FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



287 



'Kxperimcnt Station, our trees and 

 shrubs in their winter garb furnish ex- 

 cellent lessons for the profitable employ- 

 ment of pupils during many weeks at 

 that season in true botanical study. 

 " Let each member of a class be provided 

 with a branch, a foot or two long, from 

 a sugar maple, and then spend some 

 ten to twenty minutes or more quietly 

 looking at the buds and the bark, with 

 its sears and specks, and then tell what 

 he has discovered, venturing to explain 

 the object or meaning of some of the 

 things he has seen. In a similar man- 

 ner let each look over a branch of 

 beech and then point out the difference 

 between the two kinds." Opening buds 

 of trees may be obtained at any time 

 during the winter by placing the lower 

 end of the stem in water for a week or 

 two while in the schoolroom. 



EiviND AsTRUP, in his book With 

 Peary near the Pole, gives admiring pic- 

 tures of the natural innocence of the 

 uneontaminated Eskimos of northern 

 Greenland, where are communities in 

 which " money is unknown, and love of 

 one's neighbor is a fundamental rule of 

 action; where theft is not practiced." 

 All things are held in common, and 

 falsehoods are told only to spare the 

 feelings of the listener. Among the in- 

 stances of the native kindliness of these 

 people is one where a dog had eaten up 

 a reindeer coat, yet was only remon- 

 strated with by its owner. When the 

 author suggested that a hungry dog 

 should be punished for stealing a piece 

 of blubber, the owner said that it was 

 himself who deserved the thrashing for 

 not having obtained sufficient food for 

 the dog. 



TnE operations of the Illinois State 

 Laboratory of Natural History during 

 1897 and 1898 Avere almost wholly con- 

 nected with the work of the State En- 

 tomologist or with that of the Biologi- 

 cal Station. The former work related 

 to various insects injurious to crops. 

 The operations of the Biological Station 

 were carried on with more reference to 

 completing a formal report upon the 

 fishes of Illinois. The work is conducted 

 with a view to the acquisition of cor- 

 rect ideas of the relative abundance 

 and local distribution of species, their 

 haunts, habits, regular migrations," and 

 irregular movements, their building 



times and places, rate of growth, food, 

 diseases, and enemies — and, in short, 

 the whole economy of each kind repre- 

 sented at the station and of the whole 

 assemblage taken together as a commu- 

 nity group. Extensive studies of aquat- 

 ic entomology were made, and a paper 

 on ephemerids and dragon flics is near- 

 ly ready for the press. No part of the 

 work of the station, however, attracts 

 more attention among scientific men, or 

 is likely to lead to more interesting and 

 important results, than the plankton 

 work, or the systematic study of the 

 minute forms of plant and animal life 

 suspended in the water. Water analy- 

 ses have been extensively made in con- 

 nection with these studies, which, com- 

 bined with the continuous biological 

 work, will, when generalized, furnish a 

 substantial and authoritative body of 

 knowledge of the conditions of the wa- 

 ters of the middle Illinois previous to 

 the opening of the Chicago drainage 

 canal, useful for comparison with the 

 results of similar studies made after 

 that event. A summer school was con- 

 ducted, with fifteen pupils, in 1898, and 

 publications were issued. 



NOTES. 



The Pasteur monument was dedi- 

 cated at Lille, France, the city in which 

 the subject of the memorial performed 

 his earlier more important researches, 

 April 9th. The ceremony was witnessed 

 by a large assembly, which included 

 many eminent scientific men of France 

 and foreign countries, among whom 

 men engaged in similar researches to 

 Pasteur's were especially represented. 

 The monument, the fruit of a public 

 subscription, represents Pasteur stand- 

 ing on the summit of a column of Soi- 

 gnies stone, holding in his right hand an 

 experimental flask. At the foot of the 

 column a woman presents her child, 

 which ha,s been bitten by a mad dog, for 

 treatment. To the left is a group rep- 

 resenting inoculation — a woman, pei-- 

 sonifying science, injecting serum into 

 a child she holds on her knees. Three 

 bas-reliefs represent respectively Dr. 

 Roux inoculating a sheep for anthrax, 

 Pasteur studying fermentation, and the 

 first antirabic inoculation of the young 

 Joseph Meister, who is held by his 

 mother, wearing the broad-flapped Al- 

 satian bonnet. The statue is in light 

 bronze, and with the gilded bas-reliefs 

 harmonizes well with the gray of the 



