ccxli 



The interest created by the Archaeological work done by the committee 

 has resulted in the formation of an Archaeological Section of the Academy, 

 which organized on the ioth inst, and elected W. B. Potter, Chairman ; 

 F. F. Hilder, Secretary, and G. Hambach, Curator. 



Division of labor is most desirable where the laborers are many and the 

 field of labor is large. Where, as in our own case, however, the laborers 

 are few, there is strength in union, and I question the wisdom of the sepa- 

 rate section, because it withdraws just so much from the interest and value 

 of the meetings of the main body, and all the sectional work could be done 

 by a committee. The American Association formed an Archaeological 

 section in 1S75, but the experience of 1876 proved the course unwise. 

 There were not enough papers to maintain continued interest in the sec- 

 tion, and those interested in maintaining it were kept from attending the 

 general Section B. 



ZOOLOGY. 



Many of the most interesting contributions in this department have 

 been made through Hayden's Bulletins of the U. S. Geological and Geo- 

 graphical Survey of the Territories. Mr. J. A. Allen has continued his 

 interesting papers on the "Geographical Variation in Birds and Mam- 

 mals"; and indeed the various laborers in this field of Zoology have been 

 so active that I must forego all mention of work in the different depart- 

 ments, and confine my remarks to the work in my own specialty more 

 particularly. The study of the Arthropoda is less popular than that of 

 the higher animals, but not less important. The Insecta alone in species 

 outnumber all other animals, and a glance at the Zoological Record, pub- 

 lished in London, England, is sufficient to show that the devotees of Ento- 

 mology equal in number those of all other branches of Zoology, and that 

 the literature of the subject is proportionally great. 



Among the important contributions to Systematic Entomology, Le 

 Conte's long-looked for Rhyncofhora of America N. of Mexico holds high 

 rank, and is a most admirable and philosophical treatise of a difficult group 

 of beetles, which the author is led to believe are the oldest geologically, 

 and, consequently, the most synthetic of present Coleoptera. Packard's 

 Monograph of the Geomttrid Mvtks is a classical and admirable review of 

 an extensive family of moths Osten Sacken's Prodrome of the Tabani- 

 da? of the United States, and his papers on Syrphidae, are also noteworthy. 

 The Entomological Club of the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science was very largely attended, and certain much-needed rules for 

 guidance in nomenclature discussed and partly adopted. A vast number 

 of Hubnerian generic terms, ignored by almost unanimous consent for the 

 best part of a century, have of late years been adopted by some of our 

 lepidopterists, and made to usurp the place of those which had been long 

 accepted and were familiar. It has come to such a pass that a paper 

 by an author who adopts the innovations is unintelligible even to the spe- 

 cialist. Few but those who proposed the changes have adopted them, 

 and the large majority of working lepidopterists believe that there is not 

 sufficient reason for flooding the science with such a mass of new terms. 



