Twenty-six members present.
Messrs. R. H. Stretch and Gustav Holland, M.D., were elected Resident Members, and Mr. L. C. Schmidt of Eureka, Humboldt County, a Corresponding Member.
Donations to the Cabinet: A specimen of Coral from Mr. Eckley.
Donation to the Library: Mining Claims and Water Rights, 8vo, San Francisco, 1867, by Gregory Yale.
Professor Whitney read the following communication, supplementary to the one presented at the previous meeting.
The subject of the relation of the accidental minerals occurring on the Pacific coast was brought forward by me at the last meeting, and I wish now to add a few words in regard to the elementary substances occurring in California, an inquiry which will also afford us some interesting data for comparing the geological and chemical conditions prevailing through the great chain of the Cordilleras of North and South America.
I find on carefully tabulating the facts observed by the Geological Survey, in regard to the mineral combinations existing on the coast, that of the sixty-four elementary substances existing in nature, so far as yet known to chemists, there are only thirty-six which have been proven to occur in California, in mineral combinations.
Those which are wanting here are the following: bromine, glucinum, cadmium, cæsium, cerium, didymium, erbium, fluorine, iodine, indium, lanthanum, lithium, niobium, norium, palladium, ruthenium, rubidium, strontium, tantalum, terbium, thallium, thorium, uranium, vanadium, bismuth, tungsten, yttrium, zirconium (28.)
Of elementary substances occurring in the adjacent States, and not yet detected in California, there are, so far as I know, only three, namely: bismuth, fluorine and tungsten. This would make twenty-three elements wanting on the Pacific Coast of North America. Of these a few are extremely rare, in general, and would hardly be expected to occur here. Among these are didymium, erbium, indium, lanthanum, norium, thorium. But there are others, the absence of which is indeed quite surprising. Fluorine, for instance, is an element of extremely wide distribution, and one which occurs in great quantity in most mineral countries. Here it will probably hereafter be detected in our micas, and perhaps in other combinations, and also in mineral and sea water; but its most abundant source, fluor-spar, seems entirely wanting in this State.
Bismuth is another element of common occurrence in various combinations, but it has not yet been detected in California. A few minute scales of a mineral that I determined to be bismuth-silver, from the Twin Ophir mine, Nevada, is the only authentic instance I know of thus far, of the occurrence of this element on the Pacific coast. Tungsten, uranium and vanadium, are tolerably widely disseminated; the latter, however, less so than the former. No trace of either has yet been found on this coast north of Mexico; of strontium, zirconium, and glucinum, the same may be said. If we now compare the distribution of the elements in the South American Andes with that on this coast, we shall find some striking points of resemblance; and to a large extent, either the absence, or else the great rarity of several of the elementary substances not seen in other mineral regions, is a fact which holds good along the whole extent of the American Continent on the Pacific side. Fluorine, in combination with calcium, is almost as rare in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, as on this coast. Indeed, it was formerly supposed by Domeyko not to occur at all in Chile, but recently one or two localities, where it is found in small quantity, have been made known. Tungsten occurs in Peru at one locality in the form of wolfram, and in Chile in one or two localities, also in Lower California, but its combinations are extremely rare along the whole coast. The same may be said of uranium. Strontium and zirconium have not yet been discovered in Chile or Peru, although the former occurs in one locality in New Grenada, and glucinum has only recently been found in Chile in very minute quantity in one locality. No combination of lithium is yet known on the Pacific coast.