Cerin in France, a much more extensive flora as well as much disseminated vegetable matter and bitumen are present in the shales.8 The number of plant names in the literature would indicate that we knew a considerable flora from the lithographic stone, but a good many of these are names merely. Thus Saporta enumerated six coniferous species from Solnhofen, although at least half of these are now rightly regarded as synonyms of the remaining three. Similarly, Thistelton Dyer recorded 5 species of the coniferous genus Athrotaxites, although but one or two are valid. Ignoring the doubtful impressions which have been described as seaweeds and which are without botanical value, there are at least four genera of Solnhofen ferns, so-called. The most abundant of these individually is Lomatopteris jurensis (Kurr) Schimper, and the others are forms of the genera Sphenopteris, Odontopteris and Ungeria, and some of them at least are not ferns, but relics of plants of the cycad or "sago-palm" alliance which frequently had fern-like fronds. One of the most definitely identified plants is based on the characteristic one-seeded cone scales, which Dyer christened Araucarites Häberleinii and which unquestionably belong to the Eutacta section of the genus Araucaria, an antipodean group in the modern flora, but one that was world-wide in its Mesozoic distribution. Another satisfactorily determined conifer is Brachyphyllum, which has been entirely extinct since the Upper Cretaceous, but which was exceedingly ubiquitous throughout the Mesozoic. It had thick, club-shaped terete twigs with the leaves reduced to scales somewhat similar to those of a modern arbor vitæ or an incense cedar. Other twigs found at Solnhofen represent a cypress-like conifer variously called Athrotaxites or Palæocyparis; and Ginkgo and its extinct ally, Baiera, have also been identified, but with doubt, however. The plants of these far-off Jurassic times are so different in every way from any that still survive that it is most difficult to picture their environment in terms of their physical requirements. We know that the climate was warm from the character of the calcareous ooze in which the fossils have been found. We presume that it was also humid from the kinds of contemporaneous terrestrial and arboreal animal life, and we also know that climates were more uniform then than now from the simple fact that the same Jurassic floras occur in the Arctic and Antarctic regions as are found in the equatorial zone. 8 Saporta, G. de, Ann. Soc. Agric. Lyon, Vol. 5, pp. 87-142, pl. 14, 1873. While it may be doubted if the reefs of Solnhofen supported a dense growth of vegetation, the mainland was more or less a jungle, although it was one prevailingly low in stature and one that might more appropriately be called a "scrub" or "bush." If we can imagine a chaparral made up of ferns and cycadlike plants with cypress-like conifers rising here and there above the general level, we shall have a fairly accurate picture of the Solnhofen woods. Sequoia cones have been found b FIG. 5. TWO OF THE MOST COMMON CONIFERS FROM SOLNHOFEN. (After Saporta.) a, Brachyphyllum (Echinostrobus) Sternbergi (Schimper) in the Portlandian of France, but all of the fossil sequoias were not giants like the California big trees. In Fig. 5 I have reproduced two of the commoner types of scale-leafed conifers that have been found in the lithographic stone, namely Brachyphyllum and Palæocyparis. THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE RAPHAEL PUMPELLY'S REMINISCENCES in the Santa Rita Mountains. The conditions in the desert with its RAPHAEL PUMPELLY, distinguished Indians, Mexicans and outlaws seem as an explorer and geologist, has at the age of eighty-one years put through the press his reminiscences, well printed and illustrated, by Henry Holt and Company. It is an entertaining book, telling of many adventures in strange lands under conditions which no longer exist. Even in central New York a child eighty years ago lived under frontier conditions. The family owned forests, farms and stores; the Susquehanna River and later the Erie Canal were the means of communication with the outside world. Pum pelly was sent to school in prepara tion for Yale College, but persuaded his mother to take him abroad, where in Germany, France and Italy there was a charm in travel which has largely vanished under modern conditions. The changes in Germany, for example, have been almost as great as in central New York and in Arizona. Then the cities were still medieval in character, grass grew in the streets, sanitation was lacking, industries were carried on chiefly by individual handicrafts, the people were simple and kindly. Pumpelly's most exciting adventures were in Corsica, where he lived with the mountain people and became interested in geology. At Vienna he by chance attended a meeting of the German Association of Scientific Men, corresponding to our American Association for the Advancement of Science, and casually made the acquaintance of Professor Noeggerath, the Bonn geologist, who advised him to study at the Mining Academy at Freiburg in Saxony, where he spent three years. On returning to America, after an absence of six years, Pumpelly went to Arizona to develop silver mines almost incredible and were