1889.] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 185 



finger-nail to raise a slide. Then the drawers are complete, strong, 

 and firm, and very easily and cheaply made. Cut a shoulder on each 

 side of the drawer, make a plain box of walnut with each side grooved 

 to fit the shoulder of the drawer, and a cabinet is made which will take 

 less than half the time or expense to make of any other, and when done 

 the slides are firmly held, each in its own compartment, and available 

 for inspection or removal, and no danger of removing the cover-glass 

 or label by hasty removal or the motion incident to carrying. 



Publications of the Agricultural Experiment Stations. 



By Prof. C. H. FERNALD, 



AMHERST, MASS. 



Your editorial on " Agricultural Experiment Stations," in the May 

 number, is so sensible and timely that I write to express my apprecia- 

 tion of it. My own work in entomology has hitherto been of a tech- 

 nical character, and has been read only by the scientific entomologists, 

 who have given me my due share of praise, but what I publish in the 

 bulletins of the experiment station here, I am convinced, must be what 

 the farmer can read and profit by. There will of course be many 

 scientific facts discovered of too technical a character for the class of 

 people for whom these stations were established. Shall we publish 

 these technical things in the bulletins, and thus oblige the farmers to 

 hunt through what to them would be chaff to find a few kernels of 

 wheat? For my own part I incline to the impression that we ought to 

 prepare the bulletins for the class they were designed for, and send our 

 purely scientific discoveries to the appropriate scientific journals. 



If, however, any of this scientific work can be of profit to the farm- 

 ers when popularized, this should be done, and the popular papers given 

 to the farmers through the bulletin, while the technical paper should go 

 to the scientific journal. 



The demand upon me thus far from the farmers in this State is mainly 

 for information about insects so common and well known that it almost 

 seems superfluous to write about them, yet this is the information they 

 demand and most need just at present. The fact is, these stations to 

 do the greatest good must be public educators, and I have no doubt but 

 that many of the bulletins will, in answer to this demand, present much 

 elementary work for some time to come. 



Report upon the Postal Club Boxes — VIII. 



By QUEEN MAB. 

 Box bb. The fascinations of truth surpass the interest of fiction, and 

 objects, which, in the ordinary mind, excite only disgust, to the trained 

 perceptions and keener vision of the microscopist, become invested 

 with exceeding beauty. The life-history of even the lowest forms of 

 life is more marvelous than any fairy tale. Popularly speaking nothing 

 can be more unattractive than the tape-worm, yet in the last instalment 

 of Cole Studies received, it is shown to be an object of great interest. 

 Tcenia mediocannellata is one of the commonest tape-worms that in- 

 fest the human intestines, and its form is that of a many-jointed flat 



