schist besides the eroded limestone ought to be restored to the valley (and) where the Cambrian limestone comes to the surface in anticlines, the entire limestone formation as well as the schist ought to be added, i. e., at least 3,500 and possibly 5,000 feet, leaving out the Silurian Grit.

The differences in form are clear when the two ranges of mountains are before one, but they are not easily described. The Green Mountains are characterized by rounded, though not dome-shaped, summits, frequent long ridges radiating from them and occasionally sharp cliffs, but nowhere is there the very rugged, angular, pyramidal outline of the Matterhorn type.

The greater part of the mountain mass consists of gneiss and, of course, the general forms of the various summits are due to the effect of long weathering and glaciation upon this material.

The outlines in the Taconics are even more rounded than are the Green Mountains, the mass is often more elaborately dissected, the ridges more numerous and longer. Beginning in Snake Mountain in Addison, somewhat north of the middle of the state is a series of low mountains and hills, nowhere united in a range, but standing as isolated elevations not far from the shore of Lake Champlain.

Nearly all of these are less than a thousand feet high, though one or two are more, and they are mostly composed of Lower Cambrian red sandstone, but there are occasionally shale and quartzite. Silicious limestone of the same age also occurs in small amount. This series has been known as The Red Sandrock Formation, but as this name is preoccupied and as the terrane as found in western Vermont appears to be sufficiently distinct to deserve a local name, it is suggested that these beds of sandstone with some shale, quartzite and limestone be called the "Winooski Beds."

Among the characteristic fossils are Olenellus thompsoni, Ptychoparia adamsi, Kutorgina cingulate, Billingsella orientalis, Huenella vermontana. These place the terrane in the Waucobian of Walcott.

It seems evident that the outcrops in the lowlands and in the elevations-the series of

hills-are Cambrian remnants and that before the Ordovician, Cambrian strata some thousands of feet thick covered the western part of Vermont.

What has been called "The Champlain-St. Lawrence Fault" came after the close of the Ordovician running from Canada through western Vermont and on along eastern New York. This broke through the Cambrian and Ordovician, lifted the eastern side hundreds of feet above the western and shoved it over so that now in many places on the shore of Lake Champlain beds of Lower Cambrian rest directly on those of the Utica Shale, which is at the water's edge. These exposures are very impressive as they form cliffs on the shore of the lake.

The fourth series of elevations in Vermont are not very numerous nor massive, but commercially they are of great importance because it is in these Granite Hills that all the granite quarries are situated and Vermont at present leads the world in production of this stone, as it does in marble.

As the Taconics and Cambrian Hills are west of the Green Mountains, so these are on the eastern side a series of low mountains wholly of granite, usually more or less domeshaped and not more than a few hundreds of feet high. Millstone Hill in Barre and Robeson Mountain in Woodbury are types of these granite masses. Probably all are laccoliths and as the granite has a structure that indicates slow cooling of intrusive masses held down by heavy pressure, there was originally a considerable thickness of other rock resting upon the upthrust granite.

As Ordovician fossils have been found in the unchanged limestone near the granite, it seems probable that the covering beds were of this age, though there may be some of the Cambrian as well.

The rocks now associated with the granite are metamorphic so that the igneous activity which resulted in the granite thrust did not take place until after the great metamorphism following the Ordovician. It has been thought that it did not occur till the Devonian or even somewhat later.

One other elevation should be mentioned. Mount Ascutney in Windsor is a conspicuous object in the Connecticut Valley as it stands alone twenty miles from any other hill. Of this it must be sufficient to note that its structure is unique among Vermont mountains and unusually complex, as any one who will refer to Dr. R. A. Daly's account in Bulletin 209, U. S. G. S., will find. Dr. Daly says: Ascutney owes its existence to a great stock of quartz syenite.

Also

Mount Ascutney is, like most New England mountains, a residual or erosion, a monadnock overlooking a dissected rolling plateau.

