CURRENT NOTES. 97 



men sitting round a table. There must be sub-committees and super- 

 committees, joint committees and special committees. How also 

 shall we control genius, encourage mediocrity, and secure " team- 

 work ? " How better can science present a respectable front to 

 Governments or offer responsible hands for grants-in-aid ? A detached 

 individual is an unstable creature ; he may die, neglect to report, get 

 off the lines, or make discoveries of a very upsetting kind. A 

 committee is safe ; its existence secures continuity and is a guarantee 

 against the precipitate production of uncomfortable truths. But the 

 Professor fears that the chief product of organization is organizers, 

 and that in elaborating our machinery we forget its purpose. 

 Fortunately, however, mankind is wiser than any of its generations 

 and has a knack of creeping out of the hard shells it continues to 

 secrete. "Organization" is the fad of to-day, and will be as 

 ephemeral as its predecessors. " Culture " was one of these. But 

 " culture " died, and its corrupt body became decadence when, ceasing 

 to be a mental attitude, it became an intonation and a set of opinions. 

 Progress was another ; but that has hardly recovered from the shock 

 of the war, which gave us good reason to distrust some aspects of 

 modern civilization. Now even popular preachers find it safe to mock 

 at " progress." The truth is that a conception seldom becomes 

 crystallized in a phrase until it has outgrown its most fertilizing 

 activity. Ideas have their cycle of life ; they are born of the great, 

 named by the dull, and killed by common usage." — H.D. 



We quote again. American of course. " One of the noblest 

 decisions on record, so far as bald-headed men are concerned, has 

 been handed down by the Supreme Court of Maine. It is notorious 

 that a bald head has a peculiar attraction for the common house-fly* 

 He prefers to roost there or promenade there to any other place in the 

 neighbourhood. Now the high court has declared the bald-headed 

 persons are entitled to protection. A hotel-keeper sued because the 

 defendant, who had contracted for accommodations for a certain 

 period, left the hotel before the time had elapsed. The defendant 

 said he was pestered by flies, which were particularly numerous in the 

 dining-room. The august court held that the fly is a nuisance and its 

 disease-carrying characteristics are well known. A patron of a hotel 

 was warranted in leaving the establishment, regardless of a contract 

 for a longer stay, if the dining-room was infested with the pests. An 

 innkeeper, it declared, agreed by implication to furnish accommoda- 

 tions compatible with the prices paid, the standing of the hostelry and 

 the class of persons invited to become patrons. ' Accommodations/ 

 the judges asserted, included apartments, dining service and sanitary 

 conditions, and if the hotel-keeper failed to maintain these in inviting 

 and wholesome manner the patron was warranted in seeking quarters 

 elsewhere, regardless of an engagement to remain for any specified 

 time." 



In the Can. Ent. for December there is a plate of figures with 

 descriptions of six new species and forms of Macro-lepidoptera from 

 British Columbia. There is also the first portion of an important 

 article on the Nervous System of a Lepidoptercn with two plates of 

 details. 



The January number of the Irish Nat. contains a few notes on th 



