P OP ULAR MIS CELL ANY. 



S^S 



orous Mammals. By Elliott Coues. Pp.22. Bul- 

 letin of the United States Entomological Com- 

 mission. No. 2. Pp.14. Washington: Govern- 

 ment Printing-office. 



The Plants of Wisconsin. By G. D. Swezey. 

 Beloit: I'ree jh'ess print. 



POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



Scientific Associations for 1877. The 

 French Association for the Advancement of 

 Science will this year hold its sessions in 

 August, at the city of Havre, under the 

 presidency of Dr. Broca, the eminent ar- 

 chaeologist. The Geological Society of Nor- 

 mandy will give an exhibition of the geo- 

 logical and paleontological products of that 

 ancient province. 



The annual meeting of the British Asso- 

 ciation will be held at Plymouth, on Au- 

 gust 15th ; Prof. Allen Thomson, President. 

 The officers of the Association hope to be 

 supported by the personal assistance and 

 written contributions of philosophers of 

 other countries, and they undertake to make 

 preparation for the reception of the distant 

 friends and associates who may give notice of 

 their intention to be present at the meeting. 



The officers of the American Associa- 

 tion for the next meeting, which is to be 

 held at Nashville, Tennessee, commencing 

 on Wednesday, August 29th, are Prof. Si- 

 mon Newcomb, President; Prof. Edward 

 C. Pickering, Vice-President of the Physical 

 Section ; Prof. 0. C. Marsh, Vice-President 

 Section of Geology and Natural History ; 

 Prof. N. T. Lupton, chairman of the Chemi- 

 cal Subsection ; Prof Daniel Wilson, chair- 

 man of the Subsection of Anthropology ; 

 R. H. Ward, chairman of the Subsection of 

 Microscopy; A. R. Grote, General Secre- 

 tary ; F. W. Putnam, Permanent Secretary ; 

 William S. Vaux, Treasurer. 



Sliad in the Oliio River. Mr. Spencer 

 F. Baird, of the United States Fish Commis- 

 sion, in a letter to the editor of Forest and 

 Stream, states that he has received a few 

 specimens of a genuine white shad, four 

 pounds in weight, taken from the Ohio River 

 at Louisville, Kentucky a direct result 

 from the efforts made by the commission to 

 stock the western rivers with shad. The 

 letter gives a brief account of the work 

 done by the commission toward introducing 



the shad into the waters of the Western 

 States, beginning with 1872, when Seth 

 Green planted 30,000 young shad in the 

 Alleghany at Salamanca, New York, and 

 25,000 in the Mississippi near St. Paul. 

 Later in the same year, the Rev. Mr. Clift 

 placed 200,000 in the Alleghany at Sala- 

 manca, and a small number in the Cuya- 

 hoga and in the White River at Indian- 

 apolis. The same gentleman carried 2,000 

 young shad as far west as the Platte, at 

 Denver. In 1863 about 160,000 shad were 

 placed in the Greenbriar and New Rivers 

 in West Virginia, and about 55,000 in the 

 Monongahela in Pennsylvania and the Wa- 

 bash in Indiana. Mr. Baird has been in- 

 formed that for some considerable time 

 forty to fifty shad have been taken daily at 

 Louisville by a drag seine said not to ex- 

 ceed thirty or forty yards long, and that in 

 the shoaler water of only three or four feet, 

 while the regular steamboat-channel is ten 

 or twelve yards deep and 250 yards wide. 



A Remarkable Salt-Bed at Godericb, On- 

 tario. Dr. T. Sterry Hunt gave, at the late 

 meeting of the Institute of Mining Engi- 

 neers, an account of the layers of rock-salt 

 in the geological strata of Goderich, Onta- 

 rio, as developed by a boring recently made. 

 The paper has been published in the Engi- 

 neering and Mining Journal, from which we 

 quote some particulars regarding two of the 

 most important rock-salt beds reached in 

 the course of the boring. A bed of rock- 

 salt of exceptional purity was found at the 

 depth of 1,060 feet, and another bed, not 

 so pure, at the depth of 1,092 feet. Of 

 these, the former is 25 feet thick and the 

 latter 34 feet ; they are separated from each 

 other by a layer of less than seven feet of 

 rock, and for practical purposes may be 

 regarded as one. The amount of foreign 

 matter contained in the twenty-five-foot 

 bed is singularly small, being less than a 

 quarter of one per cent. Its remarkable 

 purity is seen on comparing this with 

 the best commercial salts. Thus, Cheshire 

 rock-salt contains of foreign matter 2.67 

 per cent., and the famous rock-salt of Car- 

 dona, Spain, 1.45 per cent, of impurities. 



The salts got by evaporation from sea- 

 water and from brines, with which our mar- 

 kets are in great part supplied, contain nearly 



