Society; Mr. Albert S. Gatschet; the Editors of the Novara Expedition Reports, Vienna ; Meteorological Central Iustitute of Vienna ; Royal Academy at Munich; Dr. Carl Alfred Littel; Natural History Society at Stuttgard; Physical Econ. Society at Königsberg ; Prag Observatory ; Annales des Mines; Nouvelle Société Indo-Chinoise at Paris; Dr. Le Grand ; M. Joachim Barrande; M. A. Woeikof; Accademia dei Lencei, Rome; Sig. Allesandro Dorno ; Turin Observatory; Revista Euskara at Pamplona ; R. Academy, Lisbon ; R. Academy, Madrid; Victoria Institute, Astronomical Society and Sir Edward Sabine, London ; Natural History Society at Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Mauritius Expedition; Asiatic Society of Japan; Tasmanian Society; New Zealand Institute; Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society ; Geological Survey of Canada ; Mr. Samuel H. Scudder ; Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences; Harvard College Observatory; Editors of Psyche; Essex Institute ; American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston ; Mr. W. Ripley Nichols; American Oriental Society: Superintendent of Fairmount Park; Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia; American Journal of the Medical Sciences; Peabody Institute, Baltimore; Official Army Register; Mr. Samuel Newcomb; U. S. Geological and Geographical Survey Bureau ; Cincinnati Society of Natural History; and M. Barcena, of Mexico.

A letter was received from the Secretary of the R. Academia di Scienze, Littere ed Arti of Modena, dated July 30, requesting exchanges. On motion the name of this society was ordered to be placed on the list of correspondents to receive the publications.*

A letter was received from Mr. C. E. Billin, Secretary of the Engineers’ Club of Philadelphia, requesting to receive the Society's publications. On motion the request was

* NOTE.-Jan. 5, 1877, we received from the “Societa Italiana (in 1782) della Scienze fondata da Anton-Mario Lorgna.” Memoirs (4°) 2d Ser. J. (1862), II (1866)-3d Series I, i (1867), ii (1868), II (1869–1876). Pub. lished in Florence.

granted and the Engineers' Club placed among the Society's correspondents to receive the Proceedings from the beginning of 1878 onward.

Letters requesting the supply of deficiencies in the series of the Society's publications were received from Trübner & Co., from the Boston Public Library, and the Naval Observatory, and were referred to the Librarian for action.

A request for subscription to the “ American Catalogue,” dated September 17, New York, 37 Park Row, was referred to the Librarian to consider and report.* '.

A letter was received from S. Guerrier, Emporia, Kansas, September 9, asking the worth of an old Bible (1602) described by its owner.

The committee to which was referred Prof. Haldeman's plates and descriptions of prehistoric remains in the cave near Chicques rock in Lancaster Co., Pennsylvania, reported in favor of their publication in the Transactions of the Society. On motion the report was accepted and the committee discharged. On motion the publication was ordered.

The Committee on Finance was requested to inquire into and report upon the expediency of publishing the two memoirs presented at recent meetings by Dr. Lautenbach, of Geneva, Switzerland.*

Dr. König exhibited and described a piece of chemical apparatus which he invented for the purpose of applying the use of sliding glass wedges, colored and transparent, and empirically graduated, to the optical extinction of the colors, simple or compound, of the blowpipe beads of the chromatic metals, ground to a given thickness and rendered trausparent by a coating of balsam. The use of the glass wedge has been known; but this use of complimentary colors for producing the extinction of a given color, and for thus obtaining the exact degree on a scale marking the percentage of metallic elements contained in the bead, is new, and, as

* See Minute Book, Oct. 18, 1878.

Ashbumer.] 'v [.Vug. 16,

Hard shells and slate 15 to 1665

Hard shells 5 " 1670

Sand and pebbles 8 " 1678

Slate and shells 82 " 1760

Drilled dry. Cased 450'

Conductor 15'

Salt water in slate 445 to 540'

red rock 1528 to 1535'

Smell of oil reported in sand 1670 to 1678'

The Olean Conglomerate is probably represented in the record by the sand from 30 to 85 feet below the top of the well.

The records of the Hear Creek and Silver Creek Wells are invaluable as having a direct bearing upon the probable existence of petroleum to the south and south-east of Wilcox.

