Miles In Width Research Articles

The Finger of God

The Finger of God Melissa Faliveno (bio) You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that isburning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm.hebrews 12:18 It was a warm night in early June—the Midwestern kind of warm specific to spring, the air so thick it's hard to breathe, so wet it feels as if you're swimming—when a tornado struck and destroyed a small town just eight miles west of mine. I was a little over a year old. My mother, who was younger than I am now, came into my bedroom as I slept and looked out the window into the darkness of the west. It was the same window out of which I would look for years to come, whenever the clouds began to build—face and fingers pressed to glass, cranking open the pane to get a better look at the sky. But that night, it was my mother who watched. She looked at the clock and waited. It was just after 11 pm. Maybe the wind was howling. Maybe there was thunder. Maybe, more likely, there was only silence—that still, strange calm Midwesterners know so well, the kind that precedes the most violent of storms. And then she saw them: fast, bright sparks of green, a second or two apart, like flash bulbs in the distance against the dark. It would take her a minute to realize what she was seeing: a massive tornado, invisible in the black of night, striking each pole of the power lines that ran along the highway—the road that connected a small doomed town and our own. Soon she would pick me up, press my small body to her chest, and hurry us down to the room beneath the stairs, a tiny crawlspace where we would huddle together—my father and the cat crammed in with us—and wait out the storm. But for a second or two she stood there in the dark, looking out into the night, as a great, unstoppable force tore through a sleeping town, destroying everything in its path. It was June 8, 1984. The town was called Barneveld, and the tornado—the largest in Wisconsin history—was an f5. On the Fujita scale, the f5 is [End Page 172] the largest, rarest, and most powerful tornado. It carries winds of more than two hundred miles per hour and can stretch up to a mile in width. It has the ability to rip entire houses off their foundations, pluck trees and trucks and livestock from the land and toss them to the sky. The f5 is dangerous, unpredictable, and unforgiving. In the bad nineties action movie Twister, which I watched obsessively as a kid, a group of storm chasers—led by the late Bill Paxton and an unhinged Helen Hunt—pause around a dinner table, on a momentary break from their mission in the Kansas stretch of Tornado Alley, when someone asks what an f5 is like. Commotion at the table ceases; conversation comes to a dramatic halt; forks are placed gravely onto plates. One of the elder chasers on the team, a character nicknamed "Preacher," stops as he serves up a steak. He takes a breath and says: It's the finger of God. I grew up in a small, God-fearing town in southern Wisconsin called Mount Horeb. A blue-collar place dealing in livestock feed and John Deere tractors, with a population back then of just over two thousand, Mount Horeb is perched on a high, sloping hill, surrounded on all sides by long, rolling fields of corn and wheat and soy. Five miles to the west are the Blue Mounds, a state park and tourist attraction that keeps the area on the map: a stretch of low, tree-dotted hills—technically monadnocks, or small mountains, a geological anomaly in that part of the country—with caves beneath them, a line of squat blue peaks that as children we were told protected our little town like a castle's defensive wall. From storms and monsters, the spirits that dwelt in the caves; from whatever else might come our way...

Irish clergy and the diocesan church in the ‘four obedient shires’ of Ireland,c.1400–c.1540

In 1435 the Irish council complained to Henry VI that there is not left in the nether parts of the counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Kildare, that join together, out of the subjection of the said enemies and rebels scarcely thirty miles in length and twenty miles in breadth, thereas a man may surely ride or go in the said counties to answer to the king’s writs and to his commandments.The letter was accompanied by a request that the king render payment due to the lord lieutenant Thomas Stanley for his service in Ireland, and also suggested that the king should travel to the colony to help fight off its enemies. Accordingly, the perilous state of English Ireland was almost certainly exaggerated to strengthen the arguments for financial and military support from the crown. Nevertheless this letter demonstrates that in the minds of the settler elite, which staffed the Irish council, the four counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Kildare were the bastion of English rule in Ireland, beset, the council would have us believe, by enemies on all sides. This picture of the ‘four counties’ as the political, and to a certain extent the cultural, stronghold of Englishness in Ireland can be found in other contemporary sources, as the region was perceived as both distinct and distinctly English.

