"Sir: Please to give the Nature, Essence, Beginning of Existence, and Rise of Mind in General, with the whole Theory thereof, so as to be able to answer all Questions relative thereto. Yours, BENJAMIN THOMPSON." Dr. Ellis copies from the old memorandum book of young Thompson, which has fortunately been preserved, a number of very curious things; among them, " An Account of what expence I have been at towards getting an Electrical Machine." Commencing "1771, July 1, pd. brass wyer,' and giving item by item over 'iron wyer,' 'Pewter to make bullets," Old brass," 1 Book Brass Leaf,' 'Oil bottles,' 'Copper Filings,'Silver Brons,' 'Shellac," Laquer," Varnishing brush,' Aqua fortis,' &c., &c.," which is soon followed by "An Account of what Work I have done towards Getting an Electrical Machine." He was then 17 years old, and had enjoyed no advantages of education beyond the most elementary training of a rural school, these early efforts "towards getting an electrical machine," being a foreshadowing of the energy and personal attention which many years later aided him in his memorable researches upon heat, in which he so broadly laid down the doctrines sustained by most remarkable original experiments, in anticipation of the Mechanical Theory of Heat. Our readers will find Dr. Ellis's memoir of Rumford a most entertaining and instructive portraiture of this remarkable person. It will not be forgotten that he was the originator and founder of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, where Davy, Faraday and Tyndal have found the chief theater of their memorable labors. It is fitting that the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at Boston, as the custodian of his funds, specially entrusted to them to promote research in his chosen departments of Light and Heat, should publish "The complete works of Count Rumford." They will probably fill four volumes. B. S. 2. On the direction and force of the Wind, with the fall of Rain and Snow at Wallingford, Conn., from observations made by Benjamin F. Harrison, M.D., and reduced by FRANCIS E. LOOMIS, Ph.D., Prof. of Physics and Industrial Mechanics, Cornell University. pp. 62. (From the Transactions of the Conn. Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. II, 1871).-The observations discussed in this paper were made at Wallingford, a town about twelve miles north of New Haven. The wind observations were made with a self-recording apparatus similar in most respects to Osler's selfrecording anemometer, and embrace a period of five years. The observations were reduced separately for each hour of each month of the year; and the results are graphically represented upon a Plate which exhibits in a very striking manner the diurnal changes in the wind's direction. During six months of the year, viz: from October to March, inclusive, this diurnal change is small, but during the other six months the diurnal change is very great, and is most remarkable in May and August, when during the forenoon the average wind blows almost directly from the north, and in the afternoon almost directly from the south. This remarkable change in the average direction of the wind is traced to the changes of temperature of the land and the neighboring water; and the cause assigned seems adequate to account for all the facts at present known in this vicinity. It is much to be desired that a similar series of observations should be made at New Haven, for the purpose of developing still more precisely the laws which govern the diurnal and annual changes in the wind's direction. The Wallingford observations also show the mean force of the wind, together with its diurnal and annual changes, but in a manner less satisfactory than they show its direction. The same article furnishes the fall of rain and snow at Wallingford for a period of twelve years, from which it appears that the average annual precipitation at Wallingford is fifteen per cent greater than at New Haven. The good judgment and perseverance of Dr. Harrison in making these observations are greatly to be commended, and we hope his example may be imitated by many other observers in our country. The results of such observations are not only important in their bearings upon questions of pure science, but they are intimately connected with the interests of every individual, with the prosperity of agriculture, and the security of commerce. 3. