the best essay on, "The control of the foreign relations of the United States: the relative rights, duties and responsibilities of the President, the Senate and the House, and of the judiciary, in theory and practise," and presentation of John Scott Medals "For Useful Inventions," by Owen Roberts, Esq., on behalf of the Board of City Trusts of Philadelphia.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

THE National Institute of Social Sciences has awarded its gold medal to Mme. Curie.

MR. HERBERT C. HOOVER has been elected a trustee of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

PROFESSOR A. S. EDDINGTON has been elected president of the Royal Astronomical Society in succession to Professor A. Fowler.

MR. C. TATE REGAN has been appointed keeper of zoology at the British Natural History Museum, South Kensington.

DR. JOHAN HJORT, director of the Norwegian Fisheries, has received the degree of doctor of science from the University of Cambridge.

We learn from Nature that the following were elected fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh at the ordinary meeting on March 7: Dr. Nelson Annandale, Mr. W. Arthur, Mr. B. B. Baker, Dr. Archibald Barr, Mr. J. Bartholomew, Mr. A. Bruce, Mr. Andrew Campbell, Dr. Rasik Lal Datta, Dr. John Dougall, Dr. C. V. Drysdale, Mr. G. T. Forrest, Dr. W. Gibson, Dr. J. W. H. Harrison, Mr. J. A. G. Lamb, the Rev. A. E. Laurie, Mr. Neil M'Arthur, Mr. D. B. M'Quistan, Dr. T. M. MacRobert, Dr. J. M'Whan, Mr. J. Mathieson, Sir G. H. Pollard, Professor E. B. Ross, the Right Hon. J. P. Smith, Professor N. K. Smith, and Dr. I. S. Stewart.

AT the Chicago meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the council established a committee on conservation to cooperate with similar committees of other organizations. This new committee on conservation has now been appointed, its

personnel being as follows: J. C. M chairman, Carnegie Institution of W ton, Washington, D. C.; Isaiah B American Geographical Society, Nev City; H. S. Graves, 1731 H Street, Washington, D. C.; Barrington Moo Park Avenue, New York City; V. E ford, University of Illinois, Urbana, I

DR. HAVEN EMERSON, formerly c sioner of health of New York City, h appointed medical adviser and assistan tor of the Bureau of War Risk Insura

DR. P. G. NUTTING, organizer and past four years director of the scient search of the Westinghouse Electric pany, will not be with that compan May 1. Dr. Nutting was for ten yea the Bureau of Standards, leaving in assist Dr. Mees in the organization velopment of the research work of th man Kodak Company.

DR. L. A. MIKESKA has resigned fr Color Laboratory of the Bureau of Ch U. S. Department of Agriculture, to j staff of the Rockefeller Institute for Research, New York City.

DR. HENRY E. CRAMPTON, of Barna lege and the American Museum of History, has returned from a nine trip to the tropics and the islands Pacific.

JOHN W. GILMORE, professor of ag at the University of California, has b pointed exchange professor from the States to the University of Chile academic year 1921-1922.

DR. LAFAYETTE B. MENDEL, profe physiological chemistry, Yale Uni spoke before 500 members of the Section of the American Chemical Soc Friday, March 18. Preceding the talk ner in honor of Dr. Mendel was served Quadrangle Club, University of Chic

ON March 12, the Mayo Four Rochester, Minn., was addressed by Dr Ewing, President George E. Vincent & Charles Choyce.

PROFESSOR DOUGLAS JOHNSON, of Columbia University, addressed the annual open meeting of the Syracuse University chapter of Sigma Xi, March 16, on "The rôle of geography in world affairs." On March 17, he spoke at Colgate University on the same subject.

THE Council of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, has received a gift of 50,000 francs from Mme. Mathias Duval, widow of the eminent professor of histology. The sum having been given without any conditions as to the manner in which it shall be expended, a committee has been appointed to decide how it can best be employed.

PLANS to broaden the scope of the Gorgas Memorial Institute in Panama into a research and teaching institution of international scope are being developed by the provisional board of directors for the United States.

ERNEST JOSEPH LEDERLE, the sanitary engineer, died on March 7, at the age of fifty-six years. Dr. Lederle was health commissioner of New York City under Mayor Low and Mayor Gaynor.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL

NEWS

THE latest report on the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Endowment Fund indicates pledges of over $900,000 to date. The committee in charge has no doubt that the entire $1,000,000 will be pledged before Commencement Day. This is the second million of the $2,000,000 fund undertaken, the first million having already been pledged, partly in the form of scholarship funds given by industrial corporations in Worcester.

AN appropriation by the Oregon legislature of $271,000 has been made for medical work in Portland by the University of Oregon.

THE Corporation of Yale University has adopted regulations with reference to research associates and research fellows. Research associates are to have professorial rank, and research fellows assistant professorial rank.