The Past in the Present: Romans in Britain

The Past in the PresentRomans in Britain Mairi MacInnes (bio) Now and then it strikes me that it is not things in themselves, but what we think of things, that most matters to the human race. Now and then I veer from acknowledging this as truth to a flat contradiction: rubbish, I think; things-in-themselves give supreme value to all existence, and it does not matter what human beings make of them because they stand outside time in our imagination. In Michael Ignatieff’s life of Isaiah Berlin, there occurs a good instance of one side of this Janus-faced commonplace. It is 1945, and the philosopher, born in Riga in 1909 when Latvia was part of the Russian Empire, is in Leningrad as a British diplomat, new on the scene, and a native Russian-and German-speaker at that. He inquires, among other things, about the fate of the city’s writers under the Soviets in the late and terrible war. What of the famous Anna Akhmatova, say, who has not been allowed to publish since 1925 and whose poems Berlin has never even read? Overwhelmed by news of her continued existence, he calls on her that afternoon and returns in the [End Page 585] evening to talk all night. Their talk ranges across all experience: “He asked her whether the Renaissance was a real world to her, or an imaginary one, and she affirmed it was the latter. All poetry and art, she said, were ‘a form of nostalgia, a longing for a universal culture, as Goethe and Schegel had conceived it, of what had been transmuted into art and thought—nature, love, death, despair and martyrdom, of a reality which had no history, nothing outside itself.’” Ignatieff goes on, “That evening in the Fontanny Dom, in the bare and denuded room, with the potatoes in the dish, the Modigliani drawing [of Akhmatova], the cigar smoke slowly settling, Isaiah’s life came as close as it ever did to the still perfection of art” (Isaiah Berlin: A Life). In northern England, where southern parts of Scottish counties touch on the English counties of Northumbria and Cumbria, the land is rough and hilly, with occasional outcrops of crag over moorland grazed by sheep and the habitat of curlews, grouse, lapwings, skylarks, with wild geese and swans on loughs, and there is only the occasional farmhouse to mark a human dwelling. These are the Debatable Lands, for centuries fought over by Scots and English up to the union of the two kingdoms in 1603, some mere eighty miles in breadth, extending between North Sea in the east and Irish Sea in the west. Here runs Hadrian’s Wall, a frontier of the Roman empire erected by the Emperor Hadrian following the year a.d. 122 and still in existence for the most part nearly two millennia later; and, though serving no practical purpose today, it is tramped by thousands going east or west for pure pleasure on the well-marked path that runs immediately to the north or south of it. I walked some forty miles of it with five friends a few years ago, and was aware, as I think we all were, that the geography and the brilliant April weather that prevailed then, and the history and the desolation around us meant much more than present conditions indicate, that all hung on the imagination, as the Renaissance existed in the imagination of Anna Akhmatova in 1945. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed myself more profoundly. Nor was this an effect of the solitary landscape. When people like me who were born and bred in long-lived parts of the earth find ourselves in a North American landscape, we are often disturbed by the difference. No lumps in the fields that may be tumuli, no fields at all, no tracks or tracks broken off or continued far away, no crumbling green dykes, no silted waterways, no ruins, no former quarries, no mines, no obelisks, no standing stones or henges, nothing in the places between houses or villages, towns, cities, providing the smother of humanity: a prehuman landscape. An American wrote to me recently from the...

The Historical Background, Geographical Extent and Legal Bases of the Philippine Territorial Water Claim

The Philippine territorial water claim is unique in international law. On the basis of historic right of title, the Philippines claims a rectangular territorial sea fully enclosing the entirety of the archipelago, which at some points exceed 12 nautical miles in breadth. The 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, which the Philippines signed and ratified, prescribes the maximum breadth of the territorial sea at 12 nautical miles. For this reason, the Philippine territorial sea claim has been criticized for being excessive. This paper will discuss and clarify the historical background, geographical extent, and legal bases of the Philippine territorial water claim.

Moss on the Matanuska Glacier, Alaska

A species of moss (Musci) is observed on the Matanuska Glacier of Alaska in the middle of summer. The life cycle of the moss is perfectly observed. This is very rare and special because the environment is completely glacial and barren of plants. Matanuska is a gigantic glacier formed about 18,000 years ago in the Palmer region near Anchorage. It has a dimension of 27 miles in length and 4 miles in width. The glacier is located in the region between Anchorage and Mount McKinley. This huge glacier carved the Matanuska valley thousands of years ago. The mighty glacier also forms the Matanuska River. The summer weather is very changeable throughout the day: warm, cold, sunshiny, windy, cloudy, rainy, snowy, foggy, etc. The Arctic clouds move very quickly and create variable climates. So there are four seasons even in one day during the summer period of this region.