In so mountainous a region as that of Vermont the elevations of all sorts must form the most obvious part of its physiography, but in any other than an arid region where there are mountains there must also be streams and lakes. Everywhere in Vermont the stern, rugged, impressive mountain scenery is softened by the charm of stream and lake. Aside from Champlain and Memphremagog, there are not far from four hundred lakes and ponds in the state. Some are but a fraction of a mile long, others several miles. Most of them are of glacial origin. The streams are innumerable. There are four rivers that empty into Lake Champlain, although they rise in the eastern part of the state and thus do not conform to the general trend of surface features. These, the Missisquoi, Lamoille, Winooski and Otter have found their way across the mountains. They are antecedent streams and therefore old. Other rivers flow into the Connecticut and a few others elsewhere. Nearly all have formed deltas.

Necessarily the general character of Vermont physiography is much modified by the character of the rocks. As one crosses the state from east to west he will find at least a dozen belts or strips of differing rock material. Along the Connecticut River are schist and slate for the most part, while between these and the mountains are schist, limestone, conglomerate quartzite, etc. The common schists are sericite and phyllite.

The age of these beds, some of which extend through the length of the state, some only for a few miles, has been long in doubt, but within the last few years Dr. C. H. Richardson, working on the Vermont Survey, has studied the rocks of eastern Vermont and has been fortunate in discovering in limestone beds at many localities crushed graptolites, some of which have been identified by Dr. Ruedeman as undoubtedly Ordovician.

So numerous and widely distributed are these outcrops that it appears quite certain that eastern Vermont is largely Ordovician, though there may be a small amount of Cambrian. As has been indicated, much of. the rock east of the Green Mountains is highly metamorphosed and when the mountains themselves are reached exceedingly complex structure is found. It will probably be a long time before all the intricacies of Green Mountain geology are disentangled.

For a few miles west of the mountains the rocks are similar to those found in the Connecticut Valley east of them. Farther west there are sedimentary rocks which have been somewhat changed, and near the lake others which are unchanged. The shores of Lake Champlain afford many excellent opportunities for studying the Lower Cambrian, and the divisions of the Ordovician from Beekmantown limestone to Utica shale. All headlands on the eastern shore of the lake are of these beds, as are nearly all the islands in Lake Champlain.

The last period in the making of Vermont physiography is, naturally, the Pleistocene. The usual events of this age are too well known to need repetition here and what the Pleistocene was elsewhere it was in Vermont. There is here no evidence that more than one advance of the ice came over the region we are considering. Evidences of the action of the glacier that moved over Vermont are everywhere and if other glaciers preceded it, all traces of their coming have been removed by the last. This seems to be of the time of the late Wisconsin and it covered the highest mountains, as scratches on bits of quartz enclosed in the gneiss show. The gneiss itself is

too much weathered to show glacier scratches. The oscillations of the land surface in the Vermont region are well known to geologists, as are the effects produced upon the surface by which in various ways both highlands and lowlands were modified. One class of these phenomena is found in the ancient water levels which are plainly discernible in many localities.

Geologists are indebted to Professor H. L. Fairchild for his careful study of these levels through New England. So far as Vermont has been studied, Dr. Fairchild's results are given in the Tenth Report of the Vermont Survey.

Of the level plains, terraces and similar features he writes:

The broad stretches of sand plains on both sides of the Champlain Valley and conspicuous in Vermont are clear evidence of standing water at levels far above Lake Champlain.

Again:

The terraces, beaches and shore phenomena in the open Champlain Valley were produced by waters confluent with the sea. The summit marine plane lies uplifted to-day about four hundred feet above tide at the south edge of Vermont and about eight hundred feet at the north border of the state.

Most if not all the terraces in the Connecticut Valley which have been explained as due to river flood action are to be accounted for in the same manner as Professor Fairchild has shown in Bulletin, Geol. Society, Vol. 25, pp. 219-242.

The condition of Lake Champlain and the many changes through which this lake has passed from Pre-Cambrian time to the end of the Pleistocene forms an interesting chapter in the physiographic history of Vermont, but the story is far too long to be told at this time.