reduced to chaos by the removal of the United States soldiers at the out break of the Civil War. After countless adventures, Pumpelly made his way over the Old Yuma Trail to California. There he received an appointment to enter the Japanese service and had the advantage of intimate acquaintance with the country and its people when it was first opened to the outside world. He explored the mines and introduced the use of gun powder in blasting, but the anti-foreign party forced the Yeddo Government to cancel its con tracts and Pumpelly went to China. There he received an imperial commission to examine the coal fields and had all sorts of adventures in regions practically unexplored and among natives to whom foreigners were almost unknown. Everywhere Pumpelly appears to have formed kindly relations with all sorts and conditions of people. He finally crossed Siberia and returned to New York at the age of twenty-eight. Pumpelly accepted in 1866 a chair of mining geology at Harvard which he held for nine years. His first class consisted of William Morris Davis, Henry Gannett and Archibald Marvin. But he only spent a limited amount of time at Cambridge, being engaged in many enterprises and living in many places. He was on the U. S. Geological Survey, state geologist of Michigan and Missouri, and director of the Northern Transcontinental Survey. He was vicepresident of the International Geological Congress, held in Washington in 1891. An illustration is here reproduced (by the courtesy of Henry Holt and Company to whom we are also indebted for permission to reprint the portrait of Pumpelly) showing four distinguished directors The Duke of Wellington thought of foreign geological surveys, together well of the idea, but with his pracwith Dr. Van Hise and the author, on tical good sense pointed out that an excursion which followed the con- "two could play at that game," a gress. But all these things are fact which the Germans have learnt passed over lightly in the book. to their cost. In 1846 the plans were Pumpelly was most happy in his again referred to a committee, which married life and had innumerable reported that it was not desirable friends among scientific men and that any experiment should be made men distinguished in other direc- on the ground that part of the plans tions; but he likes best to describe "would not accord with the prinadventures among strange peoples. ciples of civilized warfare." Later, This he does again toward the when again there was talk of war, close of the book, for at the age of Dundonald was asked about his nearly seventy he conducted an ex- plan, but once more it was rejected, pedition into Central Asia for the the only objection to it being that it Carnegie Institution accompanied was too terrible for use by a civilby his son, and with the cooperation ized community." Dundonald's acof Profesor W. M. Davis and Professor Ellsworth Huntington. They made important discoveries concerning prehistoric civilizations and geological and climatic changes. The next to last chapter tells of revisiting the Arizona desert in 1915. The final chapter discusses ancestry, heredity and environment. THE USE OF ASPHYXIATING GAS THE British Ministry of Information, according to the British Medical Journal, recently issued a communication relating to a statement sent out by the official German wireless to the effect that the idea of using poison gas in warfare originated with the British Admiral Lord Dundonald, better known to fame as Lord Cochrane. It is a matter of history that in 1812 Dundonald submitted to the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV., secret war plans which included the use of an asphyxiating gas. A committee of experts to whom this proposal was referred expressed the opinion that the mode of attack was "infallible and irresistible," but it was not sanctioned. In 1840, when there was a threat of war with France, Dundonald again submitted his plan to the British Government and offered by means of it to annihilate the French fleet. 66 count of the plan is given in the correspondence of Lord Panmure, who was War Minister during the Crimean War. In a memorial dated August 7, 1855, he states that when viewing some sulphur kilns in 1811 he observed that the fumes which escaped in the rude process of extracting the material, though first elevated by heat, soon fell to the ground, destroying all vegetation and endangering animal life to a great distance. With reference to the materials required for the expulsion of the Russians from Sebastopol, experimental trials had, he said, shown that about five parts of coke effectually vaporize one part of sulphur. Four or five hundred tons of sulphur and two thousand tons of coke would be sufficient. Besides these materials it would be necessary to have as much bituminous coal and a couple of thousand barrels of gas or other tar for the purpose of masking the fortifications to be attacked, with dry firewood to kindle the fires, which ought to be kept in readiness for the first favorable and steady breeze. Dundonald offered to direct the application of the plan himself, but the proposal was rejected. The use of asphyxiating gas is a very ancient device. Smoking out the enemy was one of the regular manoeuvres of war in antiquity. Polybius relates |