Gender and Urban Development in "The City of Big Shoulders," 1871-1933

On October 8 and 9, 1871, a fire that had started at a barn, belonging to Patrick and Catherine O'Leary near their home on 137 DeKoven Street, ravaged an area of Chicago four miles in length and three-quarters of a mile in width, encompassing much of the commercial heart of the city and the residential North Division. The fire caused the death of three hundred Chicagoans, destroyed the homes of nearly a third of the city's population, and resulted in property damages approximating two hundred million dollars. 1

Study of the seawater transparency field in the Crimea-Caucasus shelf area

This paper discussesin situ observational data on the directed light attenuation index in the near-surface layer, collected in September 1987. The absolute light attenuation index has been evaluated for a near-shore strip of water 10–15 miles in width. When multidisciplinary research is conducted in the open sea, this part of the sea surface remains unstudied, as the observational grid for it is made larger than the spatial-temporal parameters of the biophysical processes producing optical inhomogeneities.

Bio-optical variability across the Arctic Front

Biological and optical characterization of the Arctic Front (AF), which separates North Atlantic waters from the Greenland Sea Gyre, has not been well studied and we report, herein, the first synoptic description of bio-optical and temperature variability across the AF utilizing both shipboard (vertical and horizontal measurements utilizing the towed Undulating Oceanographic Record, UOR) and satellite (AVHRR) observations of sea surface temperature and visible band reflectances (580–680 nm). The UOR measures depth, temperature, in vivo chlorophyll fluorescence, upwelling and downwelling hemispherical (450, 488 and 550 nm) and vector (488 and 550 nm) irradiances at 10 s intervals during vertical undulations from 2 to 50 m. During a UOR tow on 19 August 1986, the AF was encountered as a sharp boundary with an abrupt change in bio-optical properties within the upper 50 m over a few miles. Temperatures increased from 5.7° to 8.4°C with the average chlorophyll concentration and diffuse attenuation coefficient [K(450)] increasing by factors of 4.1 and 1.8, respectively. Discrete samples for species composition and HPLC pigment analysis, taken within this high pigment region (150 miles in width), indicated that this near surface bloom was a mixed phytoplankton population with moderate concentrations of the coccolithophorid, Emiliania huxleyi. AVHRR visible band imagery showed a high reflectance patch adjacent to the frontal boundary which are normally associated with substantial concentration of coccolithophorids. If our observations on the magnitude and extent of the biomass are typical of the AF, it should have an important role in marine biogeochemical production in this high latitude area.

Geographical variations in hurricane risk and legislative response

Abstract Risk from the “natural event system”; of hurricanes varies greatly along the U.S. coastline, and so do the property and lives at risk. Damage potential from storm surge in the Miami area is less than a third that of the Tampa area. However, damage potential from winds in the Boston and New York areas exceeds that of either the Miami or Tampa areas. Passage of time since the great hurricane disasters near the turn of the century and improvements in the warning system may make coastal dwellers underestimate the likelihood of a hurricane catastrophe. But population growth near the coast has been more than three times the national average, and 10 of 58 coastal segments 50 miles in width more than doubled in population between 1960 and 1970. Twenty‐two segments increased by more than 25,000 people with six increasing by 150,000. Legislative response to the growing hazard has varied as widely as risk but is not clearly correlated with risk.

