work of a dog. The lamb was taken out, and was, strange to say, little the worse of its burial. A diligent watch was instituted, with the result that the depredator-a collie dog--was captured in the act of burying another lamb, which was also alive.

The new building at South Kensington for the British Museum was finished last June, and the geological, botanical and mineralogical specimens have been removed from the old building. The zoological collections, which are equal in bulk to the other three collectively, have yet to be removed, as the necessary funds for this purpose have not yet been appropriated. Professor Owen, the veteran Superintendent of the Natural History Collection, still actively directs the labors of his assistants. A biographical notice of Professor Owen and an excellent portrait by Jeens appeared in Nature. He has lately designed an index museum in the new building, intended to show the type characters of the principal groups of organized beings," thus epitomizing nearly the entire museum.

The members of the expedition which, under the auspices of the Archæological Institute of America, is to investigate the ruins of the city of Assos, in Asia Minor, will sail this week in the steamship Germanic, of the White Star Line. The party comprises Joseph Thatcher Clarke, of Boston, who will act as the leader; Francis Henry Bacon, of this city; Maxwell Wrigley, of Brooklyn, and two or three other gentlemen who are interested in archæological research. Through the Department of State, the Turkish Government has offered the members of the expedition every assistance in its power. Assos is on the south

ern coast of Mysia, opposite the island of Lesbos, and contains among other things the ruins of a Doric temple, a theatre, and massive fortification walls.

-The following calculation as to the total number of existing botanical species, has been recently made by Dr. Müller, of Geneva. We have at present in our books about 130,000 species, and if we suppose that 30,000 (in round numbers), belong to countries like Europe and North America, where there are hardly any species, but some cryptogams to be discovered, the remainder, or 100,000, representing exotic plants, more or less tropical and southern, we may double the latter for new species, giving 200,000 for these less known regions, and altogether 230,000 for the whole globe, with the exception of countries still quite unknown botanically. Adding only 20,000 species for the latter, we reach a minimum sum of 250,000 species of plants.

- Dr. B. W. Richardson, in a paper read before the Sanitary Institute (Exeter, September 20, 1880), seems to approach the position of Professor Jäger. He writes: "Go into the wards of a

lunatic asylum, and notice among the most troubled there the odor of the gases and the vapors they emit by the skin and the breath. That odor is from their internal atmosphere, their nervous ethereal emanation. They are mad up to suicide or murder, or any criminal folly. Can it be otherwise? They have secreted the madness; they are filled with it; it exhales from them. Catch it, condense it, imbibe it, and in like manner it would mad. den any one." Is not this the teaching of Jäger and Dunstmaier, spiced to suit the audience and the occasion?- Journal of Science.

-- M. E. Yung (Comptes Rendus, August 30, 1880) has studied the development of the eggs of Loligo vulgaris and Sepia officinalis exposed to light of different colors. The development is hastened by violet and blue light; retarded by green and red. Yellow light behaves like white light. Larvæ of Ciona intestinalis also grew most rapidly in the violet light. Development under the red and green lights, though retarded, was effected in perfection.

Besides issuing the beginning of what will be a most valuable series of monographs on the Mediterranean fauna studied at Dr. Dohrn's Zoological Station, a provisional priced catalogue of the microscopical preparations issued by the Station at Naples, has been published. It includes four different preparations of Protozoa, 33 of Colenterata, 49 of Echinodermata, 33 of Vermes, 57 of Arthropoda, 54 of Mollusca, and 193 of Vertebrata. These will be as valuable as any ever sold. The price is from one to ten francs.

As the result of Dr. O. Finsch's voyage of ten months in the Pacific Ocean he has sent to Europe about thirty boxes of collections, the materials embracing 70 mammals, 180 birds, 800 reptiles, 1200 fishes, 15,000 mollusks, 800 crustacea, 400 spiders, 1400 insects, together with 50 skulls and 55 casts of faces, representing the people of twenty different islands, besides 1500 ethnographical objects.

- A Young Men's Society for Home Study has been formed in Boston for the encouragement of systematic study and reading at home. The course in Natural Science, of which department Mr. S. H. Scudder is the head, embraces Botany, three courses in Zoology and two courses in Geology. The reading is designed to be accompanied by the study of specimens.

We learn that the Rev. W. H. Dallinger, of Liverpool, the distinguished microscopist, has accepted the appointment of Governor and Professor of Biology at Wesley College, Sheffield. This institution may be congratulated on the acquisition it has made.

-The death of Mr. Frank Buckland, is announced in the papers of Dec. 18th. Mr. Buckland was the son of Dean Buckland, the distinguished geologist. He was well known as a pleasing writer on popular natural history, and as a fish culturist.

A large and valuable collection of Rhode Island plants has been presented by Mr. James L. Bennett, of Providence, to the already increasing Herbarium of Brown University, of which Mr. W. W. Bailey has recently been appointed the curator.