It will be noticed that the mass of the red rocks are some 300 feet lower in the the Hear and Silver Creek Wells than in the Wilcox Wells, estimating from the bottom of the Olean Conglomerate.

The question as to whether the mass of red bands in the two localities are the same and whether the strata included between them and the Olean have thickened to the south and south-east, is extremely suggestive.

Note.—The records are published just as they have been reported to me. I have not even altered the phraseology, which is quite different in a number of places where the same idea was evidently intended to be conveyed.

I will merely add, for those who are unacquainted with the terms employed by the drillers, that "shell" means any hard stratum encountered in the well, and not, as might be supposed, a fossil.

Nature's Reforesting. By Eli K. Price.

(Rend before the American Philosophical Society, September 20, 1878.)

The paper on Sylviculture read in November and December, 1877, has produced the following confirmatory letters of views therein expressed. They are from the present Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, who lives in Beaver, and the Professor of Botany in the University of Pennsylvania, formerly a resident of Mifflin County, Pennsylvania.

Continental Hotel, Febiiuary 11, 1878.

My Dear Sir :—I have read the address you sent me on Sylviculture

with great interest, especially as some of its facts have come under my own

observation. The western part of Pennsylvania was once among the best

wooded portions of it, yet the destruction of timber has plainly affected

granted and the Engineers' Club placed among the Society's correspondents to receive the Proceedings from the beginning of 1878 onward.

Letters requesting the supply of deficiencies in the series of the Society's publications were received from Trübner & Co., from the Boston Public Library, and the Naval Observatory, and were referred to the Librarian for action.

A request for subscription to the “ American Catalogue," dated September 17, New York, 3.7 Park Row, was referred to the Librarian to consider and report.*

A letter was received from S. Guerrier, Emporia, Kansas, September 9, asking the worth of an old Bible (1602) described by its owner.

The committee to which was referred Prof. Haldeman's plates and descriptions of prehistoric remains in the cave near Chicques rock in Lancaster Co., Pennsylvania, reported in favor of their publication in the Transactions of the Society. On motion the report was accepted and the committee discharged. On motion the publication was ordered.

The Committee on Finance was requested to inquire into and report upon the expediency of publishing the two memoirs presented at recent meetings by Dr. Lautenbach, of Geneva, Switzerland.*

Dr. König exhibited and described a piece of chemical apparatus which he invented for the purpose of applying the use of sliding glass wedges, colored and transparent, and empirically graduated, to the optical extinction of the colors, simple or compound, of the blow pipe beads of the chromatic metals, ground to a given thickness and rendered transparent by a coating of balsam. The use of the glass wedge has been known; but this use of complimentary colors for producing the extinction of a given color, and for thus obtaining the exact degree on a scale marking the percentage of metallic elements contained in the bead, is new, and, as

* See Minute Book, Oct. 18, 1878.

Dr. König promised to show in a coming memoir, efficient for very precise determinations.

Prof. Houston desired to place on record an extension of the researches of Prof. Thompson and himself, on Electric Lighting, obtained by passing the Ruhmkorff discharge through glass tubes containing silica, carbonate of ammonia and similar substances.

Prof. P. E. Chase (detained from the meeting by illness) presented, through the Secretary, a communication entitled “ Crucial Harmonies.”

Mr. Lesley exhibited several plates of the Permean fossil plants discovered and described by Profs. Fontaine and White of the West Virginia University, at Morgantown, in the country west of the Monongahela River, and took occasion to speak of the progress made by Prof. James Hall, Dr. T. Sterry Hunt and others at the late Congress of Geologists opened on the 29th of August last at Paris, in harmonizing the geologies of Europe and America. Ile described the meetings of the Congress, and the appointment of national committees on classification and coloration, to report to Prof. Capellini six months previous to the next assembling of the International Congress of Geologists at Bologna in 1881.

Mr. Lesley laid on the table for examination some quasi coprolites, found by Mr. W. D. H. Mason in the roof slates of the Mammoth bed, as described in a letter dated Williamstown, July 29, 1878.

Pending nominations 864 to 870 were read.

Prof. Houston moved that the minutes on printed page 728 of No. 101 of the Proceedings be corrected. Owing to the lateness of the hour, and at the request of the Secretary, who reported the minutes, the subject was postponed for consideration at the next meeting.

And the meeting was adjourned.