Deep Drilling and Production Practices in the Moore-Hooper Field - Delaware Basin

This paper presents problems and hazards encountered in deep drilling and production in the Moore-Hooperfield of the Delaware Basin. Slow production in the Moore-Hooperfield of the Delaware Basin. Slow penetration rates, high mud costs, and troublesome gas are common. penetration rates, high mud costs, and troublesome gas are common. A detailed discussion presents over-all planning and logic of drilling approach, casing design, mud program, and cementing of deep liners. Introduction Sun Co. drilled the discovery well, Moore-Hooper No. 1, in the Delaware Basin in 1973. Fifteen productive wells have been drilled to date, seven of them by Sun. Twelve are completed and are producing from the prolific Fusselman formation at producing from the prolific Fusselman formation at approximately 19,200 ft. Production from this reservoir is relatively dry gas with 4,000 to 5,000 ppm hydrogen sulfide. Average absolute open flow of these wets is about 160 MMcf/D. Four were also drilled to the Ellenburger formation at 22,000 ft. Production of Ellenburger gas, which contains approximately 50 percent CO2, has been delayed until a gas sales line is available. Plans are for Intratex Gas Co. to start processing this gas Plans are for Intratex Gas Co. to start processing this gas in their Mia Vida field plant in late 1977. Many problems and hazards are involved in deep drilling in this area of the Delaware Basin. This paper highlights some of the major problems such as high mud weights, loss of circulation, controlling kicks and related equipment, and how they were handled. It also presents over-all planning and logic of drilling approach, casing design, mud program, and cementing of deep liners. Included are basic geological data, structure map and cross-section, and brief production history. In early 1976, some 15 rigs capable of 25,000-ft drilling were operating in or within 15 miles of the Moore-Hooper field. This was probably the greatest congregation of super rigs in any concentrated area of the U.S. The Delaware Basin, which extends northwest across Pecos, Ward, Winkler, Loving, and Culberson counties Pecos, Ward, Winkler, Loving, and Culberson counties in Texas, and southern Eddy and Lea counties of New Mexico, long has been recognized as a challenging deep drilling area. The Mentone or Moore-Hooper field area is particularly troublesome because of the very thick, abnormally pressured Lower Wolfcamp, Atoka, and Barnett sections. These formations exceed some 5,900 ft in thickness. Because they are predominately shale with high pore pressures, the result is slower penetration rates, high mud costs, and troublesome gas while drilling. The Moore-Hooper field is a northeast plunging anticline dipping into a fault to the north and northwest. Fig. 1 is a structure map contoured on top of the Fusselman pay. Sun initially drilled the discovery well in Section 79, pay. Sun initially drilled the discovery well in Section 79, then drilled Sections 78, 85, 86, 80, 72, and 89. Subsequent drilling by others, particularly the Clayton William's Gataga No. 2 in Section 81, removed any doubt that the Moore-Hooper and the Vermejo fields are contiguous, forming a sizeable gas field some 8 miles long and 2 to 3 miles in width. Casing and Mud Program Fig. 2 represents a typical casing program that essentially has remained the same. As development drilling progressed, some casing seats were adjusted slightly. Great care was taken to assure that all tubulars were as free from defects as modem testing procedures could determine. Electro-magnetic inspection was performed at the mill, again on the location for longitudinal and transverse defects and wall thickness, and all tubulars were grade verified. JPT P. 1385

Bishop Porteus’ Visitation of the Diocese of Chester, 1778

BEFORE DIVISION in 1836, the diocese of Chester was a huge rambling area of the country with its administrative centre, Chester, situated at one end. The diocese included not only Cheshire but also Lancashire, south of the Ribble, the counties of Denbigh and Flint plus isolated parishes in Carmarthen and Caernavon. Administrative problems were intensified by the inclusion in the diocese of the archdeaconry of Richmond, almost a diocese in itself, which incorporated the territory north of ~heRibble, south Cumberland, south Westmorland and, across the Pennines, the deaneries of Richmond, Catterick and Boroughbridge, terminating at Nun Monkton some seven miles west of York. This enormous diocese was 120 miles in length, 90 miles in width and 570 miles round the perimeter, containing 533 churches and chapels to serve a population of approximately two million souls. The appointment of Beilby Porteus as bishop of Chester in 1777 marked a new approach to the supervision of a diocese whose communications were poor and population scattered. Porteus was the nineteenth child of Robert Porteus, a tobacco planter from Virginia, who had married the daughter of Colonel Jennings of Ripon. Beilby was born in York, educated at Ripon grammar school and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he became tutor to Thomas Robinson, son of Lord Grantham of Newby Hall. This lead to the formation of a close friendship with the family which lasted throughout Porteus' life. From Cambridge he moved to the post of chaplain to Archbishop Seeker, master of St Cross Hospit~l, Winchester, rector of Hunton in Kent, and finally rector of Lambeth, and chaplain to George 111.1 Following the death of Archbishop Drummond, a translation to York was offered to Terrick of London but he declined on account of his age. The see was then offered to William Markham, bishop of Chester and dean of Christ Church, Oxford, who accepted the offer, so creating a vacancy at Chester. George III insisted that Chester should be offered to Beilby Porteus since, 'he would be an ample match in any debate in the