— Prof. Thomas Rymer Jones, F.R.S., died in December; he was born in 1810; held the chair of comparative anatomy in King's College, London, and was the author of "The General Outline of the Animal Kingdom."

- Dr. E. Sequin, well-known as a leading American physician, philanthropist and physiologist, died in New York in October. He was born in France in 1812, and showed brilliant talents while a student in Paris.

It is stated in the daily papers that the late Prof. Watson, of the University of Michigan left the sum of $50,000 to the National Academy of Sciences for the promotion of original research in astronomy.

It is said

It is reported in the daily papers that a manuscript journal of Gilbert White, of Selborne, has been discovered. to be of considerable length.

Dr. Lauder Lindsay, who wrote on the subject of intelligence in the lower animals, and who was an authority on British lichens, died in December last.

Prof. Ernst Hampe, a distinguished German bryologist, died recently at Helmatedt, aged 85 years.

:0:

PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES.

NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, Dec. 20.-Professor C. H. Hitchcock read a paper on the ancient volcanoes of New England, and Dr. R. P. Stevens exhibited some rare silver ores and carboniferous fossils from Arizona.

BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY, Dec. 15.--Notes on the geology of Mt. Desert were read by Mr. Wm. M. Davis, and that of the adjoining Frenchmen's Bay was discussed by Mr. W. O. Crosby. Mr. J. S. Kingsley spoke of some points in the anatomy of Holothurians. Dr. Edward Palmer showed some objects of ethnological interest from caves in Mexico.

APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN CLUB, Dec. 10.-Mr. H. Murdock read a paper on Mt. Cardigan, including accounts of several ascents.

AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, Dec. 23.-Mr. Thomas Davidson read a paper on the recent excavations and discoveries at Athens and Olympia.

MIDDLESEX INSTITUTE.-At an adjourned meeting of the Middlesex Scientific Field Club, held on the 8th of December, 1880, the name of the club was changed to that of Middlesex Institute, by which name it will hereafter be known.

BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY, Jan. 5, 1881.-Dr. M. E. Wadsworth discussed the appropriation of the name Laurentian" by the Canadian Geological Survey. The President gave further details of the structure of the carboniferous millipedes, to show that they should be classed as a distinct suborder of Myriapods. Mr. F. W. Putnam exhibited some supposed Palaeolithic implements from Massachusetts, and spoke of their discovery and character. Mr. J. S. Kingsley presented a collection of Crustacea and remarked on some of its rare or curious species.

·:0:

SELECTED ARTICLES IN SCIENTIFIC SERIALS.

GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE.-December. Notes on the occurrence of Stone Implements in the coast latitude south of Madras, by R. B. Foote. Analysis of Moa egg-shell, by A. Liversidge. Classification of the Pliocene and Pleistocene beds, by C. Reid. The Mammoth in Siberia, by H. H. Howorth. (The writer maintains that in former times when the mammoth abounded in Northern Siberia, the climate of this region, extending from the Ural mountains to Behring straits, Siberia, was much milder and like that of Lithuania at present "where the bison still survives, and where so many of the other contemporaries of the mammoth still live.")

ANNALS AND MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY, November.-On the minute structure of the recent Heteropora neozelanica, and on the relations of the genus Heteropora to Monticulipora, by H. A. Nicholson. On Stromatopora dartingtoniensis, n. sp., with tabulation in the larger branches of the Astrorhiza, by H. J. Carter.

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, January, 1881.-The Albany Granite, New Hampshire, and its contact phenomena, by G. W. Hawes.

DURING

BY DAVID S. JORDAN AND CHAS. H. GIlbert.

the most of the present year, the writers have been engaged in the study of the fishes of the Pacific coast of the United States, in the interest of the U. S. Fish Commission and the U. S. Census Bureau. The following pages contain the principal facts ascertained concerning the salmon of the Pacific coast. It is condensed from our report to the U. S. Census Bureau, by permission of Professor Goode, assistant in charge of fishery investigations.

There are five species of salmon (Oncorhynchus) in the waters of the North Pacific. We have at present no evidence of the existence of any more on either the American or the Asiatic side.

These species may be called the quinnat or king salmon, the blue-back salmon or red-fish, the silver salmon, the dog salmon, and the hump-back salmon or Oncorhynchus chouicha, nerka, kisutch, keta and gorbuscha. All these species are now known to occur in the waters of Kamtschatka as well as in those of Alaska and Oregon.

As vernacular names of definite application, the following are on record:

a. Quinnat-Chouicha, king salmon, e'quinna, saw-kwey, Chinnook salmon, Columbia River salmon, Sacramento salmon. tyee salmon, Monterey salmon, deep-water salmon, spring salmon, ek-ul-ba ("ekewan ") (fall run).

b. Blue-back-krasnaya ryba, Alaska red-fish, Idaho red-fish, sukkegh, Frazer's river salmon, rascal, oo-chooy-ha.

c. Silver salmon-kisutch, winter salmon, hoopid, skowitz, coho, bielaya ryba, o-o-wun.