Howard — Early Days of the Biological Society. 275 



journed. Did it settle the question? Or was the whole story 

 an invention of the humorously minded Lugger? 



At the meeting of April 30, 1887, the late Dr. J. H. Kidder 

 exhibited some specimens, among them a round ball the size of 

 one's fist and which was evidently composed of vegetable fibers 

 and fragments, and (I imagine maliciously) gave no information 

 about it except that it had been found on a shelf in the National 

 Museum. And then the members began to guess. The most 

 extraordinary theories were put forth. Van Deman, I remem- 

 ber, even thought that it might be one of the balls of hair from 

 the stomach of a horse. After all sorts of theories had been ad- 

 vanced, Doctor Kidder stated that it had been taken from the 

 shallow waters near the shore of one of the alkaline lakes of the 

 West and that it consisted of fragments of aquatic plants which 

 had been partially eaten by the larvae of the Ephydrid flies 

 which inhabit these lakes and that the balls had been formed by 

 wave action. I never knew whether he was right or not. 



At intervals almost periodic there has arisen a discussion as 

 to whether the flying fish flies. It may be of interest to know 

 that this question was first brought up at the meeting of May 

 14, 1887, and that hot discussion followed in which W. B. Bar- 

 rows, Admiral (then Engineer) Baird, Lucas, Goode, Hallock, 

 Dall and Riley took part. Of course every one knows now that 

 flying fish can't fly, just as every one now knows that flying fish 

 do fly, and that the difference between the "can't " and the " do " 

 depends entirely upon the definition of the verb to fly! 



The decade from 1880 to 1890 marks what will possibly be 

 known to history as the Gilbert and Sullivan era. Gilbertian 

 expressions were quoted everywhere, and the charming jingle 

 which began "The flowers that bloom in the spring tra la la have 

 nothing to do with the case" may have suggested to that pro- 

 found sociologist and eminent paleo-botanist, Lester F. Ward, 

 the title of a paper which he read February 8, 1890, "The Flow- 

 ers that Bloom in the Winter." In spite of the Gilbertian insig- 

 nificance of the flowers of spring, Professor Ward's comments 

 on the flowers that bloomed in the extraordinary winter of 1890 

 will be found of especial interest this year if the Washington 

 botanists took the trouble to list the plants that flowered during 

 the still more remarkable winter of 1918-19; but, as the botan- 



