April 29, 1878; Physical Society at Berlin, June 15, 1878 ; Holland Society of Sciences at Harlem, July, 1878; Royal Academy of Lisbon, February 7, 1878; Meteorological Office at London, July, 1878; Secretary of State of New Hampshire, August 10, 1878; Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, August 17, 1878; Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, September 5, 1878; Coast Survey Office at Washington, August 17, 1878; Office of the Chief of Engineers, Washington, September 3, 1878; Department of the Interior, Washington, July 24, 1878; * Department of State at Washington, August 31, 1878; the Argentine National Observatory, April, 1878; and from the Argentine Scientific Society, Buenos Ayres.

Donations for the Library were received from the Mining Surveyors and Registrars of Victoria; Royal Academies at Berlin and at Brussels; Natural History Societies at Riga, Offenbach am M., Bremen and Boston; Anthropological Society, and Geological Institute at Vienna; Physical Society at Berlin; Holland Society at Harlem; Geographical Society and Revue Politique at Paris; Geographical Commercial Society at Bordeaux; Royal Geographical, Geological, Antiquarian, Zoological and Metereological Societies of London ; Meteorological Office of the Royal Society; Prof. Richard Owen, and London Nature; Joseph Gurney Barclay, Esq. Peyton, Essex, Eng.; Geological Survey of New Hampshire; Museum of Comparative Zoology and Peabody Museum in Cambridge, Mass.; American Journal of Science and Art; Mr. Henry T. Eddy, of Princeton, N. J.; Princeton College; Franklin Institute; Journal of Pharmacy, Medical News, Penu Monthly; Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania ; American Journal Mathematics, Baltimore; Mr. Asaph Hall, of Washington; Kansas Agricultural Report, Topeka; Geographical and Statistical Society, Mexico; Ministerio de Fomento, Mexico; and the Argentine Scientific Society in Buenos Ayres.

Also previously, and not noted, from the Royal Danish

* Cartas de Indias from the Government of Spain.

Society; Mr. Albert S. Gatschet; the Editors of the Novara Expedition Reports, Vienna; Meteorological Central Institute 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. I (1862), II (1866)—3d Series I, i (1867), ii (1868), II (1869–1876). Published in Florence.

1878.]

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 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. He 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.

1878.]

[Ashburner.

Oil Well Records in McKean and Elk Counties, Pennsylvania. BY CHAS. A. ASHBURNER, M.S. ASSISTANT GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. (Read before the American Philosophical Society, August 16, 1878). The demand for accurate well records in the northern oil field has become very great, from the eagerness with which the producers have sought to find petroleum, outside of the limits of the Bradford development. Most of the explorers, from the way in which their wells are drilled by contractors, are unable to keep a complete and correct record of the rocks through which the drill passes, yet they are ever anxious to procure reliable records from other sources to aid them in their "wild cat" operations.

During the past two years I have been able to obtain through the assistance of Mr. M. M. Schultz of Wilcox, a number of extremely valuable and interesting records of wells drilled in the vicinity of that village. Mr. Schultz by his untiring perseverance has succeeded in getting records of no less than six wells drilled to an average depth of over eighteen hundred feet. All have been kept with the greatest care and most of them under his personal supervision.

No complete register of all the rocks passed through by the drill has ever been kept by any of the producers in the Bradford oil field. In December, 1877, Prof. Lesley appointed Mr. Arthur Hale, of the Survey, to the special work of obtaining a correct record of the Dennis & Co.'s Well, No. 1, which was about to be drilled on the high summit to the south-west of Bradford.

All of these records together with a more minute description and fuller discussion of the rocks drilled through, will be found in my forthcoming report of progress in McKean and Elk Counties. I have been induced to communicate to the Society a few of the more valuable well records for immediate reference prior to the publication of the report.

The position of the Olean Conglomerate above the mouth of each well is given in feet in order that a comparison may be made between the several sections. All the rocks of the section are not named for reasons which can be better appreciated when the report is published.

The Olean Conglomerate is the bottom of the Coal Conglomerate No. XII, or Millstone grit. The Bradford oil producing sand belongs without question to the Chemung Period, or the upper part of No. VIII.

C. W. Dennis & Co.'s Well, No. 1.

Owned by C. W. Dennis & Co., situated on the Roger's farm, threefourths of a mile south 35° west of Bradford, Bradford Township, McKean County.

The record of this well was kept by Mr. Arthur Hale, aid to Mr. John F. Carll, Assistant Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania.

The well was drilled in December 1877, and January 1878. Mr. Hale made the measurements with great accuracy, the method pursued, toPROC. AMER. PHILOS, soc. XVIII. 102. B. PRINTED NOV. 21, 1878.