In recent years, much concern has been expressed on the deleterious effects that anthropogenic emissions of acidic pollutants have on ecosystems of both industrialized countries and remote areas of the world. In many of these regions, seasonal snowcover is a major factor in the transfer of atmospheric pollutants, either to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems or to the more permanent reservoirs of glaciers and ice sheets. The recognition of the role that seasonal snowcovers can thus play in the chemical dynamics of whole ecosystems was recently echoed by the Committee on Glaciology of the...

Every "legitimate" member of Revolutionary War soldier Francis Jones's family (including his son-in-law Congressman James Strudwick Smith) lies in a small cemetery near where the Smiths' enslaved maid Harriet gave birth to four daughters, one fathered by Jones's white lawyer grandson, three by the white physician grandson. The four girls grew up with two "mothers", for Miss Mary Ruffin Smith, spinster sister of the licentious boys, took them into the big house, baptized them into the Episcopal Church, and then guided them to marriage to respectable biracial men. One great-great-grandchild,...