Work of the Geological Department of the University in 1888.

The report of the curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology gives some very interesting information in regard to the work of a number of departments of the University.

In the Geological Department a course of lectures (once a week, lasting through the college year) was delivered to teachers and others, the attendance averaging about twenty-five in number. The subject of this course was "Geographical Methods and Results."

The article "United States," written for the "Encyclopedia Britannica," has made its appearance in the twenty-third volume of that work, and is now being reprinted, and will make a volume of about 400 octavo pages. This article contains a very condensed review of the physical geography and geology of the United States, and also an historical and statistical resume of the development of the mining interests of the country, which in the reprint now in press will, as far as is possible. be brought down to the end of the current year.

A book of about 250 pages has been published entitled "Names and Places-Studies of Geographical and Topographical Nomenclature." The object of this book is to explain the origin and meaning of names given to prominent topographical and scenic features with especial reference to this country. Some field work has been done, chiefly in New England, in continuation of the surface geology and glacial deposits of Northeastern North America.

The north side of the Mont Blanc group in Europe has been visited, for the purpose of getting a clearer idea of the present condition of the glaciers in that region, where the decrease in size of the masses of ice during the past forty years, common to the whole mountain system of Central Europe, from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus, has excited great attention, not only as a matter of scenic interest, but bearing on glacial theories in general. Some geological work was also done in Southwestern England, and a few of the mines of Devonshire were examined during a hasty trip through that region.