1897] MICROSCOPICAL JOUIi:tirAL. 259 



a Closterium, a desmid, and more wonderful still a 

 Dictyodia fibula, with endochrome in it. This is removed 

 from the Diatoms and placed among the Rhizopoda. 



Now what can become of these when they pass down 

 to the sea ? They may be dissolved, for they are read- 

 ily soluble in fresh water and presumably in salt-water 

 although they may not be as soluble. Or they may 

 change. The Surirella striatulaand Coscinodiscus excen- 

 tricus may live as salt- water forms, for they have been 

 seen so and the others die. The spot where I collected 

 them was where the fresh -water flowed into the brackish, 

 and Newark, which is only three miles further south, and 

 where salt water is very brackish, and New York bay, 

 which is nine miles further off is salt. So that we have 

 a quick change from fresh to salt water and they can be 

 watched. 



EDITORIAL. 



Small Attendance at the A. M. S.— We have just read 

 in an exchang-e the query which the writer seems unable 

 or unwilling to answer : "Why is it that the membership 

 of the society and attendance at its meetings are so small?" 

 The reasons are quite apparent but one hates to state 

 them. The truth, if it must be told, is that a little group 

 of of&cers and candidates for office run the meetings for 

 certain very narrow, or for personal ends. There is never 

 exhibited a broad spiritof philanthropy, never a sufficiently 

 deliberate purpose to interest new recruits in microscopy, 

 never sufficient means to enable then to learn the business, 

 never reports from local societies, never steps to found 

 additional local societies, never grants of money for phil- 

 anthropic investigation with the instrument, never prac- 

 tical application of microscopy to hygiene, to health, to 

 happiness of the masses. 



A few specialists, a few college professors, a few doctors, 

 get together to do what is of personal interest to themselves, 

 to read accounts of what they have occupied themselves 



