Vose.] 360 [January 3, 



change of featliers occurs, and generally breeding is stopped until 

 spring. The common street pigeon, however, being more hardy, 

 often raises six or seven broods in the year. The young are generally, 

 but not always, male and female. 



Tlie diseases to which the domesticated varieties of pigeons are 

 subject are not man}'. The only serious one is almost unknown to 

 the street pigeon. It is a species of catarrh, brought on by one of 

 three causes : cold and damp, high feeding, or "in and in breeding," 

 the most fatal mistake pigeon breeders are guilty of. The disease 

 runs like wild-fire through the collection. Young and old are alike 

 attacked and perish almost inevitably. On one occasion, five years 

 ago, in ten days' time, I lost over forty specimens out of a collection of 

 one hundred. The street pigeon, picking up a precarious subsistence, 

 and shifting always for himself, is never attacked with this scourge. 



Mr. George L. Vose, of Paris, Me., read a communication 

 on the flattened and distorted pebbles in the conglomerate, 

 occurring near Rangely, in Maine. 



He reviewed the different theories, accounting for their form and 

 exhibited drawings and tracings taken from the stones themselves. 

 He endeavored to show that the changes had taken place while the 

 pebbles were hard and not necessarily, as urged by Dr. Hitchcock 

 and son, while in a plastic condition. This was best shown by a trac- 

 ing in which one pebble had been bent over another and exlubited 

 lines of fracture converging toward the pbint of resistance with an 

 aljrupt depression of the central portion of the overlying pebble. 



Mr. Tlieodore Lyman gave an account of the progress 

 recently made in New England in raising edible fisli. 



Mr. Seth Green had discovered that the eggs of shad needed to 

 be constantly washed by fresh water to insure hatching. Mr. Green 

 had invented a box Avhich would secure this condition when floated 

 in a ri\(.r. The box should be placed at such an angle that the 

 water Ijubljling up through perforations in the bottom would keep the 

 eggs within in constant motion. In this way a much larger propor- 

 tion of fish could be brought to maturity than if the eggs and young 

 fish were left a prey to all their natural enemies ; at least ninety per 

 cent, could be hatched by the artificial process, for in one experiment 

 only three out of ten thousand were lost. The differences between the 

 embyro of "the shad and salmon were pointed out. In salmon the eggs 

 need a temperature of from 45° to 55° and are hatched in from sixty- 

 five to one hundretl and twenty days, and then the yolk sac remains 



