Tue Microscope. pH is: 
is to be opened to students from all parts of the world, the results 
of ail investigations to be published by the department of public 
works. In addition to the salaries of the officers, two thousand 
dollars annually will be appropriated for its support. The site has 
not yet been fixed upon, and Cronica Oientifica justly complains of 
the inadequate provisions made for its establishment and support. 
Spain is almost the last of the chief civilized nations to found a 
zoological station.—Science. 
H. R. Boutt, gives the following directions for mounting bird 
parasites: My usual plan is to catch them alive, if possible, (with 
a needle dipped in turpentine), and immediately put them into a 
bottle of turps. When they have been soaked a few hours for the 
small ones and longer for the larger ones, lift them out with a tube, 
and deposit a drop of turps on the slide with two or three parasites 
in it. Arrange with a needle, and then, taking a small quantity of 
balsam on a needle, touch the slide near the objects, draw a thread 
of balsam across and around them, then put aside for the turps to 
evaporate. Afterwards a drop more balsam and a cover will settle 
that slide —Journal of Microscopy. 
For cocnting Waite Bioop Corpuscuss, M. J. Toison adop- 
ted the staining method, using the basic anilines, of which he found 
methyl-violet 5 B the most reliable. The formula given is :—Dis- 
tilled water, 160 c. cm.; soda sulphate, 8 grms.: methyl violet 5 B, 
0.025 grams. ‘The violet was dissolved in the glycerine, diluted 
with half the distilled water, the salts in the other half: the two 
mixed and filtered when cool. The staining fluid was mixed with 
the blood and then placed in a cell or moist chamber. The stain- 
ing action is well marked in from 5 to 10 minutes, and attains its 
maximum in 20 to 30 minutes. The white blood-corpuscles appear 
as small granular violet balls, which are easily distinguished from 
the greenish red corpuscles—Jr. Royal Mic. Soc. 
Pror. Forses publishes in the “ Bulletin of the Illinois State 
Laboratory of Natural History,” vol. ii., pp. 257-321, an account of 
the continuation of the interesting studies on the contageous dis- 
eases of insects, begun by him in 1883. In this account he des- 
eribes at length a highly distinctive disease of the English cabbage- 
worm, (Pieris rapae). This disease he believes to be caused by a 
spherical microscoccu, of which he gives two excellent micropho- 
