47 8 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



paining map and illustrations are 

 taken. 



Early last year an expedition was 

 organized and embarked in a sailboat, 

 designed for the circumnavigation of 

 the Salton Sea and an examination of 

 its contacts with the adjacent desert 

 vegetation. Six stations were selected 

 from which under varying conditions 

 the succession of vegetation will be 

 studied as the water recedes. The 

 maximum depth of the water is 84 

 feet, and it is expected that most of it 

 will evaporate in about ten years. Its 

 width is from five to twenty-five miles, 

 and each year new stretches of beach 

 will become available for occupation 

 by plants. The level of the lake fell 

 about one foot by June 1, and two or 

 three feet six months later. At that 

 time the strip of saline shore left bare 

 had not been occupied by plants. 



The Desert Laboratory has under 

 way various other studies in acclimat- 

 ization and the influence of physical 

 features on vegetation. Thus four sta- 

 tions have been chosen at elevations, 

 respectively, of 2,200, 2,700, 6,100 and 

 8,000 feet, and transplantations cause 

 marked structural changes in the 

 plants. Attention is given to the de- 

 termination of whether these changes 

 are transmitted and persist in locali- 

 ties other than the one in which they 

 originated. 



JOHN SAMUEL BUDGETT 

 It is becoming that honor should be 

 paid to those who sacrifice their lives 

 for science. One of the strongest props 

 of militarism is the instinctive respect 

 commanded by the soldier who is ready 

 to die for his countiy. It should be 

 widely known that in laboratories and 

 in the field men of science are quietly 

 at work with dangerous organisms, 

 with poisons and explosives, exposed to 

 disease, accepting risks for the ad- 

 vancement of science and the welfare 

 of man greater than those to which the 

 soldier is liable. 



A fitting tribute to one of this com- 

 pany of scientific martyrs has been 



paid in the publication of a volume in 

 memory of John Samuel Budgett, who 

 died from fever contracted in several 

 visits to the jungles of South America 

 and Africa. He had gone in search of 

 zoological material and especially to 

 study the development of Polypterus, 

 which is one of the two surviving 

 forms of the great group of fishes that 

 flourished in the Paleozoic and Meso- 

 zoic periods. 



The memorial volume, which is beau- 

 tifully printed by the Cambridge Uni- 

 versity Press, contains a biographical 

 sketch of Budgett by Professor A. E. 

 Shipley, a collection of his zoological 

 papers and several papers by Mr. Rich- 

 ard Assheton and others, consisting of 

 the completion of the work begun by 

 Budgett on the material that he had 

 collected. 



Budgett was born at Bristol in 1872. 

 Like nearly all those who have done 

 good work in natural history, he 

 showed early his interests and apti- 

 tudes. As is so often the case, his 

 father was keenly interested and nat- 

 uralists visited his house; he was ir- 

 regular in his school attendance and 

 did not do very well at examinations. 

 Before he completed his course at Cam- 

 bridge, he went with Mr. Graham Kerr 

 to the Gran Chaco of Paraguay in 

 search of Lepidosiren. The expedition 

 was brilliantly successful and brought 

 back a large supply of specimens of 

 tnis practically unknown lunglish, in- 

 cluding eggs and larva? in all stages of 

 development. Budgett's first paper 

 was an account of the batrachians of 

 the Paraguayan Chaco, published in 

 1898. 



After obtaining his degree, he took 

 up with dauntless courage the search 

 in Africa for Polypterus, about whose 

 habits and development nothing was 

 known, but whose primitive condition 

 might be expected to throw light on 

 the origin and relationship of fishes. 

 In search of these fishes Budgett 

 visited the Gambia, the Victoria Nile 

 and the Niger, undismayed by innu- 

 merable dilliculties including malaria 