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, showing the operations, expenditures and condition of the institution for the year 1869; 430 pp. 8vo. Washington, 1871. -Besides the report of the Secretary, this valuable volume contains the following memoirs, selected from various sources:-Life and works of Kepler, by M. Berthrand; Eulogy of Thomas Young, by Arago; Memoir of A. Bravais, by E. de Beaumont; Life and Scientific Labors of S. Marianini, by C. Matteucci; Chemistry of the Earth, by T. S. Hunt; Electrical Currents of the Earth by C. Matteucci; on the Phenomena of Flight in the Animal Kingdom, with many illustrations, by M. Marey; on the Northern Seas, by M. Babinet; Report of the Trans. Soc. Phys. and Nat. History of Geneva; Coronado's March in Search of the "Seven Cities of Cibola," and discussion of their probable location, by Gen. J. H. Simpson, U. S. A.; on the Social and Religious Condition of the Lower Races of Men, by Sir John Lubbock; on the Principles and Methods of Paleontology, by T. H. Huxley; Remarks on the " Casa gicantesca" of Yzamal in Yucatan, by Dr. A. Schott; Forests and their Climatic Influence, by M. Becquerel; on a Meteorite, from Washington Co., Wisconsin, by Dr. Fr. Brenndecke; Remarkable Forms of Hailstones in Georgia, by S. Abich; Eruption of the Volcano of Colima, by C. Sartorius. 4. Elemente der Mineralogie, von DR. CARL FRIEDRICH NAUMANN. 8th enlarged and improved edition, with 836 figures, 606 pp. 8vo. Leipzig, 1871 (W. Engelmann.)-Dr. Naumann's Elements of Mineralogy is the most prominent of recent German Mineralogical text-books. Its editions have followed one another rapidly, and the present is the eighth. It is a complete but condensed work, its descriptions being brief, and also its notices of localities and its mention of chemical composition. The figures of crystals are numerous and excellent. THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND ARTS. [THIRD SERIES.] ART. XXXII-On the Connecticut River valley Glacier, and other examples of Glacier movement along the valleys of New England; by JAMES D. DANA. IN former papers I have spoken of the existence of a Connecticut valley glacier in the Glacial era; understanding by the expression, as I have said, that the under part of the great continental glacier lying in the Connecticut valley-depression moved in the direction of the valley-either while the great glacier was at its maximum thickness and held on its southeasterly course, or after its partial decline. I propose now to give more fully the evidence with regard to the Connecticut valley movement; and, further, to show that other large valleys of central and western New England had also, in the same sense, their valley-glaciers-that is, they determined the direction of the ice that lay within them. The facts appealed to in support of the conclusions are partly of my own observation; but they are mostly drawn, for Massachusetts, from the Report on the Geology of the State by Dr. E. Hitchcock, who labored with much enthusiasm in this department of the science; for New Hampshire, from an unpublished map by Prof. C. H. Hitchcock, kindly furnished me by its author; for Vermont, from the Vermont Geological Report, which contains the numerous observations of Prof. C. B. Adams, Prof. C. H. Hitchcock, A. D. Hager and Zadock Thompson; for eastern New York, between New England and the Hudson river, from the volume of the New York Geological * Manual of Geology, 1863, p. 544; This Journal, II, xxxv, 249, 1863; Trans. Connecticut Acad., ii, 45; This Journ., III, i, 1, and 125. AM. JOUR. SCI.-THIRD SERIES, VOL. II, No. 10.--Oct.,1871. Reports by Wm. W. Mather, an assiduous laborer in this field of research. We learn, first, from the scratches on the rocks outside of the larger valleys of New England-that is, over its higher landsthat the general course of the continental glacier covering New England was between S. 20° E. and S. 50° E. The true course, deduced from the magnetic, is here given, and so throughout the following pages. On the high region of western Connecticut (1000 to 1200 feet above the sea), about Warren and Litchfield, the author found the courses of the scratches S. 29° E.; more to the west, east of Kent, on Kent mountain, S. 19° E.; to the south of Kent, about Newtown, S. 38° E. Percival observes that over this western part of Connecticut the direction of the transfer of drift was to the S.S.E. (probably meaning S. 20°-25° E.); and he cites as proof the distribution of