Transportation Corridor Planning for Arizona Regional Airport

This paper describes the many facets of the long-range planning process for establishment of the Arizona Regional Airport and a multimodal transportation corridor between the urban centers of Phoenix and Tucson serving the airport and local communities along the way. Through these long-range efforts, about 80 sq. miles of land have been set aside, or land-banked for the Regional Airport by the State of Arizona. Over 80% of the land bank is now owned by the State of Arizona. The planning for the transportation corridor envisions a broad band of land, from 1/2 miles in width to provide space for known and as yet unknown modes of transportation for people, goods, and utilities. This wide corridor is needed for environmental considerations. The interface between the various agencies and public interests is explained. The planning is truly long range as these facilities will not be needed for at least 20 yr.

Removal of Sulfur Dioxide Emissions By Scrubbing With Oilfield-Produced Water

Oilfield-produced water was successfully used to remove sulfur dioxide from the flue gas of steam generators fired with high-sulfur crude oil. This process cost less than sulfur removal processes or low-sulfur fuel. Water process cost less than sulfur removal processes or low-sulfur fuel. Water injectivity was improved by a decrease in pH caused by absorption of the sulfur dioxide. Introduction The San Ardo field is located in the south-central portion of the Salinas Valley, about 5 miles southeast portion of the Salinas Valley, about 5 miles southeast of the town of San Ardo in Monterey County, Calif. The field measures about 6 miles in length and 2 1/2 miles in width and extends over 4,200 acres. Heavy oil, 11 degrees to 13 degrees API gravity, is entrapped within several sands at drilled depths of generally less than 2,800 ft. The San Ardo oil field is one of California's major petroleum reserves. The well productivity and recovery petroleum reserves. The well productivity and recovery of the heavy, viscous crude oil is dependent upon thermal recovery processes, principally steam injection. The crude oil has an average sulfur content of 2 percent by weight and is used as fuel in the steam generators. The natural gas produced with the crude is insufficient to supply the fuel requirements. Alternate sources of low-sulfur fuel are in short supply in this area. The Monterey-Santa Cruz County Unified Air Pollution Control District (UAPCD) enacted Rule 415, effective July 1972, that prohibits the use of a fuel oil with a sulfur content greater than 0.5 percent. In Jan. 1972 the UAPCD adopted Rule 417 that stipulates "the provisions of Rule 415 shall not apply where sulfur compounds are removed from the stack gases to the extent that the emissions of sulfur compounds are no greater than that which would be emitted by using a liquid or solid fuel complying with Rule 415." This paper describes the method, testing, and performance of emission scrubbing to remove sulfur performance of emission scrubbing to remove sulfur dioxide from the combustion gases of the steam generators used in Mobil's thermal recovery operations at San Ardo. Processes Considered Processes Considered The steam generators installed in the field are of two sizes with heat input of 22 and 50 MM Btu/hr. The generators are placed in groups of three to eight units at seven locations distributed over approximately three sections, or about half of the field. The various systems that were considered for gathering and processing the emissions from these widely scattered sources werecirculate an absorbent solution to the emission scrubbers on each of the steam generators and recover products and/or wastes in a central plant;compress the flue gas at each steam generator location and treat the flue gases and recover products and/or wastes in a central plant; andproducts and/or wastes in a central plant; andoperate small recovery plants at each steam generator location. A generalized flow diagram of a central treating plant is shown in Fig. 1. Detailed economics of each of the above alternatives will not be discussed because conditions at San Ardo are not applicable to a general situation. The economics and flexibility of generator and process operations support the first method for the situation at San Ardo. Some idea of the quantities of raw materials required, and wastes and/or salable products generated by the various processes that were considered, are given in the following discussion. JPT P. 227

