NOTES. 



H3 



wind. The populace thought that fire was 

 falling from the sun. More intelligent per- 

 sons believed that snow had been actually 

 formed in consequence of the cooling of the 

 atmosphere, some of which had fallen with- 

 out melting till it came in sight, and this 

 view was currently accepted. It was finally 

 shown; however, that the particles were float- 

 ing seeds, and every one was enabled to sat- 

 isfy himself of the fact by grasping a hand- 

 ful of them. 



NOTES. 



The tertiary lake-basin at Florissant, be- 

 tween South and Hayden Parks, Colorado, 

 furnishes one of the richest deposits of fossil 

 insects that have been found anywnere. 

 According to Mr. S. H. Scudder, who exam- 

 ined it in connection with the Hayden Sur- 

 vey, it has yielded in a single summer more 

 than double the number of specimens which 

 the famous localities at (Eningen, in Bava- 

 ria, furnished Heer in thirty years. The 

 (Eningen specimens are, however, a3 a rule, 

 better preserved, but a larger number of 

 satisfactory specimens are found at Floris- 

 sant than at (Eningen. Sixteen species of 

 insects have been published, and, besides 

 these, a planorbis-shell, eight species of 

 fishes, several birds' feathers, and a single 

 tolerably perfect sparrow. Also several 

 thousand specimens of thirty-seven species 

 of plants, have been found. 



Professor Xorde.vskiold has had occa- 

 sion during his Arctic vova^es to ask the 

 question, which must have often occurred to 

 many, What becomes of the " self -dead " 

 animals, or those that die a natural death ? 

 During his nine expeditions in regions where 

 animal life is abundant, he has found only 

 a very few remains of recent vertebrate 

 animals which could be proved to have died 

 a natural death. We have at present no 

 idea of what beeomes of the bodies of such 

 animals, " and yet we have here a problem 

 of immense importance for the answering 

 of a large number of questions concerning 

 the formation of fossiliferous strata. It is 

 strange, in any case, that on Spitzbergen it 

 is easier to find the vertebras of a gigantic- 

 lizard of the Trias than bones of a self-dead 

 seal, walrus, or bird, and the same also 

 holds good of more southerly inhabited 

 lands." 



Mr. A. S. Packard, Jr., has given, in a 

 contribution to the Boston Society of Nat- 

 ural History, the descriptions of twentv-two 

 new species of ichneumon, microgaster, tri- 

 cogramma, and other genera of parasites in- 

 festing North American butterflies, typical 



specimens of most of which may be seen in 

 the collection of Mr. S. H. Scudder, and of 

 a few in the Harris collection of the muse- 

 um of the society. 



Professor Otis T. Masox is not satisfied 

 I with the existing classifications of the an- 

 j th Topological sciences, and has adopted a 

 J classification of his own, as follows: 1. An- 

 thropogeny ; 2. Prehistoric Anthropology ; 

 3. Biological Anthropology ; 4. Psychologi- 

 cal Anthropology ; 5. Ethnology ; 6. Linguis- 

 tic Anthropology; 7. Industrial Anthropol- 

 ! ogy ; 8. Sociology proper ; 9. The Science 

 ! of Religion ; to which he adds a tenth class 

 of works on the instrumentalities of re- 

 search. In his bibliographical contributions 

 to the Smithsonian Report and the " Ameri- 

 can Xaturalist," Professor Mason states that 

 a larger number of papers have been pub- 

 lished on prehistoric anthropology than on 

 any other branch of the science. He enu- 

 merates one hundred and forty-six memoirs 

 in this branch as published in 1879, and 

 twentv-eizht as published in America alone 

 in 1880. 



The deaths in the Peabody Buildings, 

 London, during sixteen years, have been at 

 the rate of sixteen and seven tenths per 

 thousand per annum, while the general 

 death-rate of the metropolis during the 

 same period has been twenty-three and 

 four tenths. The death-rate in the crowd- 

 ed districts surrounding the Peabody Build- 

 ings has been stated to be thirty or forty to 

 the thousand. 



A committee of the British Association 

 is investigating the question of the existence 

 of earth-tides, or of oscillations in the crust 

 of the earth similar to those which are pro- 

 duced in the ocean by the attraction of the 

 moon. A pendulum is so suspended that its 

 slightest motion turns a mirror, and causes 

 a perceptible movement in the spot of light 

 reflected by it upon a distant screen. The 

 pendulum is proved to be continually chang- 

 ing its position, for the reflected light is in 

 incessant motion, and so irregularly that it is 

 hardly possible to localize its mean position 

 on the screen within five or six inches. Mr. 

 W. Mattieu Williams has susnrested that the 

 constant movements of the microscopic bub- 

 bles imprisoned within the cavities of gems 

 and minerals are due to the same cause. 



The death is announced of the Rev. Dr. 

 Thomas R. Robinson, Director of the Ob- 

 servatory at Armagh, Ireland. He was 

 elected to the Royal Society in 1856, and 

 was one of. the oldest Fellows on the list, 

 beimr nearlv ninetv when he died. His 

 latest contribution to science, " On the Con- 

 stants of the Cup Anemometer,'' was pub- 

 lished in the " Philosophical Transactions " 

 in 1S80. 



