of using our present system of weights and measures, with " our long and short tons, Our barrels of 200, 280, 300 or 400 lbs, our pounds avoirdupois and our pounds Troy, our bushels of a dozen different weights, and our gallons of several incomprehensible kinds"; but the disadvantages of this system have been partly avoided in many cases by giving the statistics in metric measures as well as in our

own.

The question of the cost of production has been given especial prominence in this volume, with a view to showing the reduction in the cost of the crude products. To use the words of the editor: "The itemization of cost is the first essential step in securing economy in producing any article, and the history of every country and of every industry has shown that prosperity, whether national, industrial, or individual, is, in a general way, inversely proportional to the cost of supplying the rest of the world with what one produces." These reductions are in no way dependent on the reduction of wages. On the contrary, many of the mining industries where the greatest reduction in cost of production has been accomplished, are carried on with high priced labor; and in many other cases, where the wages are not high, the condition of the wage-earners has been greatly improved. The reduction in cost of production has been entirely brought about by improvements in mining machinery, by a more thorough understanding of the nature of the deposits to be worked, and by more intelligent management and labor. The reduction in cost of production is nowhere better seen than in the materials most necessary to our welfare. For instance, coal can in some cases be carried by rail for 400 miles and delivered on board vessels for from $2 to $2.25 per ton, and yet the mine owners and railroads make dividends; some of the manufacturing establishments in Western Pennsylvania obtain coal. at from 60 to 75 cents per ton at their works; hard gold-bearing quartz can be crushed, washed and 95 per cent. of the gold saved on the plates for $1.25 per ton; high grade Bessemer iron ore can be mined, handled, shipped and delivered a thousand miles from the point of production for less than $4.00 per ton. All these figures seem almost incredible until one investigates the various devices which the ingenuity and better education of those engaged in the industry have. invented for reducing the expenses of production.

The former annual statistical numbers of the Engineering and Mining Journal were excellent in all they undertook, but the present

volume, the Mineral Industry, makes a great advance in giving the statistics for foreign countries in addition to those of the United States. By so doing it gives the American producers an opportunity to know the present, past and probable future conditions of competition in foreign countries.

The two most important features in any statistical work are accuracy and promptness. The necessity of accuracy is self-evident, and without promptness the statistics lose much of their serviceability to those most interested in them, for the statistics of an industry published a year or two years late are rarely of much value to those engaged in that industry. The business man wants his statistics immediately after the expiration of the time to which they relate, so that he may know the existing condition of the industry in which he is engaged; but if he does not get these statistics until many months or even several years afterwards, the condition of the industry may have changed entirely since the time to which the statistics refer. It is the promptness with which this volume is issued, combined with a high. degree of accuracy, far greater than would be expected in statistics so hastily compiled, that gives it its especial value.

In conclusion, it may be said, that as a piece of statistical work, relating to an industry that is world-wide in its scope, combining accuracy with full detail and systematic arrangement, and issued so soon after the close of the time to which it relates, the Mineral Industry has never been equaled in this country or abroad. The former statistical numbers of the Engineering and Mining Journal, which referred mostly only to American mining, were considered remarkable pieces of statistical work, on account of the promptness of their publication; but in the Mineral Industry we have an epitome of the mining operations of every quarter of the globe, published almost immediately after the close of the time to which they refer, a feat which heretofore would have been declared impossible. This accomplishment is most creditable to the editor, Mr. Rothwell, to the systematic organization of the Scientific Publishing Co., and to the business manager, Mrs. Braeunlich, by whose business ability such an expensive undertaking is made commercially practicable. The volume will be found. of the greatest value to the economic geologist, the miner, the engineer and the business man.

R. A. F. PENrose, Jr.

ANALYTICAL ABSTRACTS OF CURRENT

LITERATURE.

A New Taniopteroid Fern and its Allies. By DAVID WHITE.

(Bul

letin Geological Society of America, 4 pp., 119-122, pl. I.). Mr. White has described, under the name of Taniopteris missouriensis, a new and well characterized fern from the Lower Coal-measures in the vicinity of Clinton, Henry County, Missouri. Botanically, it is of particular interest in that it combines the so-called tæniopteroid and alethopteroid types of structure, while geologically it is of much value in supplying a readily identified stratigraphic mark in a part of the Carboniferous not especially rich in fossil plants. After thoroughly describing it and considering its specific and generic resemblances, the author discusses at length its suggested genetic relations and represents in a graphic manner a scheme of its probable ancestors and line of descent. F. H. K.

Rainfall Types of the United States.

Annual Report by Vice President GENERAL A. W. GREELY. (The National Geographic Magazine. Vol. V., April 29, 1893, pp. 45-58 pl. 20).

The paper confines itself to the characteristic distribution of precipitation throughout the year and gives the rainfall types of the country.

