler, 35 Fulton St. Pp. 89. 50 cents.

Schneider, A. Reagents and Reactions known by the Names of their Authors. Revised and enlarged by Dr. Julius Altschul. Translated by Richard Fischer. Milwaukee: Pharmaceutical Review Publishing Company. Pp. 82.

Smith, William Benjamin, Tulane University. The Origin and Significance of Disease. New Orleans. Pp. 25.

Solly, S. Edwin. A Handbook of Medical Climatology. Philadelphia and New York: Lea Brothers & Co. Pp. 470. $4.

Thruston, Gates P. The Antiquities of Tennessee and the Adjacent States. Second edition, with New Chapters, Notes, and Illustrations. Cincinnati: The Robert Clarke Company. Pp. 369, with plates. $4.

United States Treasury Department. Notice to Mariners for April, 1897. Pp. 16.

Walker, Judge J. C. Waco, Texas. What is the Unit of Life? Pp. 16.

Ward, Lester F. Dynamic Sociology, as based upon Statical Sociology and less Complex Sciences. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 2 vols. Pp. 706 and 690.



Fragments of Science.

Dr. Ebenezer Emmons and the Olenellus.—During the geological survey of the State of New York which, commenced in 1836, was almost the first of the geological surveys that were entered upon and properly prosecuted in the United States, there was a marked difference of opinion between Prof. Ebenezer Emmons, of Williams College, who had charge of the portion of the survey that embraced the rocks of western Massachusetts and the upper waters of the Hudson, and his associate geologists, which finally terminated in a bitter personal antagonism and almost social ostracism of Dr. Emmons. The point at issue was mainly the relationship in respect to position and age of the rocks in question, especially those typified by the strata of Greylock Mountain and the Hoosic Valley. The position taken by the majority of the associate geologists on the survey was that the so-called Silurian system of rocks constituted the basis of the fossiliferous rocks of New York and inferentially of the whole country, and that the so-called "Potsdam sandstone" was the lowest fossiliferous member of this system, and in fact marked the dawn of life upon the planet. Dr. Emmons, on the contrary, claimed that beneath the oldest member of the Silurian system there was an older and extensively developed system of fossiliferous rocks, to which he gave the name "Taconic," and exhibited an entirely new and characteristic fossil not before recognized or described, and which received the name of "Olenellus." For all this Dr. Emmons received little or no credit, and among geologists was regarded as visionary and something of a humbug. But time has at last brought its revenges, for, at the last meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Liverpool, September, 1896), Mr. J. E. Marr, F. R. S., President of the Geological Section, in an address reviewing the recent progress in this department of science, took occasion to speak of the "Olenellus"—whose first discovery he attributed to Dr. Emmons—as characterizing a zone of life in rocks much older than the Silurian system, and as "furnishing us with a datum line from which we can work backward," and possibly prove the existence "of a fauna of a date anterior to the formation of the Olenellus beds." So that Dr. Emmons, in place of being wrong in his observations and deductions in 1845, did really find the fossil he described, and rightly located the rock containing it in the geological horizon; and thus was entitled to take the lead at that time over all his American and European colleagues.

Koch's Latest Tuberculin.—Since the premature announcement of Dr. Koch's consumption cure, some six years ago, the doc-