wild pansies, purple, yellow, cream-white, and variegated, fringed pinks, spirea, blue gentians, wild hollyhocks, daisies, forget-me-nots, alpine roses, purple Altai lilies, and scores of flowers that I had never before seen, many of them extremely brilliant, large, and showy. Of plants and fruits, which with us are domesticated, but which in the Altai grow wild, I noticed rhubarb, celery, currants (red and black), gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries and blackberries, wild cherries, crab-apples, and wild apricots or peaches. Most of the berries were ripe or nearly so; and the wild currants, in particular, were as large and abundant as in an American garden. The scenery was extremely wild and grand, surpassing at times any thing that I saw in the Caucasus.

On Saturday, Aug. 1, we reached the foot of the last great ridge or watershed which separated us from the main chain of the Katoonski Alps. Sunday morning we climbed about 2,000 feet to the summit of the last ridge, and looked over into the wild valley of the Katoon, out of which rise the Katoonski pillars,' the highest peaks of the Russian Altai. I was prepared for something grand in the way of scenery, because I had already seen those peaks two or three times, at distances varying from 25 to 30 miles; but the near view from the heights above the Katoon so far surpassed all my anticipations, that I was simply overawed. It was not beautiful, it was not picturesque : it was overwhelming and stupendous.

The deep, narrow valley or gorge of the Katoon, which lay almost under our feet, was somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 feet deep. On the other side of it rose far above our heads the wild, mighty chain of the Katoonski Alps, culminating just opposite us in two tremendous snowy peaks, whose height I estimated at 15,000 feet. Colonel Maiyfski, the governor of the district, has since told me that they are believed to be not less than 18,000 feet in height. They were white from base to summit, except where the snow was broken by great black precipices, or pierced by sharp, rocky spines and crags. Down the sides of these peaks, from vast fields of névé above, fell enormous glaciers, the largest of them descending from the high saddle between the twin summits in a continuous ice-fall of at least 4,000 feet. The glacier on the extreme right had an almost perpendicular ice-fall of twelve or fifteen hundred feet, and the glacier on the extreme left gave birth to a torrent which tumbled about 800 feet with a hoarse roar into the deep, narrow gorge. The latter glacier was longitudinally subdivided by three moraines, which looked, from our point of view, like long, narrow-shaped dumps of furnace-slag or fine coaldust, but which, when I afterward climbed up on

them, I found to be composed of black rocks from the size of my head to the size of a house, extending four or five miles, with a width of 300 feet, and a height of from 25 to 75 feet above the general level of the glacier. The extreme summits of the two highest peaks were more than half the time hidden in clouds; but that rather added to, than detracted from, the wild grandeur of the scene, by giving mystery to the origin of the enormous glaciers, which at such times seemed to the imagination to be tumbling down from unknown heights in the sky through masses of rolling vapor. All the time there came up to us from

the depths of the gorge the hoarse roar of the waterfall, which seemed now and then to be almost lost in the deeper thunder which came from the great glaciers, as masses of ice gave way and settled into new positions in the ice-falls. This thundering of the glaciers continues for nearly a minute at a time, varying in intensity, and resembling occasionally the sound of a distant but heavy and rapid cannonade. No movement of the ice in the falls was perceptible to the eyes from the point at which we stood; but the sullen, rumbling thunder was evidence enough of the mighty force of the agencies which were at work before us.

After looking at the mountains for half an hour, we turned our attention to the valley of the Katoon beneath us, with a view to ascertaining whether it would be possible to get down into it, and reach the foot of the main glacier which gives birth to the Katoon River. Although the descent did look both difficult and dangerous, I was by no means satisfied that it was utterly impracticable. While we were discussing the question, our guide was making a bold and 'practical attempt to solve it. We could no longer see him from where we stood; but every now and then a stone or small bowlder, dislodged by his horse's feet, would leap into sight three or four hundred feet below us, and go crashing down the mountain-side, clearing two hundred feet at every bound, and finally dashing itself to pieces against the rocks at the bottom with a noise like a distant rattling discharge of musketry. Our guide was evidently making progress. In a few moments he came into sight on a bold rocky buttress about six hundred feet below us, and shouted cheerfully, 'Come on! You could get down here with a telega' (a Russian peasant's cart). Inasmuch as one could hardly look down there without getting dizzy, this was a rather hyperbolical statement of the possibilities of the case.

