January 8, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



65 



We have to define efficiency by " work out 

 divided by work in." The teacher has also 

 replaced the dictionary. 



Our school work in what is called, from 

 custom, reading seems to consist in reciting 

 some " pieces," very ultra-modem, calling for 

 Bome acting and a little thought. Later the 

 pupils are required to learn what some critic 

 has said about the great works, with perhaps 

 extracts from the professor's doctorate thesis. 

 It is then certain that the pupil will not read 

 any of the books which he has heard called 

 classics. 



A teacher found that his pupils could not 

 get what was in the book. They said : " Why 

 do the books not present the matter as you 

 do ? " He wrote the book ; he reported that 

 the reviewers said that it was about as dry a 

 book as they had ever seen. 



John N. James 

 Indiana, Pa. 



the cotton worm moth 

 I WAS interested in Professor Fernald's note 

 on the cotton worm moth in your issue of 

 November 27. Professor Pernald reports that 

 few of these moths were taken in Massachu- 

 setts in 1912. Now in 1912 we had a great 

 flight of them here, the only invasion on a 

 large scale that I have heard of in this locality. 

 They were here by the tens of thousands, 

 literally covering the ground for a space of 

 100 square feet or so under some of the street 

 lights. 



The moths arrived on the night of October 

 10; the night watchman in the village told 

 me they came in all at once at about 3 a.m. 

 and flew for a time in such swarms round the 

 electric lights " that you couldn't see the lights 

 for the moths." They were reported in large 

 numbers in at least one other village near 

 here; and my father who was then living in 

 London, Ontario, wrote me that there had 

 been an invasion there which arrived two or 

 three days earlier than ours here, but which 

 must have been on the same large scale as to 

 numbers. 



It would be interesting to know whether 



these were parts of the same front, or separate 

 swarms moving independently. 



In 1913 I saw none here, but during the 

 past autumn there were a few specimens, 

 though I have no record of the date of their 

 appearance. A. P. Saunders 



Clinton, N. T. 



meteorological observations in germany 



A LETTER dated Berlin, JSTovember 30, 1914, 

 from Professor Dr. Gustav Hellmann, director 

 of the Eoyal Prussian Meteorological Insti- 

 tute in Berlin, advises us that the usual reg- 

 ular observations are being maintained with- 

 out interruption throughout the German Em- 

 pire. So far as the internal weather forecasts 

 for Germany are dependent upon cable reports 

 from foreign countries they are made with 

 difficulty ; all such reports are at present inter- 

 rupted, even those from Iceland, since the 

 latter come over a Danish cable that lands at 

 Aberdeen where they are suppressed and are 

 not permitted to reach even Copenhagen. The 

 regular, though belated arrival of the Meteoro- 

 logische Zeitschrift, together with other scien- 

 tific publications show that the German scien- 

 tific world is far from suspending its existence 

 during its present struggle. 



0. Abbe, Jr. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



An Account of the Mammals and Birds of the 

 Lower Colorado Valley, with Especial Refer- 

 ence to the Distributional Problems Pre- 

 sented. By Joseph Grinnell. University 

 of California Publications in Zoology, Vol. 

 12, No. 4, pp. 51-294, Pis. 3-13, 9 text 

 figures, March 20, 1914. 

 The report before us gives the results of an 

 expedition undertaken in the spring of 1910 

 by the California Museum of Vertebrate 

 Zoology. Since the founding of this mu- 

 seum by Miss Annie M. Alexander, in 

 1908, Grinnell and his staff have spent much 

 of their time in the field, accumulating 

 extensive series of specimens, representing the 

 fauna of California and adjacent states, and 



