That common alum with which wool or silk has been impregnated is able to attract coloring matter from solutions and precipitate it on the fibres depends not upon the strength of the chemical affinity of these fibres for the coloring matter, but upon the fact (experimentally proved by Bolley) that they become saturated with the alum which cotton does not. 13. Cellulose Digested by Sheep.-The researches of several German chemists* have proved that the cellulose of plants is by no means so indigestible a substance as was at one time supposed, but that on the contrary it is digested in considerable quantities, by the ruminants at least, especially when a portion of the food of the animal consists of some substance rich in oil.

In order to ascertain to what extent the digestibility of cellulose may depend upon its state of aggregation, SUSSDORF and A. STOCKHARDT have undertaken a series of experiments, of which only a very brief abstract can be here given. From their results it is evident that even the most compact kinds of cellulose can be in great measure digested by sheep. The experiments, commenced in July, 1859, were upon two wethers respectively five and six years old. These were fed: 1st, upon hay alone; 2d, upon hay and rye straw; 3d, hay and poplar wood sawdust which had been exhausted with lye; in order that the sheep should eat the sawdust it was found necessary to add to it some rye-bran and a small quantity of salt; 4th, hay and sawdust from pine wood mixed with bran and salt; 5th, hay, spruce sawdust, bran and salt; 6th, hay, paper-maker's pulp from linen rags and bran; after several unsuccessful attempts to induce the sheep to partake of the pulp when mixed with dry fodder it was at last given to them in a sort of paste or pap prepared by mixing bran with water. The experiments were continued until November, with the exception of a short intermission during which the animals were put to pasture in order that they might recover from the injurious effectsprobably due to the resinous matters of the spruce wood,-of the fifth series of experiments.

The animals, as well as their food, drink and excrements were weighed every day. The amount of cellulose in the excrements was also daily determined by analysis. The composition of the food ingested having been previously ascertained.

It appeared that when the animals were fed: (1.) with hay (35 lbs. per week), 60 to 70 per cent of the cellulose contained therein was digested, i. e. it did not appear as such in the solid excrements. In this experiment the animals gained 71⁄2 lbs. in 18 days. (2.) With hay 14 lbs., and straw 7 lbs. (per week), 40 to 50 per cent of the cellulose of the straw was digested. The animals having lost 24 lbs. in 11 days. (3.) With bay 104 lbs., poplar saw-dust 5lbs., bran 7 lbs. (per week), 45 to 50 per cent of the cellulose of the poplar wood was digested. The animals having gained 24 lbs. in 13 days. (4.) With hay 10 lbs., pine wood saw-dust 7 lbs., bran 10 lbs. (per week), 30 to 40 per cent of the cellulose of the pine wood was digested. The animals having gained 10 lbs. in 24 days. (5.) With hay 9 lbs., paper-maker's pulp 7 lbs., bran 14 lbs. (per week),

*For a portion of these interesting results, see: Agriculturchemische Untersuchungen und deren Ergebnisse angestellt u. gesammelt bei der landwirthschaftlichen. Versuchstation in Mackern. Leipzig, WIGAND, 1852-57; also Die landwirthschaft lichen Versuchs-Stationen. Dresden, WERNER, 1858-59.-F. H. S.

80 per cent of the cellulose of the paper pulp was digested. The animals having gained 7 lbs. in as many days.

These experiments are to be continued, and more particularly with a view of ascertaining whether any nourishing effect is to be attributed to the cellulose.-STOCKHARDT's Chemischer Ackersman, 1860, No. 1, p. 51.

II. GEOLOGY.

1. Notes on the Geology of Nebraska and Utah Territory, (in a letter to one of the Editors from Dr. F. V. HAYDEN, dated Fort Laramie, March 3d, 1860.)—It will be seen by referring to the several memoirs, published in connection with my associate, Mr. Meek, and the second edition of a geological map of Nebraska and Kansas, that the great Lignite Tertiary Basin covers a vast area in the northwest. We find by personal observation that it occupies the greater portion of the country bordering on the upper Missouri, Yellow Stone and Big Horn rivers, that it extends far up into the Wind river valley and west along the North Platte road to the Sweet Water mountains, the Cretaceous rocks being exposed here and there by local upheavals, only except along the base of the mountains.

The lignite beds, which are well developed south of Fort Laramie extending along the base of the Laramie mountains to the Arkansas and southward, furnishing the coal or lignite in the vicinity of Denver City and probably forming a part of the same basin.

