14 



8CIJENCE. 



[Vol. I., No. 1. 



coming of the Spaniards : and the idea that 

 it might have been native to both hemispheres 

 is discarded as altogetlier improbable. Upon 

 this showing, it would appear that the plant 

 should have been set down as of American, 

 rather than of wholly unknown, origin. In- 

 deed, when all the evidence is brought out, the 

 discovery of these beans in the Ancon tombs 

 need excite no more surprise than that of the 

 maize which accompanied them. 



For maize, beans, and pumpkins were cul- 

 tivated together, immemoriallj', all the way 

 from the Isthmus to Canada. And, although 

 some of the sorts of beans mentioned by 

 Oviedo in 1526, as raised in great abundance 

 in Nicaragua wliere they are native, and 

 also of those everj^where met with bj' De Soto 

 (1539-42) in his march from Tampa Bay in 

 Florida to the Mississippi, doubtless belonged 

 to Phaseolus luuatus, yet most if not all of 

 those which at the same earlj' period Jacques 

 Cartier found cultivated by the Indians of 

 Canada, must have belonged to Phaseolus 

 vulgaris, or its dwarf variety P. nanus ; for 

 only these are well adapted to the climate of 

 Canada especially the low and precocious 

 variety, which alone has time to mature 

 between the spring and the autumn frosts. 

 Indeed those same beans, derived from the 

 Indians along with maize and pumpkins, have 

 doubtless continued here in New England in 

 direct descent, to form that staple diet for 

 which the northern part of the coast of Mas- 

 sachusetts has long been famous ; so that 

 when Rufus Choate, defending a ship-captain 

 against a charge of ill-treatment in having 

 fed his crew exclusively upon it, rehearsed, 

 in his accustomed affluence of language, the 

 praises of ' ' that excellent esculent and super- 

 latively succulent vegetable, the bean," he 

 was celebrating the good qualities of a dis- 

 tinctivelj' and aboriginally American article of 

 food. 



We are not to suppose, however, that this 

 species had its home in North America, at 

 least north of Mexico. The same may be 

 said of our squashes and pumpkin, for which 

 similar reclamation ma3i' be attempted upon 

 another occasion. 



The cultivators of more than one depart- 

 ment of science have reason to thank our author 

 for having returned in mature age to the studies 

 of a third of a century ago, and to admire the 

 thoroughness, patience, sound judgment, afflu- 

 ence of knowledge, and felicity of exposition, 

 which characterize this, as indeed they do all 

 his writings. We are well pleased that the first 

 number of our new journal should introduce to 



the American public an important contribution 

 to science by De CandoUe. Asa G-ray. 



NATURAL HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



The geological and natural-history survey of Min- 

 nesota. The tenth annual report for the year 

 1881. N. H. Winohell, State geologist. St. 

 Paul: 1882. 25i p., 14 pi. 8vo. 



The principal part of this volume consists 

 in the Preliminary list of rocks and Tj^pical 

 thin sections of the rocks of the cupriferous 

 series in Minnesota, articles which appear to 

 be the result of the penurious way in which 

 Minnesota, in common with manj' other states, 

 deals with her geological survey, compelling the 

 state geologist to do work that ought to be done 

 only by competent skilled lithologists. The 

 results in this case, as elsewhere under similar 

 circumstances in our countrj^, are the same 

 as thej' would be with paleontology, were the 

 average state geologist compelled to work up 

 all the fossils of his survey. Good lithological 

 work requires something more than a micro- 

 scope, a few thin sections, and a fair knowl- 

 edge of minerals. 



The convenient summary of opinions which 

 have been held of certain rocks in the Lake- 

 Superior region given, on pp. 123-126 appears 

 to be a digest of the more elaborate state- 

 ments made in Dr. Wadsworth's notes on 

 the geologj' of this district (Bull. mus. comp. 

 zool., vii. No. 1) , with additions of a later date, 

 although no credit is given to that writer ; on 

 another page of Science, Mr. Selwj'n takes 

 exceptions to the views accredited to him, 

 though Mr. WincheU would seem at first sight 

 to be warranted in his statements from Mr. 

 Selwj'n's Canadian report of 1877-78, pp. 

 9 A, 14 A. The execution of the three maps 

 accompanj-ing the Minnesota report is to be 

 praised. 



In the zoological section of the report, Mr. 

 C. L. Herrick presents a second contribution 

 to a knowledge of the fresh-water Crustacea 

 of the state. In this, as in his first paper 

 (Seventh report, 1878), he limits himself 

 almost entirely to the microscopic Entomos- 

 traca. These two papers, with Birge's Notes 

 on Cladocera (of Cambridge, Mass., and Madi- 

 son, Wise), comprise about all the S3'stematic 

 work on these animals done in this country. 

 There is as .yet, then, no basis for a dis- 

 cussion of their geographical distribution. 

 According to Mr. Herrick, sixteen out of the 

 thirty-three species described are also Euro- 

 pean. Thirteen species are new, and two 

 new genera are established. Looking over 