The titles are to be guished attainments time to research rath was voted That th ciate should be confi tinction in research ship, and that it shou in the list of Profes professorial rank,' th being to attract to eminence, who usuall in the use of their tim fessorial appointments

EUGENE E. HASKILL bined colleges of civi neering at Cornell U His resignation is to this year after his sab now enjoying. Dean head of the college o Cornell since 1905, pri charge of the United of the Great Lakes. I uate of Cornell Univer successor, Professor F Cornell graduate, hav degree in 1897.

DR. PAUL WEATHER years associate professo versity of Georgia, has associate professorship where he was formerly

PROFESSOR IRVING H years professor of surg partment of the Unive relinquished that chai Primrose has been app temporarily.

DISCUSSION AND (

ARE THE LANCE A
FORMATIONS OF 1

TO THE EDITOR OF SCI title Professor Charles reviewed in SCIENCE (is

1 Published with the pe of the U. S. Geological Su

publication of the Geological Survey by Dr. T. W. Stanton on "The Fauna of the Cannonball Marine Member of the Lance Formation." Following the review Profesor Schuchert announces his opinion that the evidence binds invertebrate paleontologists and geologists together in the conviction that the Lance and the Fort Union are of Mesozoic time. The U. S. Geological Survey should now reverse its former conclusion and adapt itself to the fuller evidence.

In the first conclusion Professor Schuchert adopts the view of Dr. Stanton and of Messrs. Lloyd and Hares, who described and named the Cannonball beds in 1915, as to the Lance formation, but goes even further than they do in assigning the Fort Union to the Mesozoic. However, it does seem difficult to justify a separation of these formations, making one Cretaceous and the other Eocene. As a geologist long interested in the Cretaceous-Eocene problem of the Rocky Mountain region, I wish to comment that Professor Schuchert is not warranted in assuming to speak for geologists inasmuch as he does not regard much of the geological evidence. Nor does he give due weight to paleontological data, aside from those of the mollusca. Moreover, it seems gratuitous to assume that the Geological Survey, because it has not adopted the conclusion reached by Professor Schuchert, has not considered in its decisions the bearing of facts concerning the Lance secured by its own investigators some years ago. The Survey geologists have also secured much other evidence.

Now it is perfectly well known to Professor Schuchert that the question as to the age of the Lance and Fort Union beds is a part of a very large problem, involving a conception of the geologic evolution of the whole Rocky Mountain Province from Mexico to far north in Canada. More than a score of more or less local formations, younger than the great continuous Cretaceous section and older than the Wasatch Eocene, are to be correlated and interpreted. These formations present a great Ideal of varied evidence as to the history of the Cretaceous-Eocene transition period. The Survey has, in fact, based its action, with

which Professor Schuchert disagre consideration of all available eviden

Investigations of the Rocky Province and adjacent lower countr and west, made within 30 years p surely proved that the older idea diastrophism which characterized th tion from the Cretaceous to the Eoce was very faulty. The change was not abrupt, and, while over a large great Cretaceous succession was er uplift was epeirogenic for a long pe ing which erosion and prevailingly co deposition proceeded, and there was abrupt environmental change affec upon the land as has been assumed. eral the newer picture of Rocky development, after Laramie time, basis for the belief that dinosaurs a other dominantly Mesozoic land for not survive into the Eocene. In fa saurs of the type found in the Lance the Denver epoch, that is, they surv ing the period in which the entire C section was removed from a large Colorado and adjacent regions.

The Lance and Fort Union form eastern Montana and adjacent portic Dakotas present an exceptionally in and important association of stra and paleontologic data, the subject flicting ideas which must eventuall monized. Their correct interpreta contribute much to our understa Rocky Mountain history. The mos data will be briefly specified.

clearly Eocene by Knowlton. This view was not seriously opposed until the flora, first found in the Fort Union, was traced down through the Lance almost to its base. The flora thereby lost much of its interest to vertebrate and invertebrate paleontologists, but not to paleobotanists or geologists.

The Fort Union beds have a mammalian fauna of small forms considered to prove the Eocene age of the strata containing them until allied types were found in the Lance associated with dinosaurs and other supposed Cretaceous forms. The significance of the poor little mammals has seemed to disappear, from certain standpoints, but not from all. The Ceratops fauna of the Lance is closely similar to that of the Denver beds, correlated by the Geological Survey, together with other Colorado and New Mexico formations, with the early Eocene beds of the Gulf region.