We finally reached a very steep but grassy slope, like the side of a Titanic embankment, down which we zigzagged with great discomfort, but without much actual danger, to the bottom of the Katoon

The

valley. As we rode up the gorge toward the great peaks, and finally, leaving our horses, climbed up on the principal glacier, I saw how greatly, from our previous elevated position, I had underestimated distances, heights, and magnitudes. Katoon River, which from above had looked like a narrow, dirty-white ribbon, that a child could step across, proved to be a torrent thirty or forty feet wide, with a current almost deep and strong enough to sweep away a horse and rider. The main glacier, which I had taken to be about three hundred feet wide, proved to have a width of more than half a mile; and its central moraine, which had looked to me like a strip of black sand thirty feet wide, piled up in form to a height of six or seven feet, like a long furnace dump, proved to be an enormous mass of gigantic rocks three to four miles long, and three hundred to four hundred feet wide, piled up on the glacier in places to heights of seventy-five and eighty feet. In short, it was a tremendous glacier, and yet it was only one of eleven which I counted from the summit of the ridge between the Black and the White Berel. Seven glaciers descend from the two main peaks alone.

We spent all the remainder of the day in sketching, taking photographs, and climbing about the valley and the glaciers, and late in the afternoon returned to our camp in the valley of the White Berel.

Monday we made another excursion to the crest of the Katoonski ridge, and succeeded in getting a good photograph of the two great peaks without a cloud.

We returned to the Altai Station, Wednesday, Aug. 5, and two days later started back for Oost-Kamenogorsk. We were overtaken by a storm in the mountains between Bookhtarma and Alexandrofskaya; lost our way; our tarantass capsized into a hole about nine o'clock at night in the darkness; and we lay there until morning in a cold rain, without shelter, food, or fire. Shortly after daybreak help arrived from the nearest settlement; but it took eight horses and three drivers, two of the latter mounted, to get our tarantass to the next station. GEO. KENNAN.

to depth, temperature, and salinity, have been determined from surface to bottom. On this basis, Professor Mohn has attempted a new style of investigation of its currents, fed on the south by the warm, dense waters of the North Atlantic; on the north, by the cold, fresher waters from the polar seas. His method is much like that which has been successfully applied to the study of atmospheric currents, and it has led him to very interesting conclusions. First, the density is examined, and the results graphically exhibited on ten sections. Next follow a series of detailed investigations, summarized in six maps, showing, 1°, surface isotherms; 2°, contour lines as determined by hydrostatic equilibrium, the North Sea thus appearing five centimetres higher than the ocean east of Iceland; 3°, the atmospheric pressure for the year, prevailingly low from Iceland towards the North Cape; 4°, the deformation of the surface of wind-formed currents by the deflective force arising from the earth's rotation, which depresses the central area about fifteen decimetres below the marginal; 5°, the same, due to both gravitative and wind currents; and, 6°, the summation of all persistent deforming causes. The currents themselves, as thus deduced, are shown in a larger map; their correspondence with what might be inferred from the isotherms establishes the correctness of the work. Finally, the pressure, temperature, and currents at depths of 500, 1,000, and 1,500 fathoms, are discussed and graphically illustrated in three pairs of maps. Taking this with an earlier monograph (supplement No. 63) by the same author, we have a very full description of the average physical conditions of these northern waters. The methods employed by Mohn may some day be well applied to the American Mediterranean from the Windward Islands around to the Bahamas.