I have, in a former paper, suggested that fresh-water deposits near Fort Bridger are probably on a parallel with the estuary beds of Judith river, which at that time were not positively known to be Tertiary. The facts now in my possession show, with a good deal of certainty, that they form the lower portion of the great Lignite Basin. These estuary deposits, which occur in a number of localities in the west and northwest, as along the Grand and Cannon Ball rivers, at the mouth of the Judith on the Missouri, near the mouth of the Big Horn on the Yellow Stone, seem to have ushered in the tertiary epoch of the West, which had already been foreshadowed in Cretaceous formation No. 5,* by the Tertiary character of the Mollusca. We have already, in a former paper, noted the fact that a large portion of the fossils peculiar to the Cretaceous formation No. 5, are closely similar to true Tertiary types and in most of the localities the transition from No. 5 to the estuary beds is scarcely perceptible. On the North Platte, especially at Deer Creek, No. 5, which is very largely developed in this region, is not unfrequently thrust up through the overlying lignite beds, charged with its characteristic fossils. Along the bluff banks of the stream, where the beds are but slightly disturbed, the order of sequence of the strata is so perfect that I would not have been in doubt where to draw the line of separation until we came to the first seam of lignite, and even then I would have considered several beds of the Lignite formation as the upper portion of No. 5 had I not found in these lower lignite beds Unios and other fresh-water shells, together with impressions of leaves identical with those occurring so abundantly in the Upper Missouri and Yellow Stone Tertiary strata, and furthermore these beds on the

The Cretaceous series of Nebraska has been divided into five formations, which for convenience have been numbered from the base in ascending order, 1, 2, 3, &c. SECOND SERIES, VOL. XXIX, No. 87.-MAY, 1860.

North Platte have now been traced continuously over the intervening country from the mouth of the Yellow Stone river to the Platte. I have ascertained the fact that the lignite beds along the North Platte are a continuation of those on the Upper Missouri, and that they extend in their full developement far up into the Wind river valley and along the Platte road to the Sweet Water mountains. As yet I have seen no indications of lignite in any of the divisions of the Cretaceous period except in formation No. 1 near the Big Sioux river on the Missouri and in a series of sandstones and shales near Fort Benton which we have referred to the same rock. As we proceed south and southwest in this region No. 1 seems to disappear gradually, and along the Laramie mountains I cannot determine

its existence at all.

The geographical extension of the great Lignite Basin seems to me to be one of the most interesting questions in the geology of the West at the present time. Very little is known as yet of its limits and from the interesting facts collected by Dr. Engelmann and from other sources it must Occupy a large area to the southward and westward from this point, and we already know that it extends far northward into the Hudson's Bay vicinity.

In regard to the White river Tertiary Basin its boundaries have been published with a good degree of accuracy. Its limits north of the Platte river are now well known, and as I have already stated in a former paper, one of the upper members of that basin is revealed along this river, and these, in their southern and southwestern extension, pass by a gradual transition into the Yellow Marl or superficial deposits of the Quaternary period. That the White river Tertiary beds are of later date than those of the Lignite Basin, is clearly shown by the former having been observed resting conformably upon the latter in several localities.

2. Nole on Prof. Newberry's criticisms of Prof. Heer's determination of species of North American Fossil Plants, in a letter to Prof. ASA Gray, Cambridge. Dear Sir: When I offered for publication in this Journal, the translation of part of a letter from Prof. O. Heer, concerning some fossil plants of the Tertiary, I was far from supposing that any of the statements of my learned friend would not appear satisfactory to every one interested in the study of our American Palæontology. Much less could I foresee that those statements would be construed in a manner that I do not think quite justifiable. As Prof. Heer's letter was published without his knowledge and sanction, I am forced, much to my regret, to defend his position against Dr. Newberry, a personal friend also, and a true and faithful pioneer in the field of our botanical paleontology.

I know nothing about the discussion on the Cretaceous formations and fossils, except what has been published in this Journal. And although last year, during my connection with the State Geol. Survey of Arkansas, I had the opportunity of examining well exposed strata at different stages of the Cretaceous, I was unable to find there any fossil plants, and therefore I have never seen as yet an American Cretaceous plant. Thus I can take my arguments only from the statements of Dr. Newberry himself. It is unnecessary to recall the five points in discussion.

The two first statements are, even from the assent of Dr. Newberry, satisfactorily explained by the insufficiency for exact determination of

sketches made from incomplete specimens. Nevertheless, it is but right to remark in favor of the opinion of Dr. Heer that Populus Leuce has not the leaves toothed as Dr. Newberry says, but only subdenticulate, following Unger's figure and description. Moreover, species of Populus bear toothed and entire leaves on the same branches.

The third assertion, about the value of the genus Ettingshausenia, concerns only the author of the genus and has nothing to do with the determination of the species. There was no call for a critique upon Prof. Heer on this account.

The fourth statement is the only essential one; it is: "that excepting the so-called Credneria and Ettingshausenia, all the genera enumerated in Dr. Newberry's letter are Tertiary and not Cretaceous."

