64 



b'CIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLVII. No. 1203 



Park and collected material for a report to be 

 issued in cooperation with the National Park 

 Service. In the Northwest preliminary work 

 on a biological survey of Washington was 

 begun by W. P. Taylor and in the southwest 

 E. A. Goldman collected in northern Arizona 

 south of the Grand Canyon. 



THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE NEW YORK 

 ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



The New York Zoological Society held its 

 annual meeting on the evening of January 8 

 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. When Pro- 

 fessor Henry Fairfield Osbom, president of the 

 society, called the meeting to order, there were 

 more than a thousand members and their 

 friends present. 



In his annual report Madison Grant, chair- 

 man of the executive committee, said that the 

 attendance at the New York Zoological Park 

 and at the aquarium showed a substantial in- 

 crease over 1916. The attendance at the park 

 during 1917 was 1,898,414, and that of the 

 aquarium 1,595,118, making a total attendance 

 of 3,493,532. The cost per visit was about 

 7 cents for these two institutions during the 

 past year. The number of exhibits at the 

 park is about the same as last year, although 

 there has been a slight increase in the nimiber 

 of species. There are over 4,000 animals at 

 the park at the present time. The collection 

 at the aquarimn shows a slight increase over 

 last year, and there are now more than 6,000 

 living specimens on exhibitions. 



In his report. Dr. Charles H. Tovrasend, di- 

 rector of the aquarium, said that present con- 

 ditions were almost intolerable because sea 

 water invaded the engine-room and passed 

 throughout the basement of the entire building 

 through the pipe galleries. The result was that 

 the building was unsanitary. Application 

 would be made to the city. Dr. Townsend said, 

 for an appropriation of $100,000 to remove 

 the boilers and engines to the front of the 

 building beyond the reach of sea water. One 

 of the advantages of this alteration, he pointed 

 out, would be increased exhibition space and 

 more room for office work. 



Dr. William T. Hornaday, director of the 

 Zoological Park, after making his report, called 



attention to the need of Congress ratifying the 

 arrangement between the United States and 

 Canada for the protection of migratory birds. 

 Dr. Hornaday said that Canada had already 

 accepted the proposal and diligently and force- 

 fully carried it into effect, despite the distrac- 

 tion of her participation in a great war. The 

 arrangement, he said, had been held up in the 

 Foreign Relations Committee of the House of 

 Eepresentatives, and he urged that action be 

 taken at once. He declared that our food 

 supply depended to a large extent on the en- 

 actment of this bill, as the migratory birds 

 feed on crop-destroying insects. A resolution 

 which he offered urging the President and 

 Congress to take immediate action was imani- 

 mously adopted by the meeting. Two series 

 of pictures, one a motion picture taken in the 

 Marine Biological Laboratory at Naples, Italy, 

 by Dr. Edward Bosio, and the other a series of 

 natural-color pictures taken by Mrs. Eoy C. 

 Andrews in the Chinese province of Yunnan, 

 were shovrn for the first time. Pictures taken 

 by Donald B. MacMillan on the recent Crocker 

 Land Expedition sent out by the American 

 Museum of Natural History and the American 

 Geographical Society were also shown, as well 

 as motion pictures taken in the New York 

 Zoological Park by Eaymond L. Ditmars. 



WARTIME SERVICE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 

 CALIFORNIA 



According to the report presented by Presi- 

 dent Benjamin Ide Wheeler to the regents of 

 the University of California at their De- 

 cember meeting, nearly three thousand stu- 

 dents, alumni, former students and members 

 of the faculty of the University of California 

 are now in military or naval service. The 

 University of California has organized and has 

 been conducting since May 21 a school of mili- 

 tary aeronautics, in which some five hundred 

 flying cadets are now being trained in an eight- 

 weeks course. A new contingent is admitted 

 each week. The university is now teaching 

 forty-five men in a school of navigation, con- 

 ducted in conjunction with the U. S. Shipping 

 Board, for the training of officers for the 

 merchant marine. For the third time, a six- 

 weeks' course is about to be begun for the 



