Popular Science Monthly/Volume 42/March 1893/Correspondence
RECENT GLACIAL RESEARCHES IN ENGLAND.
Those readers of the Monthly who may be interested in the subject of glacial geology will recall a brief sketch of recent glacial discovery in England published in the December number. The article included a map of the glaciated areas of Great Britain and Ireland, prepared for Prof. G. F. Wright's new book, Man and the Ice Age, by Prof. Percy F. Kendall, of Leeds, England. We have, since the article was published, received a letter from Mrs. H. Carvill Lewis, calling attention to "a few slight inaccuracies contained in it." We regret that the whole letter is longer than we can make room for, but we give the most important points of it. "In the first place," Mrs. Lewis writes, "reference is made to the completion of my husband's 'field notes under the joint editorship of the Rev. Dr. Crosskey and Prof. Kendall'—now of Leeds. The truth of the matter is, that Prof. Kendall's only contribution to the volume is a short introduction containing a resume of his own observations during the last three years—many of which seemed to throw light on the vexed questions of British glacial geology which my husband had attempted to solve. To the best of my knowledge, Prof. Kendall never saw my husband's manuscripts, and the onerous task of arranging the large collection of unfinished papers and diagrams was a labor of love on the part of the Rev. Dr. Crosskey, of Birmingham, who undertook it in compliance with my husband's parting request. The volume in question consists of a full introduction—written partly by Dr. Crosskey and partly by myself—which is followed by notes and observations made by my husband in this country [England, where Mrs. Lewis is at present residing], and then by two appendixes. The first appendix is by Prof. Kendall, as I have said; and the second, which was compiled by myself at Dr. Crosskey's request, consists of such abstracts from my husband's continental work as promised to throw light upon the problem of glacial action in Great Britain. In connection with my husband's explorations in Pennsylvania, I may state, in passing, that it was only over the last third of the work that my husband had the pleasure and benefit of Prof. Wright's companionship; all the foregoing portion of the terminal moraine was traced by himself alone. Further on in your article I find the remark that, 'upon completing this work [the tracing of the moraine in Pennsylvania], the two professors, by previous arrangement, divided the work of exploration—Prof. Wright carefully surveying the line westward, etc., while Prof. Lewis went to England to do the work of which we have spoken there.' Now as I had the privilege of sharing all Prof. Lewis's thoughts and plans since before he had the honor of making Prof. Wright's acquaintance, I can confidently state that when the work in Pennsylvania was brought to a close in 1881, my husband had no idea whatever of going to England, and that it was not till the summer of 1884 that he gave the matter serious thought."
With regard to Prof. Wright's participation in the Pennsylvania survey, Prof. Warren Upham is quoted in the sketch of Prof. Henry Carvill Lewis, published in The Popular Science Monthly for July, 1889, as saying—a statement to which no exception has ever been taken: "Prof. Lewis first became specially interested in the glacial drift and its terminal moraine during the latter part of the year 1880, when, in company with Prof. G. F. Wright, he studied the remarkable osars of Andover, Mass.; the gravel of Trenton, N. J., containing palæolithic implements; the drift deposits of the vicinity of New Haven, Conn., under the guidance of Prof. Dana; and, finally, the terminal moraine in eastern Pennsylvania between the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers. The following year Profs. Lewis and Wright traversed together the southern border of the drift through Pennsylvania from Belvidere on the Delaware, west-northwesterly more than two hundred miles, across the ridges of the Alleghanies to Little Valley, near Salamanca, N. Y., and then southwesterly one hundred and thirty miles to the line dividing Pennsylvania and Ohio, which it crosses about fifteen miles north of the Ohio River." This fully substantiates Prof. Wright's claim that he accompanied Prof. Lewis in Pennsylvania everywhere except through small portions of Northampton and Luzerne Counties and through the region extending from Pine Creek in Lycoming County to Olean in New York—or was with him through more than three fourths of the distance.
It is probably too much to say that Prof. Lewis definitely laid his plans, while engaged with Prof. Wright in the Pennsylvania survey, to make a glacial survey in England like what they were then doing in the United States; but we understand that the matter was frequently talked over by them, and was more than once introduced by Prof. Lewis. His subsequent work was exactly in the line of what he had often said remained to be done in Great Britain and ought to be done.
Mrs. Lewis makes some criticisms of the map published with Prof. Kendall's article, and protests that it "must not, in any sense, be taken to represent my husband's personal observations as to the extent and limits of the several glaciated areas, as it bears little or no resemblance to the records which he has left of them"; and she proceeds to point out some of the points of difference, particularly in Ireland.
The map does not profess to be that of Prof. Lewis, but represents the work as completed in England by Prof. Kendall. Very likely it is imperfect in Ireland, but it gives the general facts as well as could be done before Prof. Lewis's notes are published.
We are pleased to learn from Mrs. Lewis's letter that the manuscript of her husband's book has gone to press.—Editor.
HABITS OF POGONIA OPHIOGLOSSOIDES.
Editor Popular Science Monthy:
Sir: In reading the very interesting article in your November number, Color in Flowering Plants, I am at a loss to understand the author's description of the orchid Pogonia ophioglossoides.
She says, "There is no other pogonia . . . which has its leaves whorled on the stem," and speaks of its "greatly elongated sepals and three-parted corolla—all green" etc. She also describes it as growing in the same places as the "much more abundant Indian cucumber," and as resembling it much more closely than allied orchids. It grows quite abundantly in Nantucket, but I have never found it there with whorled leaves, green flower, or growing with the medeola.
On the contrary, its single leaf, growing midway on the slender stem, first attracted my attention as distinguishing it from the Calopogon, of which, at first glance, I took it to be a faded specimen. I have frequently found them growing together, and have mistaken one for the other.
Gray's Manual describes exactly the species I have found as Pogonia ophioglossoides, so I can not think it a "form" peculiar to Nantucket. I am, therefore, considerably puzzled to account for the discrepancies, and should be glad to be enlightened.
| Mabel P. Robinson. |
| El Mora, N. J., October 28, 1892. |