Nobody will consider as identical the genera Salicites and Salix, Alnites and Alnus. Then, from the eleven genera enumerated by Dr. Newberry, two only are found in the list of Hiehle, containing seventeen genera. These two genera are Populus and Acer, the true characteristic genera of the tertiary of Europe. The first is represented already in that formation by thirty-three species; the second by forty-five or more, and except the species admitted by Hiehle, not a single one has been found in the Cretaceous. From the nine other genera of Dr. Newberry which are not mentioned as Cretaceous by Hiehle, not one has been found by anybody else in that formation. Hence Prof. Heer was right to say that, except the two which he named, all the genera enumerated in the letter of Dr. Newberry were of the Tertiary and not of the Cretaceous. Every botanist without exception would have come to the same conclusion.

Therefore I cannot understand how the accusation of ignorance or of partiality could be brought against the celebrated Professor of Zurich. How it could be thought that a naturalist who has spent his life, without regard to personal interest, in the constant pursuit of his favorite science (the Botanical Paleontology of all the formations), could be supposed to ignore not only the fossil flora of the Cretaceous, but what Hiehle has published in the Palæontographia. This work is in every library and Prof. Heer has quoted it all along in the three volumes of his admirable Fossil-flora of the Tertiary! And how a man of such high moral standing as Prof. Heer, respected everywhere for his faithfulness and devotion to science, could be accused of giving his opinion or rates of determining the plants from a judgment biased by erroneous oral testimony, is still more inconceivable to me.

In the letter of Prof. Heer, there is not a word which could be construed as censurable or offensive to anybody. When the most learned Botanists take again and again species and genera for re-examination, new determinations, for a constant changing of names, of relations, of affinity, even with specimens of living plants; when such Paleontologists as Heer, Corda, Unger, Göppert, Braun, &c., who have on hand the largest libraries, numerous specimens, and every facility for comparing them are forced every day, either by new discoveries or by a more careful study, to acknowledge mistakes and to change their nomenclature; when the same fossil leaf is for different authors a Populus, a Salix, a Laurus, a Ficus, a Quercus! it cannot be expected that in America, where the science of Botanical Paleontology is scarcely born,

where the age of the strata from which the fossil plants are taken is mostly uncertain, where we have no possibility of comparing specimens, and not a single library where we can find all that has been published on palæontology, we can come at once by some kind of divination to the correct determination of a fossil species. And most commonly the examination has to be made on pieces of broken specimens of leaves, of which the general outline and the details of nervation are obliterated. We have thus to begin and to break the way, and the only means of doing it with advantage to our successors is to publish our fossil species as fast as we can get them, figuring them carefully and determining the species as well as we can without caring for any foreign opinion.

About the fifth statement of Prof. Heer, I can not admit, as Dr. Newberry appears to do, that the fossil flora of the American Cretaceous ought to be closely related to the European. The Tertiary of North America, of which numerous specimens have recently been collected in Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky, has some of the genera of Europe, Sabal, Phonicetes, Laurus, &c., represented by peculiar species different from those of Europe, with a large number of Terminalia, Magnolia, two genera scarcely represented in the European tertiary. But this question cannot be examined now.

Contrary to the supposition of Dr. Newberry, it is certain that the fossil plants obtained from three different stages of the Tertiary in Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky, indicate a warmer climate than that of the same latitude at our time. And it is certain also that already two marine fossiliferous beds (very rich indeed) have been discovered, the one near Cairo in Illinois, by Prof. A. H. Northen; the other near Oxford, by Prof. Hilgard, and perhaps a third one in Tennessee by Prof. Safford, three State Geologists of the three different States. I have spent some time last fall in the examination of the formations; and besides the specimens of fossil leaves which I have collected, I have now for examination the rich collection of the Mississippi University of Oxford, and the private collections of fossil plants of both Prof. Hilgard and Prof. Safford. It is from these materials partly examined that I have taken the above conclusions.

Columbus, Ohio, April 3, 1860.

Respectfully Yours,

III. BOTANY AND ZOOLOGY.

LEO LESQUEREUX.

1. Florula Ajanensis, by REGEL and TILING. Moscow, pp. 128, 4to, 1858. (Extr. Trans. Imp. Soc. Mosc.)

Primite Flora Amurensis, by C. J. MAXIMOWIEZ. St. Petersburg, 1859. (Extr. Mem. present. Acad. Im. Sci. St. Petersb.), pp. 504, tab. 10, 4to. The first-named work, with the Florula Ochotensis of Trautvetter and Meyer in Middendorf's Journey, gives an account of the botany of the confines of Northeastern Siberia bordering on the Ochotsk Sea. The latter, a bulky volume, contains the first fruits of the botanical explorations consequent upon the colonization of the lower part of the Amoor River by the Russians. These districts nearly abut upon the northern part of Japan, and therefore possess for us a peculiar botanical interest. They share notably, though not as largely as Japan, in those North American types which present so curious a problem in geographical dis