Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/139

Rh. We may profoundly lament this tragical state of things, but we can neither controvert it nor alter it. 'Many are called, but few are chosen.' The selection, the picking out of these chosen ones, is inevitably connected with the arrest and destruction of the remaining majority. Another English naturalist therefore designates the result of Darwinism very frankly as the 'survival of the fittest.' At any rate, this principle of selection is nothing less than democratic; on the contrary, it is aristocratic, in the strictest sense of the word. If, therefore, Darwinism, logically carried out, has, according to Virchow, an 'uncommonly suspicious aspect,' this can only be found in the idea that it offers a helping hand to the efforts of the aristocrats. But how the socialism of the day can find any encouragement in those efforts, and how the horrors of the Paris Commune can be traced to them, is to me, I must frankly confess, absolutely incomprehensible."

volume, the third in the series, fully sustains the high character which the two previous ones gave to this important work. The officers on whom rests the responsibility of the survey are J. S. Newberry, chief geologist; E. B. Andrews and Edward Orton, assistant geologists; T. G. Wormley, chemist; and F. B. Meek, Paleontologist. A corps of local and special assistants have rendered important service. Those of the corps who have contributed reports for the present volume are Messrs. John J. Stevenson, M. C. Read, A. W. Wheat, John Hussey, F. C. Hill, A. C. Lindemuth, J. S. Hodge, and F. Hesser. All of these reports are of a high order, and show in how careful and thorough a manner the work is being done. Reports of surveys of six counties are by the geologist-in-chief, who also contributes an important paper reviewing the general geological structure of the State. This paper is a wonderfully clear statement of the facts brought out by the local surveys, and of the conclusions which they suggest. It is the more interesting from the fact that it reviews conclusions presented in previous reports of the survey which had been criticised by several eminent geologists in other States. Much of the uncertainty which existed as to the age and geological equivalence of the Ohio rocks seems now to be removed. Concerning the Cincinnati uplift it is said that "the Cincinnati axis in Ohio is an anticlinal ridge of which the arched strata of the Cincinnati Group form the core." This uplift formed an elevated ridge through the Upper Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous ages. Many of the great deposits thin out on the sloping sides of this elevation. It constituted, indeed, two islands, one in Tennessee, the other in Kentucky and Ohio.

The Cincinnati Group referred to is shown to contain the characteristic fossils of the Hudson River Group, Trenton Limestone, and some which are found in the Black River and Birdseye Groups. But, says Professor Newberry, they are so intermingled as to make it impossible to identify any one of the subdivisions of the Cincinnati Group with either of the Lower Silurian Limestones of the East.

The Oolitic Iron-ore band of the Clinton is in Ohio, sometimes two or three feet in thickness, sometimes it is scarcely more than a ferruginous stain. This is stated to be in no sense a clay iron-stone, as has been suggested. It is a red hematite, and is called dye-stone ore in Tennessee. It is a marine not a marsh deposit, as shown by the fossils present. The iron was probably brought by drainage water from ferruginous districts and deposited.

The Corniferous Limestone in this State is a vast storehouse of fossils. Extensive collections of these will be fully described in Part II., which treats of paleontology. The land-plants found in this limestone at Sandusky and Delaware may have formed part of the luxuriant vegetation that covered the Cincinnati Island in the Devonian age, "the first land flora of which we have any traces in the United States."

Of the Huron Shale, much has been written. It occurs through Central Ohio in a line of outcrop with a maximum thickness of 350 feet. This formation is a nearly homogeneous bituminous shale, containing at