From what has been shown it will be seen that the present physiography of Vermont has become what it is through the action of a great variety of geological agencies during several periods of past time.

At least eight epochs may be defined. First, in Pre-Cambrian times were formed the hard crystalline rocks found in the interior of the

Green Mountains. Second, an unknown interval of erosion and subsidence, during which a large part of the Pre-Cambrian beds were removed. Third, Cambrian deposition when the sandstone, shale and limestone of this time was laid down. Fourth, a relatively short period of erosion when these beds were all carried off except the few remnants now standing. Fifth, deposition of thick beds of limestone and shale in the Ordovician ocean. Sixth, a period of igneous activity and metamorphism during which the schist, quartzite, gneiss and slate and marble were formed. This was the time of the greater uplift of the Green Mountains as now they appear. Seventh, a vast interval from the close of the Ordovician to the beginning of the Pleistocene. Eighth, the Pleistocene glaciation and erosion.

UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT

GEORGE H. PERKINS

WHAT KINDS OF BOTANY DOES THE WORLD NEED NOW?1

FOR months, even years, after the great war began I felt that the world had suddenly been plunged into darkness, intense and impenetrable, in which one could only grope one's way, unable to determine or to keep one's direction, shocked and grieved that those lights, which were thought to serve as guides before, had so completely gone out. I believe now that this series of figures is wrong; that, instead, the world has had such a light turned upon it that we are dazzled, if not blinded, that its shams have been exposed as the pleasing envelopes of selfishness-mercenary, political and social-that the lights which had guided us before are still burning but that they have become so shaded and dimmed by human goggles that they disappeared in the flood of light which makes war a great revelation of human weakness, human wickedness, human stupidity, and human ideals.

1 An address delivered at the meeting of the San Francisco Bay Section, Western Society of Naturalists, at Stanford University, on November 30, 1918.

It may be more the function of others to inspect the quaking edifice of civilization, to ascertain and repair its weaknesses; but now is certainly the opportunity, and hence the obligation, of scientific men to review their sciences, to consider the relations of science, be it zoological, botanical or geological, to human life, human needs and human ideals. This review should comprise both the pursuit of science, research if you will, and also the teaching of science.

So far as the teaching of botany is concerned, two such reviews have come to my notice, one English, the other American.2 No one, so far as I recall, has recently reviewed the pursuit of botanical science in any more public way than in addresses to professional audiences, such as the botanical section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and its affiliated societies, and even these reviews are only relatively recent.

A glance at the botanical science of various epochs in the past shows the changes in emphasis which teachers have given it, changes in direction which its leaders have encouraged. The well-known statement of Mrs. Lincoln,3 which never fails to release a smile, if not to arouse a laugh, whenever it is quoted, is but one of many statements of the peculiar fitness or of the importance of botanical study for a part or the whole of the human race. But in spite of these statements the world has little idea of what botany really is or what its devotees are trying to accomplish. Hence, while to name a man a plant pathologist is to connect his name with one of the branches of botanical science, to call him a botanist is to suggest to the mind of the average man something very different from the vigorous and

2 See a series of contributions in numbers 1-6, New Phytologist, 17, 1918, and Davis in SCIENCE, N. S., 48, No. 1247, November 22, 1918.

3 Lincoln, Mrs. Almira H., "Familiar Lectures on Botany," 3d edition, Hartford, 1832, p. 14: "The study of botany seems peculiarly adapted to females; the objects of its investigation are beautiful and delicate; its pursuits, leading to exercise in the open air, are conducive to health and cheerful

virile person capable of working hard a good many more than eight hours a day and playing at least equally hard besides. Why is this? The explanation seems to be that the various branches of botanical science have themselves forgotten their origin, soon after they became independent, and the rest of the world never knew or cared. What "man in the street" is aware that the present science of bacteriology had its foundations laid and its first story built in botanical laboratories, and that even now bacteriological papers come from the same source? Forestry is botanical science applied to trees and the accompanying vegetation of the forest, and no forester is anything more than an administrator, no matter how much engineering, entomology and geology he may know, unless he is first and foremost a botanist, versed in the anatomy and physiology of the trees which he is to sow, cultivate, protect from damage by disease, animals and fire, and to harvest. Horticulturists, agriculturalists, farmers, are botanists as well as the New Englandish spinster who "analyzes some of the by-products of a summer vacation. By superior organization, admirable enthusiasm, and freedom from that excess of modesty which has been one of the misfortunes of botanists, every one knows of plant pathologists and of plant pathology. But the plant pathologist can not recognize a diseased plant unless he knows what it looks like when it is well, he can not tell what is wrong about its functions unless he knows the normal ones.

