Glauberite, a species not before recognised as occurring in North America occurs at Borax Lake, where it has lately been obtained in blue clay, brought up from a depth of forty feet by an artesian boring. No other crystallized, species was detected in the masses of clay examined.
Glauberite is a sulphate of lime and soda, half an atom of each base in combination with an atom of sulphuric acid. It is usually associated with rock salt, as at Villa Rubia, in New Castile, and also at Ausee, in Bavaria, and in the salt mines of Vic, in France. In the Atacama desert in Peru, it is associated with a fibrous borate of lime called Hagesine. Mr. Stretch, the State Mineralogist of Nevada, in his catalogue of minerals found in that State, mentions borate of lime (Hagesine) as occurring in globular masses and in layers from two to five inches thick, alternating with layers of salt in a salt marsh in the Columbus mining District, Esmeralda County. It is quite possible that a careful scrutiny would detect glauberite also in this association so analagous to that of Atacama.
Reference was also made to the occurrence of the species laghassite detected by Prof. S. in 1864, at the little Salt Lake near Rag Town in Nevada, as illustrating in an interesting manner, the chemistry of these bodies of saline water. The latter species is a hydrous, carbonate of lime and sodium, while glauberite is a sulphate of the same bases. Both salts undoubtedly result from the reaction of the respective elements pre-existing in solution in the saline waters.
The crystals of glauberite from Borax Lake occur in very thin flattened tables, derived apparently from the great extension of the faces O of the Monactinic prism.
Mr Bloomer read the following:
On the Scientific Name of the “Big Trees.”
BY H. G. BLOOMER, CURATOR OF BOTANY.
Early in 1853, specimens of the “Big Trees” were presented to this Academy; Dr. Kellogg and other botanists, members of the Academy, at once pronounced them to belong to the genus Taxodium, to which the common “Redwood” of California was referred at that time. Endlicher’s work upon the Coniferæ, in which the genus Sequoia (named after an Indian Chief) was instituted, had not at that time reached us. Our California Redwood, Taxodium sempervirens was included in the new genus of Endlicher. So then, the true scientific position of the Big Trees was first determined by members of the California Academy of Natural Sciences. At the time of the presentation of these specimens, an English collector of plants and seeds, Mr. William Lobb, saw them, and having experience enough to know that they belonged to a species new to the gardeners, immediately started for the grove and obtained cones, wood and foliage, which he carried with him to England in the fall of 1853. Dr. Lindley hastily described these as Wellingtonia gigantea in the Gardener’s Chronicle for December 1853.
In the meantime Drs. Kellogg and Behr pursued their studies of the great tree, and at length being convinced that there was no generic difference between it and the Taxodium sempervirens (now Sequoia sempervirens) instituted the species Taxodium giganteum, described in the Proceedings of the Cal. Acad. Nat. Sciences, May 7th, 1855, Vol. I, page 53.
Previous to this, however, Seemann, in Bonplandia, 3, p. 27, January 15th, 1855, described it under the term of Sequoia Wellingtonia. Mr. Seemann gives his reasons at length in the Magazine of Natural History, 3d Series, Vol. 3, p. 164, for discarding the genus Wellingtonia of Lindley, and says: “Dr. Torrey was undoubtedly the first who determined the true systematic position of the tree.” Now this is an error, for Dr. Torrey’s publication is dated in August, 1855; whereas Drs. Kellogg and Behr’s appeared May 7th, 1855.