W. M. DAVIS.

THE venerable Professor Vilanova secured the indorsement of the International geological congress, at its last session, to the project of a polyglot dictionary of definitions and technical terms. He himself cannot do more than supply the Spanish-French part of such a work (Ensayo de diccionario geográfico-geológico,' por D. Juan Vilanova), but he hopes others will take up and supplement his work, until a cyclopaedia of the sciences is produced in which any man can readily find exact statements of the facts in his own language, and their equivalents in all other languages. It is an important work, and the congress and all geologists will doubtless help him to the extent of their power.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 1886.

COMMENT AND CRITICISM.

THAT ADDICTION TO THE USE of opium is very much more common than is generally supposed, and that it is on the increase, is shown by a recently published brochure of Dr. Meylert (Notes on the opium habit,' New York, Putnam); and that there is a wide-spread interest in the subject, not confined to the medical profession, is evinced by the fact that this pamphlet has now reached its fourth edition, and that other treatises more pretentious have recently been published, and attained a circulation more or less extensive. Dr. Meylert attributes many deaths of patients in hospitals and asylums, and of soldiers on the march, to the sudden deprivation of opium to which they have been accustomed; and on this, and the suffering which habitués experience in their efforts to discontinue at once the use of the drug, he makes his plea for the abandonment of the rack-and-thumbscrew' treatment, and the adoption in its place of more humane methods. The basis of the author's method of cure is, that the opium habit is not an indulgence to be humored, nor a vice to be punished, but a disease which must be treated as other diseases are, by appropriate remedies. Atropia, which has become a favorite remedy with those who advertise rapid cure, does not stand the tests of experience. Coca and Avena sativa are not of any special value. The bromides of potassium and sodium, quinine, Cannabis indica, strychnia, hydrocyanic acid, chloroform, hyoscyamus, and phosphorus are the remedies in which the greatest reliance is placed; the one or the other, or combinations of them, being prescribed according to the special indication in each case. The moral treatment is not neglected in Dr. Meylert's plan, and the necessity for implicit trust and reliance in the physician by the patient is not overlooked. After all, the best test of success is success;' and whether the methods here advocated are adapted to bring about the desired results can only be ascertained by careful and patient study of a long series of cases. We shall watch with interest for these results, which should as soon as obtained be pub

lished, whether they speak for or against the methods advocated.

IN A PAPER recently read before the American institute of mining engineers, Mr. A. E. Lehman describes some of the methods of construction and the uses of topographic models or reliefmaps. Their use for educational and economic as well as scientific purposes is rapidly increasing, as the belief in the importance of representing quantitatively the vertical element of topography gains strength. The value of the reliefmap for all purposes, and especially for educational uses, is seriously impaired by exaggeration of the vertical scale. This should be avoided whenever possible, and in other cases should be reduced to a minimum. While Mr. Lehman advises exaggeration, the appearance of his model of the Cumberland valley, wherein the exaggeration is four and five-sevenths, is a strong argument against it. An even stronger argument is furnished in the form of an ambitious relief-map of the United States, by Mr. F. H. King, and mentioned by Mr. Lehman. In this model the vertical scale is exaggerated over the horizontal sixty-eight and a half times; and the effect, especially in an abrupt mountain region, can be easily imagined. This map has other faults, which will probably limit its sphere of usefulness. Another notable example of the distortion produced by the exaggeration of the vertical scale is the well-known model of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, made by the U. S. coast and geodetic survey. That effective models can be made, even of extensive areas, without exaggeration of the vertical scale, is abundantly shown by the relief-maps in the national museum.

THE RECENT MEETING of the society of naturalists in Boston was a successful one, as such meetings go. The attendance was fair, considering the eccentric position of the place of meeting, and the papers were in nearly every case of distinct value and interest. But in spite of full attendance at the sessions, and at the dinner that closed the first day of meeting, there was not sufficient acquaintance among the members; and during the sessions the silence of formality settled down