Systemic Change and Lithic Debris: The Nine Mile Creek Survey

Data from 55 archaeological sites located during the course of a survey of a portion of Nine Mile Creek northeast of Lawrence, Kansas were analyzed as the focus of a seminar at the University of Kansas in 1969. The recognition of significant variation in lithic debris samples from the Nine Mile Creek sites resulted in the development of a seriational procedure and an explana tory model in terms of temporally changing subsistence patterns. In 1968, a group of students from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kansas conducted an intensive survey of a three mile segment of the valley floor and surrounding bluff tops along Nine Mile Creek northeast of Lawrence, Kansas (Fig. 1). Nine Mile Creek is a tributary of the larger Stranger Creek, which in turn flows into the Kansas River approximately 12 miles east of Lawrence. The section of Nine Mile Creek which was surveyed is six miles upstream from the junction with Stranger Creek. The valley of Nine Mile Creek averages one-third of a mile in width within the survey area. It is bounded on the east and west by limestone bluffs with interbedded bands of chert. Evidences of glacial episodes are present in the form of a mantle of detritus which occasion ally overlies the limestone. Fifty-five archaeological sites were located in the three mile survey area along Nine Mile Creek. A majority of the sites are on the valley floor, although a few also occur on surrounding bluff tops. The valley floor was searched more thor oughly than the bluff tops, so in part this seeming concentration may be a reflection of variations in sampling. Other archaeological sur veys conducted in this section of Kansas (Univer sity of Kansas, Museum of Anthropology files), however, indicate a similar concentration of sites on valley floors, so it is believed the differential in site distribution recorded during the Nine Mile Creek survey is a fair representation of the real situation. Data recorded and collected during the course of the survey provided the substantive basis for a seminar in analytical archaeology conducted dur ing the academic year of 1969-1970. Nine students participated in analyses of the data, which included specific information on the size and location of archaeological sites and collec tions of material culture from each. Site size was estimated from the extent of surface scatter, an estimation made possible by the fact that most of the sites are now plowed farm fields. Collec tions were for the most part grab samples, although an attempt was made to collect from the entire surface of each site and to collect a large sample of all readily observable types of debris. Numbers of items available for study from each site ranged from 50 to 3005. In a few instances, more careful samples were drawn by superimposing a grid on the site and collecting all items of cultural debris from each unit of the grid. During the analyses of the collections, a bias towards the presence of quantities of lithic debris and towards the absence of artifacts with known cultural-historical distributions soon became ob vious. This bias, undoubtedly a reflection of intensive collecting activities of local amateurs, resulted in a situation wherein only 36 of the 55 sites located by the survey provided collections which included artifacts with known cultural historical distributions. Initial analytical efforts were thus centered on these 36 sites, resulting in the recognition of the presence of three named cultural-historical units in the survey area: the Archaic, Plains Woodland, and Central Plains traditions. Artifacts assignable to the Archaic tradition

Postglacial faulting and seismicity in New York and Quebec

Within the last few years studies of relationships among faulting, fault creep, and seismicity in active areas such as California and Nevada have progressed rapidly, and have contributed greatly to our understanding of tectonics and the earthquake mechanism. This success prompted a field and literature search for similar phenomena in New York State and adjoining areas, a region of only moderate seismicity but of sufficient population density so that the seismic hazard should be thoroughly studied using all relevant information.Evidence for postglacial bedrock faulting, dated by offset striations, is common on outcrops of a belt of Paleozoic shales and slates that extends from near Hyde Park, New York, northerly along the east side of the Hudson and Champlain valleys, and continues northeasterly into Quebec at least as far as St. Georges. Faults tend to be in the plane of slaty cleavage with the south or east side upthrown in postglacial time. The observed faults are thus high-angle reverse faults with little or no postglacial strike–slip component. Displacement along a single fault is usually of the order of an inch or less, but commonly several such faults are seen in an outcrop only a few feet across. Thus, the faults seem very numerous, and cumulative displacement across a belt tens of miles in width could be quite substantial.An important question is whether this faulting is associated with glacial loading or unloading, with tectonic stresses, or with some other effect such as thermal changes, hydration, or a chemical process in the shales. Present data do not seem adequate to resolve this point, and a major purpose of this paper is to request similar information on other areas, particularly those adjoining the region of interest here. Casual observation of such faults would probably be dismissed by a geologist as slumping, frost heaving, or some other local disturbance in most cases if he were unaware of the regional pattern.Correlation between the pattern of observed faults and that of recent seismic activity is not highly convincing, but this could be because of inadequacies in either or both sets of data, so this question also remains open.