The Cannonball shales demonstrate the temporary return of marine waters from an unknown and as yet undiscussed region to the Dakota district, after an absence which was of considerable duration. Where was this sea meanwhile? The known Cannonball fauna consists of two sharks, several corals and foraminifera, all of which range into the Tertiary, and 60 molluscan species. The molluscan group, according to Stanton, has the general aspect of a Tertiary fauna," but he considers 24 species to be identical with forms in the Fox Hills or Pierre formations of the Cretaceous nearby, while not one is identical with any known form in the lowest Eocene of the Gulf region and 35 are new species.

66

Dr. Stanton has given, in the excellent publication reviewed by Professor Schuchert, a careful description of the Cannonball fauna and discussed its relationships to Cretaceous and Gulf Eocene faunas. Elsewhere he has discussed the age of the Lance on general grounds but he has always given the greatest weight to the character of the invertebrate fauna, as is natural considering his special point of view.

Professor Schucher tation for his broad s His mature opinion in his "Text-book of where he says:

It is, therefore, the and paleogeography tha define the periods or sy

It may seem at first ciple guided Professor ion that two paleogeo, by Stanton" are a mos the problem in hand. seems, to the writer, fa

One of these maps ( sents the Pierre Creta ing from the Gulf o Rocky Mountain region with a land barrier re at least to the boundary Mexico. This barrier further. The other ma early Eocene limits of geographic position of What is needed is a pa several of them, to hypothesis of the course as the land barrier ros off entirely a restricted the Gulf sea, perhaps b Somewhere there was an by Dr. Stanton, cut of Gulf ocean, in which the modified to that found i Unfortunately Dr. Sta the origin, the position climatic and other condi

in which this modificat considers that the Fox 1 mate equivalent of the Exogyra costata zone, wh limit of the Cretaceous i region. He nevertheless r able differences" in the attributes to lithologic separation, and possibly t It seems to a geologis

་

invertebrate paleontologist to give some attention to the possibility that a northern isolated sea existed into early Eocene time and that its conditions produced a modification of the Cretaceous molluscan fauna naturally different from that arising during the same time in the Gulf region. Does not the Cannonball fauna show what modification had been reached at a time which, under the existing conditions, must be placed in the general time scale by utilizing, instead of ignoring, the other facts of the Lance and Fort Union formations, and also the concordant knowledge of Rocky Mountain history?

WASHINGTON, D. C.,

WHITMAN CROSS

66

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In SCIENCE for January 14, 1921, Professor Schuchert, in reviewing Dr. Stanton's recent paper on The fauna of the Cannonball marine member of the Lance formation," proceeds to answer this query in a most emphatic and unreserved affirmative. He assumes to speak with authority for geologists and vertebrate and invertebrate paleontologists, but he admits that the "floral brethren" will, of course, continue to dissent. The problem of establishing the line between Cretaceous and Tertiary time in the Rocky Mountain province has been more or less of a storm center for a number of years, but the question can only be settled when all the available lines of evidence have been evaluated and harmonized. Drawing this line at the top of the Fort Union will profoundly affect other areas and other problems, many of which Professor Schuchert appears to have underestimated if not indeed overlooked.

The faith that is in the "floral brethren " is strong! This evidence has been set forth at length on several occasions, but a brief recapitulation may not be without interest. Up to the present time, with one or two minor exceptions, the Fort Union has been everywhere accepted as of Eocene age. It has a very large flora of approximately 500 species. Aside from local stratigraphic and paleontologic considerations, the Eocene age of the

Fort Union flora is attested by its affil with many European Eocene deposi definite, acknowledged position, as Ard Mull, Gelinden in Belgium, and Sezar the Paris Basin, as well as the I in Greenland and Alaska. This affil amounts to many identical and closely species, as well as identical and related g Several Fort Union species are believed still living, a condition not known fo earlier American deposit.

The flora of the Lance formation is rich one, comprising about 125 forms, of which, however, are so fragmentar obscure as to be incapable of more generic determination. After eliminati new forms and those that can not be sp ally named there are 87 species that are tively identified, all but 15 of which 80 per cent.) are found in the Fort I It is unmistakably a Fort Union flora occurs through the whole vertical range Lance formation, some of the most cha istic Fort Union plants being found four feet of the base of the beds. ( entire known Lance-Fort Union flora les 15 species have been reported from Cret beds anywhere, and this number will duced instead of enlarged by revision floras involved.

Sedimentation was undoubtedly cont through the Lance and Fort Union tions; in fact, it is impossible to dra satisfactory line between them. The 1 point at which dinosaurs occur is tal the top of the Lance, but where these r are absent it has no recognized or recog top. If the Cannonball marine member Lance formation is Cretaceous ther Lance and Fort Union are Cretaceo there is no stopping point short of the the Fort Union. Professor Schucher holds that there "is here a continuo unbroken series of deposits from the and Fox Hills into the top of the Fort and that the reported erosion contacts b the several formations are due to I more than changes from marine to b and fresh-water deposition, or to irregu