All of these men are applying, consciously or unconsciously, what has been learned through the experience of the race and the deliberate investigations of the few. Whenever the fruits of "pure science" can be used, they become applied science or "practical." But nothing can be applied that is not first found out, and the changing requirements of the world make new demands upon the stores of knowledge acquired by study and by experience. The careful housewife draws out from her stores in attic and closet what she has put away as prospectively but not immediately useful, and thereby she saves unnec

essary drain upon the family purse. Thus the accumulations of years come, sooner or later, into use. So it is with science. In these last years of unusual and great stress, the knowledge of woods has brought about the utilization, with the minimum loss of time, of spruce, black walnut and other materials in the manufacture of airplane parts.

No one should be so unimaginative as to wish to check curiosity merely because one may not see now what possible use there may be of the fruits of curiosity. Scientific curiosity should have the heartiest support and encouragement. There should be no neglect of "pure science" merely because the world is hungry; but because the world is hungry, can not we botanists take account of stock and make some estimate of what parts of our field of study are likely to help most to relieve the present need? As a plant physiologist some parts of my subject seem to me to have more immediate prospects of usefulness than others, and to deserve for this reason more study. I can conceive, for example, no reason, scientific or other, for attempting to carry the study of geotropic phenomena any further until the chemist has thrown more light upon the contents and the changes within the cell. But that one should conclude that all study of irritability should stop is absurd. We may, perhaps, well conclude that further study of the directive effects of light may cease for a time, for we know pretty well about the movements, the bendings, of motile and sessile organisms toward or from sources of light: but how much do we actually know about the effects of light upon that chain of processes which ends in the production of fruit and seed? The observations of Delpino, the experiments of Vöchting and Klebs, the experience of agriculturalists and horticulturists in the sunlit arid regions of our western country and in the greenhouse, all point to light as the most effective stimulus to reproduction in plants that we know. Would there be any unworthiness in the student of plant physiology who is interested in the phenomena of irritability choosing to work on the influence of light

rather than on the directive influence of gravity?

The most important chemical reaction in all nature, from the standpoint of man and other living things at least, is that which results in the combination of carbon dioxide and water into sugar. The botanist has been fond of saying that plants stand between the animal kingdom and starvation; but what has he done about it? I do not ignore the invaluable studies of plant nutrition which have been carried on and are now in progress; but too many of us have given little thought to the problems involved in that reaction of which the botanist is peculiarly the custodian. Need the world have been as hungry to-day as millions of its inhabitants are, if we botanists had reflected as much upon the processes of nutrition in plants as we have, for example, upon the possible or probable course of evolution? Do we realize that, while water can only be moved, it can not be made, food can be made, and made so near to the points of maximum consumption, that the problems of transport can be very greatly reduced, if the kinds of food and the methods of culture are more accurately adjusted to the demand? This is not merely a problem for the economist; it is a problem of first rate importance for the botanist.

My allusion to the doctrine and the studies of evolution must not be misunderstood; for no one acknowledges more frankly the enormous benefits, material as well as intellectual, which have flowed from the emancipation of the race from the bonds which held it for

generations, however deplorable the results of a misguided application of one of Darwin's doctrines may have been in the last four years. But whatever the course of evolution may have been, we know that it is possible, because plants are plastic under cultivation, to breed strains which will withstand, for a time at least, conditions and enemies which others can not endure. Acquired characters may or may not be heritable; but conditions may be so modified that, in the new complex, a new and endurable balance is established.