interest in the Uintah Mountains is the evidence of enormous denudation, continued through a protracted cycle of geological time. The horizontality of the strata along the central parts of the range is such that terrace above terrace can be traced by the eye for miles around any commanding peak. The rocks there have escaped crumbling and fracture to a remarkable degree. It can therefore be seen that the deep gullies and clefts, the yawning precipices and cañons, the wide corries and vast amphitheatres by which the surface is so broken up have been produced not by underground disturbances but by erosion at the surface. Most of this tremendous denudation has doubtless been effected by ordinary atmospheric action. One of the valleys in this section he describes as crossed by beautiful horseshoe moraines that had once formed a succession of lakes, the sites of which are now occupied by meadows. In these and other high grounds, the beaver, by its dams, has converted the small streams into a succession of shallow lakes, and hundreds of acres of bog-land have been thus produced. The grand canon of the Yellowstone, gouged out of volcanic formations, Professor Geikie described as exhibiting, perhaps, the most marvelous piece of mineral color to be seen anywhere in the world. It has been cut out of tuffs and lavas, showing sulphur-yellow, verdigris, or emerald-green, vermilion, crimson, and orange tints, so remarkable that, if transferred to paper or canvas, they would be pronounced incredible and impossible. In the Yellowstone Valley abundant evidence of extensive glacial action was found. On entering the second cañon in their ascent of the valley, it was seen to be most exquisitely glaciated from bottom to top, thus making it clear that the cañon was older than the glacial period; it had supplied a channel through which the glacier had ground its way out from the mountains. According to the indications on the sides of the valley, this glacier must have had a thickness of sixteen or seventeen hundred feet. The Professor next described the famous geyser region. The ground was honeycombed with holes, filled with boiling water. One geyser, known as "Old Faithful," went off with wonderful regularity every sixty-three minutes; the others were more variable. The "Devil's Paint-Pot," a mud-geyser, boiled like a great vat of thick porridge, throwing out white and brilliantly colored mud. Professor Geikie acknowledges with admiration the labors of the explorers who first made known the wonders of this remote and inaccessible region. The reports of Hayden and his associates were found to be most trustworthy and useful. Nor could one forget the sagacity with which Hayden proposed, and the enlightened liberality with which Congress enacted, that for all time the Yellowstone region should be a tract set apart as a national park for the instruction and recreation of the people. On reaching the basin of the Great Salt Lake, our traveler was impressed, by the evidences on every hand of the former vast extent of this inland sea. Lines of terrace ran along the sides of the mountains, the highest standing a thousand feet above the present level of the water. The rocks in some of the cañons descending from the Wahsatch Mountains, in the Salt Lake Basin, were found smoothed, polished, and striated by the glaciers that had come down from the heights above, bringing with them great quantities of moraine matter. Mounds of rubbish blocked up the valleys here and there, and some of them were observed to descend to the highest terrace. Hence, when the Salt Lake extended far beyond its present area, and was about one thousand feet deeper than now, the glaciers from the Wahsatch Mountains reached its edge, and shed their bergs into its waters. Bones of the musk-ox had been found in one of the terraces, showing that Arctic animals lived in this region during these cold ages.
Death of Professor B. F. Mudge.—We have to record the death, at his home in Manhattan, Kansas, on the 21st of November last, of Professor B. F. Mudge, whose geological and paleontological researches and writings had gained for him a high place among Western men of science. Professor Sludge began his working life at the age of fourteen as a shoemaker, but at twenty fitted himself for college, and entered Wesleyan University, where he graduated in 1840. He then studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1842, and for the