Prehistory and Environment in the Libyan Desert

The Aswan High Dam on the Nile in southern Egypt has already begun to fill its huge reservoir. The resulting Lake Nasser will be over 300 miles in length and up to 40 miles in width. The threat to prehistoric and historic archaeological remains posed by the construction of this dam has been well publicized. Through the encouragement of U.N.E.S.C.O., and the financial support of a number of governments and private granting agencies, more than thirty expeditions have studied these remains. Efforts to record, and in some cases to salvage, dynastic temples have received great popular attention. A smaller portion of the total research effort was devoted to prehistory, that is, those time periods before the appearance of settled foodproducing villages that were headed at first by local chiefs and later united under pharaonic rule. Since the majority of expeditions working in prehistory seldom ventured more than a few miles from pool area proper, the Combined Prehistoric Expedition of Southern Methodist University devoted a part of its resources to a study of the adjoining Libyan Desert west of the Nile. Although it has long been known that a variety of prehistoric cultures existed in the Libyan Desert, the cultural interrelationships between the desert and the Nile, in prehistoric times, were poorly understood. An important question was whether, throughout prehistory, the deserts should be considered as culturally marginal or peripheral to an

The Treehoppers of Wisconsin in Relation to the Tension Zone (Homoptera, Membracidae)

The tension zone in Wisconsin, which is the ecotone between two floristic provinces, averages about 25 miles in width and traverses the state in a generally northwest to southeast direction. The correlations between the distributions of 78 species of treehoppers and this zone are reported. In the case of 15 of these the limits of distribution correspond closely to the tension zone; the other 63, however, show little or no such correlation.

Pleistocene deposits of the north-western Allegheny Plateau, U.S.A

In North America Pleistocene ice sheets entered the lowland now occupied in part by Lake Erie and expanded far southward in several lobes in the Interior Plains, but less far in two lobes in the Allegheny Plateau to the east in north-eastern Ohio, north-western Pennsylvania and western New York. This maturely dissected plateau, composed of essentially horizontal Carboniferous strata, has a summit level ranging from about 1200 ft in the west to about 1800 ft in the east. In recent years excavations as deep as 135 ft for strip mines (coal), highways and quarries (limestone) in that part of the plateau in Ohio and Pennsylvania have exposed complete sections as much as a mile in length, which reveal lower drifts, mainly till, that have been previously almost unknown. Each till sheet has a characteristic texture and mineral composition and separate sheets can be traced for more than 100 miles, and treated as rock stratigraphical units. The younger tills are much higher in clay than the older tills. The feldspar content of the sand fraction ranges from about 5 per cent in the oldest till to 30 per cent in the youngest till. Carbonates range from less than one per cent in the oldest till to about 15 per cent in the youngest. Within each till sheet there is a decrease in feldspar and an increase in quartz toward the margin. Statistical studies, in part by trend-surface analysis by computer methods, confirm the regularity of this variation, which is ascribed to dilution by local feldspar-poor sandstone. The dilution is much greater in the older tills; at their margins 90 per cent of the quartz content may be locally derived. The lowest till, of pre-Illinoian age, entirely a sub-surface unit, is everywhere thoroughly weathered. The overlying till of probable Illinoian age, consists of two sheets, the upper one of which has a thick palaeosol. The bulk of the drift is early Wisconsinan in age and consists of three or more till sheets. It is named (in Pennsylvania) the Titusville Till and has a 14 C age of about 40 000 years. It is sandy, very compact and oxidizes to a distinct olive-brown colour. The weathering on it is not as intense as that of the two lower tills. The oldest till of late Wisconsinan age, the Kent Till, is a distinctive coarse yellow-brown, sandy till. It is overlain by the chocolate-brown, silty, more highly calcareous Lavery Till, which in turn is overlain by the brown, silty-clayey Hiram Till. Each of the older tills, except the pre-Illinoian, extends farther south and south-east than the later tills, so that each forms the surface drift in a belt, ranging from 2 to 20 miles in width, in which its surface morphology and soil characteristics can be studied and its general character compared with that in the sub-surface.