(a) The best defined type of rainfall within the United States is that which dominates the Pacific coast region as far east as western Utah. The characteristic features are a very heavy precipitation during midwinter, and an almost total absence of rain during the late summer. (b) The characteristics of the Mexican type, dominating Mexico, New Mexico and western Texas, are a very heavy precipitation after the summer solstice and a very dry period after the vernal equinox. August is the month of greatest rainfall, while February, March and April are almost free from precipitation. (c) The Missouri type covers the greatest area, dominating the watersheds of the Arkansas, Missouri and upper Mississippi rivers, and of lakes Ontario and Michigan. It is marked by a very light winter precipitation, followed in late spring and early summer by the major portion of the yearly rain, the period when it is most beneficial to the growing grain.

Abstracts in this number are prepared by F. H. Knowlton, Henry B. Kummel, J. A. Bownocker.

(d) The Tennessee type, prevailing in Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama, has the highest rainfall the last of winter, while the minimum is in mid-autumn. (e) The Atlantic type, covering all the coast save New England, is one where the distribution throughout the year is nearly uniform, with a maximum precipitation after the summer solstice, and a minimum during mid-autumn. (f) The St. Lawrence type is characterized by scarcity during the spring months, heavy rainfall during the late summer and late autumn months, with a maximum during November.

The regions lying between these several type-regions have composite rainfall types, resulting from the influence of two or more simple types.

H. B. K.

The Geographic Development of the Eastern Part of the Mississippi Drainage System. By LEWIS G. WESTGATE, Middletown, Conn. (American Geologist, Vol. XI, April, 1893, 15 pp.)

The drainage of the Eastern Mississippi basin in post-carboniferous was in all probability consequent upon the tilting which accompanied the stronger folds of the Appalachian revolution in the east. The present drainage is found to accord in the main with this hypothetical post-carboniferous drainage, but several streams depart quite widely from it.

(a) The great drainage lines of the St. Lawrence basin are structural valleys developed along the strike of the softer Paleozoic strata, and at right angles to the original surface. The streams seem, therefore, to have adjusted themselves to the differences in hardness and structure of the beds discovered. (b) The Ohio and Cumberland rivers cut directly across the Tennessee and Cincinnati anticlines. The most probable explanation is that the rivers were superimposed upon the arched and eroded Silurian rocks from a thin cover of carboniferous beds-now entirely removed. (c) The Upper Mississippi does not follow the dip of the rocks to the southwest, but follows the strike to the southeast. This part of the river probably dates from the elevation of the plains on the west and the Appalachians on the east, which marked the close of the Cretaceous and which left a broad north and south valley. (d) The author finds good reason to believe that the Lower Mississippi, in post-carboniferous times, flowed west through Missouri and Arkansas. The present course was probably taken at the close of the Cretaceous in consequence of elevations on the west and east, and possible depression in the south.

The Cretaceous base-level recognized by Davis on the Atlantic slope can be traced more or less discontinuously, and remnants of it are believed to exist in Kentucky, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Arkansas. But in general the work of the Tertiary cycle has obliterated almost all evidence of it on all but the hard sandstones and conglomerates of the Paleozoic series.

Good examples of the lowlands excavated from the Cretaceous base-level during the Tertiary cycle, are the Valley of the East Tennessee and the central lowland of Kentucky and Tennessee. During the post-Tertiary sub-cycle the larger streams trenched to greater or less extent these lowlands. No attempt is made to carry the history of the development of the Mississippi drainage into the complicated chapter of the ice-invasion. H. B. K.

On a New Order of Gigantic Fossils. By ERWIN H. BARBOUR.. (University Studies. Published by the University of Nebraska. Vol. I, No. 4, July, 1892, pp. 23, pl. 5).

A part of Sioux County, Nebraska, lying north of the Niobrara River, has yielded a new order of gigantic Miocene fossils unlike anything heretofore known. They are best described as fossil corkscrews, of great size, coiling in right-handed or left-handed curves about an actual axis or around an imaginary axis. The screws are often attached at the bottom to an immense transverse piece, rhizome, underground stem, or whatever it may be, which is sometimes three feet in diameter. In other cases the corkscrew ends abruptly downward, as it always does upwards. In still other cases the transverse piece is variously modified, and sometimes blends into the sandstone matrix, as if the underground stem, while growing at one end, was decaying at the other. The fossil corkscrew is invariably vertical, and the so-called rhizome invariably curves rapidly upwards, and extends outwards an indefinite distance.

That they could ever have been formed by burrowing animals, by geysers or springs, or by any mechanical means whatever, is entirely untenable. Their organic origin is unquestionable. Microscopic sections show smooth spindle-shaped rods, which are suggestive of sponge spicules. From the numbers seen in place it is evident that they flourished in thickly crowded forests of vast extent.

The

A finely preserved rodent's skeleton was found in one great stem. probable explanation is not that the rodent burrowed there, but that its submerged skeleton became an anchorage for a living, growing Daimonelix, which eventually enveloped it.

The author proposes this provisional classification: