CCXXXlll 



moist lowlands of the Mississippi Valley. Man cannot introduce 

 them faster than the winds and their own wings have done. 

 Former experience proved their inability to thrive in this climate. 

 Specimens hatched in Pennsylvania as well as in Nebraska did 

 not become acclimated. And if the species could sustain 

 itself here, it would j probably, in a few generations, become so 

 modified that it would lose its present injurious character. — The 

 subject had many sides. He had discussed it at length in his offi- 

 cial writings, and, as he had laid stress on the very fact that Dr. 

 Engelmann insists on, viz., that experience alone could guide, 

 there was little difference of opinion after all. The difference is 

 that, as against the contrary opinion, entomologists consider that 

 the experience in the matter of this locust question warrants the 

 conclusions they have drawn. 



Mr. Nipher called the attention of the Academy to an improve- 

 ment in electric lights. The pieces of carbon have heretofore 

 been placed end to end, attached to opposite poles of a battery, 

 and it had been necessary to keep the points of carbon together 

 by means of clumsy and expensive clock-work. Jabloschkoff had 

 improved upon this mode, however, by placing the carbon side 

 by side, with an insulating plate between them, and their ends 

 barely projecting over the end of the insulating plate, meltmg it 

 down as they burned away. This obviates the necessity for the 

 cumbrous clock-work which has always been necessary to keep 

 the two opposing points at the proper distance from each other. 

 He thought the electric light would soon come into general use 

 for lighting factories, railway depots, etc. 



Judge Holmes criticised Mr. Darwin, and some of his sup- 

 porters, for ignoring the cause of evolution, and confining their 

 attention to the laws accoxding to which the evolution takes 

 place. 



Mr. Riley thought that neither Mr. Darwin, nor many of 

 his supporters, denied the existence of the cause, but simply 

 declined to discuss this point for reasons which appear to them 

 sufficient. 



It was resolved to devote the second meeting in January to a 

 discussion of some plan for securing a permanent hall or build- 

 ing, where the library and cabinet of the Academy may find 

 proper accommodations. 