Populations of Two Sonoran Desert Plants, and Deductions as to Factors Limiting Their Northward Extension

Recently discovered populations of ocotillo Fouquieria splendens, and smoke tree, Dalea spinosa in extreme southern Nevada were studied. Sparse distribution, reduced vigor and size all indicate that these populations have reached their northern geographic and ecologic limits. It is suggested that nothern dispersal and establishment of smoke tree is checked in extreme southern Nevada by lowered and more prolonged winter temperatures. Populations of ocotillo are disjunct and may be relict. Populations of ocotillo, Fouquieria splendens, Engelm and smoke tree, Dalea spinosa Gray have recently been located along the Colo- rado River in extreme southern Nevada. Neither species has been defi- nitely reported prior to this study as occurring in Nevada although Tidestrom (1925) and Muller (1940) suggest the possibility of oco- tillos being present in the most southern part of the state. Both species are found in the southern part of the Mohave Desert and are wide- spread in the more southern Sonoran Desert. The most northern ex- tension of the Sonoran Desert in California is in the vicinity of Needles, California where both species are found in suitable habitats. The population in Nevada represent a northern extension of the known range of both species into the northern Mohave Desert. No- menclature used in this paper follows Munz (1959). DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDY AREA. The area studied was the flood plain of the Colorado River on the Nevada side extending from south of Davis Dam to the California-Nevada boundary. The flood plain along this portion of the river is several miles wide, usually about three miles in width on the Nevada side, and varies from about 700 to 500 feet in elevation. The soil is primarily alluvial sand but small areas elevated above the main flood plain may be sandy loam. Several vegetation types are represented, the most common and widespread being creosote bush (Larrea divaricata) and burro-weed (Franseria dumosa). Thick stands of quail bush (Atriplex lenti- formis) are located near the river. Riparian populations of such species

Migrants in the Galápagos Area

The last comprehensive report on migrant birds in the region was published more than 30 years ago by Swarth (1931) who excluded most of the procellariiform species previously considered by Gifford (1913) and Loomis (1918). Subsequently, a number of records obtained at sea and on the islands were reported by various authors, chiefly Fisher and Wetmore (1931), Swarth (1933), Murphy (1936), Lack and Venables (1940), Fleming (1950), and Harrison (1962). During the 12-year period, 1952 to 1964, visits were made by one or more of the present writers to all the principal islands of the Galkpagos Archipelago (fig. 1), with numerous opportunities to observe and to collect at infrequently visited coasts and inland areas. The purpose of this report is to bring together all records of Galipagos migrants that have accumulated since 1931 and thereby make available a more up-todate summary of species occurrences, distribution, and relative abundance. The term Galapagos area, as used here, includes the islands and intervening waters of the Galipagos Archipelago, plus a circular band of open ocean, approximately 200 miles in width, measured from the perimeter of a circle that passes through Culpepper and Hood islands (fig. 2). Thus this region in the eastern equatorial Pacific encompasses a circular area of 385,000 square miles, and is approximately 700 miles in diameter. The easternmost end of Chatham Island (Punta Pitt) is 502 miles west of Cape San Lorenzo on the Ecuadorian mainland (Slevin, 1955:99). Guadalupe Island (Mexico), Socorro Island in the Revillagigedo Archipelago, and Clipperton atoll are approximately 2700, 1700, and 1300 miles, respectively, northwest of Culpepper Island in the Galkpagos. To the northeast, Cocos Island (Costa Rica) and Malpelo Island (Colombia) are approximately 425 and 630 miles, respectively, from Tower Island in the Galhipagos. The nearest land west of Galkpagos is the island of Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas, about 2800 miles distant. The islands of San Felix and San Ambrosio (Chile) and Sala-y-Gomez and Rapa Nui (Chil6) are about 1600 miles to the SSE and SSW, respectively, of Galkpagos. The perimeter of the Galipagos area comes to within about 140 and 320 miles of Cocos Island and the nearest Ecuadorian mainland, respectively. To be sure, the limits of the Galkpagos area have been chosen somewhat arbitrarily, since they cut across several oceanographic and meteorological provinces (Abbott, MS; Alpert, 1963; Murphy, 1936). Nevertheless, it is because of this unusual setting that so many interesting avian distributional discoveries are occurring and will continue to do so. The need for more thorough observing and collecting in the Galipagos is clearly indicated by the data presented below.