blocks of limestone over Litchfield county from Canaan, and also of other rocks over the same and other counties. Mather gives for the direction in Litchfield county, Conn., near Norfolk, S. 20°-25° E., and Hitchcock, for that on Mt. Tom, the highest elevation near Litchfield, S. 17°-22° E. West of the State of Connecticut, between it and the Hudson river in Dutchess county, not far west of Arthursville, I obtained for the course of scratches (which were common over the region) S. 24° E. Mather found in Putnam county (south of Dutchess), near Patterson, S. 17° E. to S. 22° E.; in Dutchess county, mostly between S. 15° E. and S. 30° E., but in some places S. 35° E.; and north of Dutchess county, in Columbia county (west of Massachusetts), mostly S. 18° E. to S. 30° E., with some on the mountain top east of Shaker Village and elsewhere in that vicinity, S. 45° E. In the Taconic range, along the western boundary of Massachusetts, Dr. Hitchcock found the course of the scratches on the top of Mt. Everett (2600 feet above the sea) and on the adjoining Mt. Washington S. 18° E.; 15 miles farther north, on top of Tom Ball in Alford, 30 miles north of Mt. Washington, S. 43° E.; on the east slope of the Taconic ridge near Pittsfield (in same latitude nearly with the Shaker village above alluded to) and at Egremont, on the west slope, about S. 50° E.; a little south of the latter, on Lenox mountain, near the road from Richmond to Lenox, S. 38° E. Scratches observed by the writer on Mt. Everett trended S. 27° E. Again Dr. H. obtained for the course in middle Granville, 20 miles west of the Connecticut, S. 38° E.; between Otis and Becket, 30 miles west of the Connecticut, and farther north in Windsor, about S.E. For eastern Massachusetts (that is, the part of the State east of the Connecticut), Dr. Hitchcock gives as the average direction S. 24° E. He obtained in Royalston, nearly 20 miles west of the Connecticut, S. 18° E. to S. 38° E. On the higher land of Vermont, away mostly from river valleys, the course of the scratches, according to the Vermont Geological Report, is for the most part between S. 35° E. and S. 55° E. In southern Vermont, on the higher land of Windham, 15 miles west of the Connecticut, S. 40° E.; in Wilming. ton, S. 29° E and S. 39° E. (intersecting): in central Vermont, in West Hancock, S. 50° E.; in Ripton, S. 60° E. In the northern half of the State, on Camel's Hump, 4088 feet above the sea, S. 55° E.; on Mt. Mansfield, 4430 feet high, S. 55° E.; on Jay's Peak, north of the latter, S. 50° E.; in Stowe, in the valley east of Mt. Mansfield, S. 35° E. Judging from the map in the Vermont Geological Report, which gives some observations not registered in the text, the on the higher lands away from the valleys is about S. 50° E.; average course and the same is not far from the course for the higher lands of New Hampshire, according to Prof. C. H. Hitchcock's map. The facts show plainly that on the higher lands, both east and west of the Connecticut, and even over the elevated ridges of the Green Mountain range through Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and also west of this range over the eastern borders of New York, the great continental glacier had a southeastward course; in the latitude of Connecticut, about S. 25° E., and to the northward, S. 35° E. to S. 55° E. With such a course the glacier moved over the elevated lands on the west of the Connecticut river and the elevated lands to the east of that river, keeping onward, with little variation in its main movement notwithstanding the ridges in its course, and following no doubt the general slope of the surface of New England. But this being true of the movement of its main mass, other facts show that the bottom ice of the great glacier followed often the courses of the valleys beneath it. 1. First as to the Connecticut river valley ice. This valley, or great north and south depression of New England, has its termination, as I have elsewhere observed, at New Haven, the Connecticut river channel leaving the valley at Middletown, Conn., and taking thence a southeastward course to the Sound. In the following table, the courses of glacial scratches along the valley are given for comparison with the course of the valley. It commences with localities at the south. 1. CONNECTICUT. E. of New Haven bay, North of Meriden, New Britain, Mt. Carmel, 7 m. N. of N. H. 2. MASSACHUSETTS. Granby, 7 m. E. of Conn. R. Mt. Tom, |