When the coyote came up the rabbit was bounding along through the bushes, going around in a great circle so that he always came back to the same place, for that is the way of the rabbit-folk. So the fox lay low and hid his brush in the sage, and the coyote followed the rabbit around the circle. And he just kept up with the rabbit all the way, for the rabbit wasn't scared, and didn't run very fast. And when they had gone once around the circle the rabbit passed the hidden fox. Then the fox got up and chased him, and was only a few feet behind. And the coyote stopped and ran sidewise for a while to unkink himself, and then he lay down in the bushes and waited for the rabbit to come back. The rabbit was much scared when he saw the fox close behind him, so he ran and bounded very fast, and the fox kept falling behind because he had his long brush to carry. But he kept at it just the same, and when the rabbit came around the circle to where he started there was the coyote waiting for him. The rabbit had to make a great jump to get over the coyote's head. Then they went around again and the coyote kept close behind all the way, and the rabbit began to get tired. When the coyote's hind legs got tangled up then the fox was rested, and he took up the chase; and so they kept on, each one taking his turn, except the rabbit, who had to keep his own turn all the time.
When the race was over there was nobody there to see how they divided up what they caught. But I saw the coyote the next day, and he looked so very empty that I think that the red fox must have taken all the rabbit meat for himself. Most likely he left his cousin just the ears for his part, with a rabbit's foot to carry in his pocket for good luck.
GLACIAL GEOLOGY IN AMERICA.
By Prof. DANIEL S. MARTIN.
Under this title the vice-president of Section E (Geology) of the American Association—Prof. Herman L. Fairchild, of the University of Rochester, New York—gave an admirable résumé of the whole history, progress, and scope of the study of ice phenomena in North America, as the opening address before the section at the recent Boston meeting. Apart from the interest of the subject in itself considered, this address was a model of what such addresses should be. While strictly scientific, without the least attempt at rhetorical effect, it was at the same time so clear, so well arranged and so simple in language, that any intelligent auditor could enjoy it and grasp it, and carry away a distinct impression of the gradual development and present status of this great department of geological study. Professor Fairchild's choice of his subject was happy also in its fitness to the occasion, as covering almost exactly the half century of the life of the association, though going back indeed a few years further, into the period of the earlier society which developed into the association in 1848.
The great body of phenomena comprised under the term "drift," and the smoothed and scratched surfaces of rock, etc., had been by no means unnoticed by the early students of American geology, but they were attributed to violent and widespread water action, and were spoken of in general as "diluvial" formations. When the agency of ice began to be recognized, it was regarded as that of floating and stranding bergs; and this view for a long time contended with the theory of glacial action, even when the latter had been adopted and advocated by eminent students of the subject.
The first allusion to drifting ice as the agent of transportation of bowlders, etc., appears to have been made as early as 1825, by one Peter Dobson, of Connecticut, in a letter to Prof. Benjamin Silliman, of Yale College. Sir Roderick Murchison, who became the great champion of this view, credits Mr. Dobson's letter with giving him the first suggestion of it. Twelve years later, in 1837, T. A. Conrad made the earliest reference to land ice as the cause of our drift phenomena; he does this in very striking words when read in the light of the studies and determinations of later years, although of course imperfectly and vaguely.
Meanwhile, however, Agassiz and others had been working among the glaciers of the Alps, and their views as to a great period of former extension, in Europe and the British Isles, were finding some acceptance abroad. In this country, Prof. Edward Hitchcock, in his address as retiring president of the Association of American Geologists, in 1841, gave a broad and careful review of the drift phenomena in eastern North America, and referred to the work of Agassiz, Buckland, and Lyell with great interest, as having given him "a new geological sense" in observing these phenomena, and said, with prophetic foresight, "Henceforth, glacial action must form an important chapter in geology."