"Thoughts and Experiences In and Out of School." By John B. Peaslee, ex-superintendent of Cincinnati schools. The book contains many valuable thoughts and suggestions, the result of a long and successful experience—and is accompanied by letters from Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and other American authors. Printed for the author by Curts and Jennings, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Werner School Book Co., Chicago, Ill.:

"The Rational Writing BooksRapid Vertical Penmanship." A new system combining legibility, rapidity and beauty.

"Napoleon Bonaparte" will appear in the March "Century" in a new role that of a temperance advocate. In the second installment of Dr. O'Meara's hitherto unpublished "Talks With Napoleon" at St. Helena, it is recorded that, having a pain in his side, the exEmperor asked his physician to show him where his liver was sit

uated; and the latter, in some remarks on the causes of inflammation of that organ, mentioned intoxication as one of them. Thereupon Napoleon remarked:

"Then I ought not to have it, as I never was drunk but once in my life; and that was twenty-four years ago, at Nice. . . . I drank three bottles of Burgundy, and was completely drunk. O how sick I was the next day! I wonder how a man who once gets drunk can ever think of doing it again. Such headache, vomiting, and general sickness; I was nearly dead for two days."

The March "Atlantic" contains a very timely and helpful article by L. B. R. Briggs, Dean of Harvard College, on "The Transition From Home to College," which ought to be read by every parent who intends to send a boy to college, by every teacher who has anything to do, directly or indirectly, with preparing boys for college, and by every professor who is to come in contact with boys after they reach college.

CLEVELAND PUBLIC LIBRARY

VOL. XLIX.

No. 4.

In the study of geography we confine ourselves almost entirely to a consideration of the surface features of the earth; and much the greater part of our time is given to the land. The circumstances attending the latter's formation, and the materials of which it is composed are usually given scant consideration. Let us depart from this custom, and study together for a short time the foundation of our state and its early geological history as a supplement to its geography.

THE ROCK FLOOR.

Could we remove the materialsthe soils, clays, sands, gravels and boulders which everywhere cover the surface of our state, we would find a rock floor. An examination of this floor would show that it is

not uniform but composed of several kinds of rocks. There would be found limestones, shales, sandstones and conglomerates, and the localities where these are found are stated later in this paper.

All these rocks belong to the group known as the stratified or sedimentary. The first of these terms refers to their bedded arrangement, or to their occurrence in layers; and the second to their being composed of sediments. Let us see the significance of these terms. The only manner by which stratified rocks may be formed is through the agency of water. This permits sorting of the material, and the deposition of the coarse portions in one place and the fine in another. Frequently owing to changed conditions, a layer of fine material may be deposited over the

coarse, and vice versa, and this alteration may be repeated any number of times.

Since this is the only manner by which stratified rocks can be formed, and since such rocks constitute the floor of the entire state, we conclude that all Ohio was once covered with water. But many of these rocks contain fossils, which are known to be the remains of marine animals, and so we conclude further that the waters which extended over our state were those of the ocean.

The question now arises-from whence were the sediments composing these rocks derived? There were two sources of a widely different nature: (1) The shells of marine animals, which furnished the materials of which our great beds of limestones were formed; and (2) Pre-existing land areas, which through their disintegration furnished the sediments now found in our conglomerates, sandstones, and shales. The nearest land from which this material could have been derived lay north of the great lakes; in the Adirondack mountains; and the Piedmont plateau, east of the Appalachians. From these areas the sediments were carried by waves and currents, and distributed over the floor of the seas which extended, with only slight interruption, from the Piedmont plateau on the cast to the Rockies on the west.

AGE OF THESE ROCKS. Were these rocks all formed at the same time, or were they produced at different periods? In other words, is the land of Ohio a product of slow growth, or was it formed in comparatively short time?

The best mode of attacking this kind of a problem is furnished by the fossils which the rocks contain. As is well known, these fossils show a progressive development in the life of the world, the simpler forms being found in the earlier rocks and the more complex forms in the later. By carefully collecting and studying these fossils it is found. that they can be divided into groups, each of which will be characteristic of a certain geological period. Consequently by the study of these fossils, the age of the rocks containing them can be relatively determined.

On this basis the stratified rocks of the world have been divided into the following great divisions, which beginning with the oldest are (1) Cambrian, (2) Ordovician (Lower Silurian), (3) Silurian (Upper Silurian), (4) Devonian, (5) Carboniferous, (6) Triassic, (7) Jurassic, (8) Cretaceous, (9) Eocene, and (10) Neocene.

An examination of the floor of Ohio shows that different parts of it contain different groups of fossils; and so we conclude that it is