proceedings: biological society 27 



stock in the District of Columbia, and it was shown that such stock 

 was divided naturally into (1) commercial material, including plants 

 and plant products received by florists, department stores, and pri- 

 vate individuals; and (2) Departmental material, including plants and 

 plant products introduced by the various offices of the Department of 

 Agriculture, more particularly the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant In- 

 troduction. Some time was devoted to discussing the new method of 

 disinfecting cotton, and lantern slides were shown exhibiting the plants 

 which are now operating in Boston, Mass., Brooklyn, N. Y., Newark, 

 N. J., and Oakland, Cal. 



H. S. Barber: An outline of the glow-worms of the American family 

 Phongodidae. 



The 560th meeting of the Biological Society of Washington was 

 held in the Assembly Hall of the Cosmos Club, Saturday, November 

 16, 1916; called to order by President Hay at 8 p.m. with 86 persons 

 in attendance. 



On recommendation of the Council, Irwin Hoffmann was elected 

 to active membership. 



Under the heading, Brief Notes and Exhibition of Specimens, Dr. 

 O. P. Hay exhibited one of the cervical vertebrae of a deer from a 

 deposit in Florida. He called attention to the fact that the remains 

 of Florida deer have usually been referred to the existing species, 

 Odocoileus osceola. A comparison of this vertebra with the correspond- 

 ing one from recent deer, other than the Florida deer, showed that 

 possibly the extinct Florida deer was a different species from the ex- 

 isting deer. Dr. Hay said that there were no examples of cervical 

 vertebrae of Florida deer for making comparisons, and that until such 

 examples were seen the identification of the extinct deer must remain 

 doubtful. 



Under the same heading Dr. Paul Bartsch called attention to a 

 hybrid duck which he had lately seen exposed for sale in the markets. 

 It was a cross between the black mallard and the domestic duck. 



The regular program consisted of two papers: 



H. Pittier: Forests of Panama (Illustrated by lantern slides). 

 Professor Pittier gave first a condensed review of the results to the 

 present date of the botanical part of the biological survey of Panama, 

 undertaken under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. Then 

 he showed how the distribution of the main ecological types of vege- 

 tation is dependent upon the regime of the winds and of the rainfall. 

 Mixed dicotylous forests cover at least six-tenths of the area of the 

 Isthmus, the rest being occupied by savannas and park-like formations. 

 Rain-forests with evergreen foliage extend over the entire northern 

 watershed and part of Darien on the south side. Other forests of the 

 southern slope belong to the type called monsoon-forest and are char- 

 acterized by the presence of many species with deciduous foliage. 

 The xerophytic character of the vegetation is more marked in the 

 broken forests of the savanna belt, without however assuming an 



