November 23, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



807 



with the orders Verticellatse, Piperales, Sali- 

 cales and Juglandes and their allies. 



The Journal of the Boston Society of Medical 

 Sciences for October begins with a discussion of 

 'The Antitoxin Unit in Diphtheria,' by Theo- 

 bald Smith, detailing various experiments made, 

 and concluding that at present we cannot do 

 better than to utilize the standard provided by 

 Ehrlich which is described in the paper. John 

 Lovett Morse has an abstract of a paper on 

 * The Serum Reaction in Foetal and Infantile 

 Typhoid,' and Albert P. Matthews describes 

 ' Artificially produced Mitotic Division in Un- 

 fertilized Arbacia Eggs,' caused by lack of 

 oxygen, heat and the action of alcohol, chloro- 

 form and ether. Martin H. Fischer has a pre- 

 liminary communication on ' The Toxic Effects 

 of Formaldehyde and Formalin,' and William 

 Sydney Thayer has some ' Observations on the 

 Blood in Typhoid Fever,' being an analysis of 

 the examinations of the blood in typhoid fever 

 made in the Johns Hopkins Hospital during 

 eleven years. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES- 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



The 327th regular meeting was held on Sat- 

 urday evening, November 8d. 



Under the head of ' Notes ' F. A. Lucas de- 

 scribed a specimen of the buffalo-fish, recently 

 received by the U. S. National Museum, which 

 had no mouth, the bones of the jaws having 

 failed to develop. The fish must have fed by 

 means of the gill openings and had attained a 

 weight of more than a pound when caught. 

 W. H. Dall called attention to the discovery, 

 by Mr. T. Wayland Vaughan, of a fossil coral 

 reef in Decatur Co. , Georgia. This reef, which 

 was of Oligocene age, resembled the fossil reefs 

 in the Island of Antigua and was noteworthy 

 from the large number of species represented, 

 the reefs of the Tertiary beds usually being 

 poor in the number of species of corals. 



Under the title, 'Insects affecting Cotton,' 

 L. O. Howard, following the 'symposium on 

 cotton,' which occupied the last meeting of the 

 Society, made some observations on the princi- 

 pal insect enemies of the plant. He presented 

 accounts of Aletia xylina, Heliothis armiger, Dys- 

 dercus suturellus, and Anthonomus grandis, noting 



various outbreaks of these pests and describing 

 their habits, transformations and the remedies 

 employed. 



Henry James spoke of ' Recent Progress in 

 Forestry,' saying that the great obstacles to 

 improvement in the management of forests in 

 America were first, from the point of view of a 

 forester, the new trees and conditions which 

 have made the application of European methods 

 in this country impossible, and, second, the al- 

 most total lack of examples of successful forest 

 management. 



During the last two years, however, this con- 

 dition of things has greatly improved. The 

 offer of the Division of Forestry, through the 

 Department of Agriculture, to examine forest 

 tracts and prepare ' working plans ' for their 

 management free of charge, has been taken ad- 

 vantage of on every side ; and it has thus been 

 made possible for the division to give object 

 lessons in forest management in many parts of 

 the countrj^ and to gain knowledge and ex- 

 perience in a most practical way. In New 

 York, for instance, a working plan is now being 

 prepared for a part of the State Forest Pre- 

 serve in the Adirondacks. On the Pacific 

 coast the day of conservative lumbering is 

 being brought nearer by investigations of the 

 habits of growth and reproduction of some 

 important lumber trees. These are making it 

 clear among other things that the Red Fir and 

 the Redwood reproduce more easily and will 

 grow to a merchantable size much sooner than 

 has hitherto been supposed. Similar observa- 

 tions are being made in other parts of the 

 country, and interest in forestry is everywhere 

 spreading rapidly. This is partly because peo- 

 ple are realizing the importance of ample forest 

 resources and a steady supply of water, partly 

 because foresters can more often get down to 

 terms which appeal to practical landowners. 

 It means that soon many States will be follow- 

 ing the example of Indiana, Pennsylvania and 

 one or two others in taking hold in earnest of 

 such important problems as those relating to 

 protection from fire and reform in forest taxa- 

 tion. Forestry is appearing daily as something 

 practical and desirable to more and more own- 

 ers of forest land and voters generally who 

 shape legislation. 



