February 28, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



359 



The Minnesota Seaside Station party of 

 1902 plans to leave Minneapolis on July 12, 

 at the close of the meeting of the National 

 Educational Association. It will proceed via 

 the Canadian Pacific Railway to Vancouver, 

 thence by steamer to Victoria and finally to 

 Port Renfrew by coasting vessel. The party 

 will return to Minneapolis about September 1, 

 giving a month or more by the sea and ample 

 time for stops in the Rockies and Selkirks, 

 arrangements for which have been made with 

 the railway. The following staS is expected to 

 organize the work of instruction and, as far as 

 necessary, research, during the term of station 

 activity: Professor Conway MacMillan, M.A., 

 director-in-chief and lecturer on algology 

 (PhEeophycese) ; Professor Raymond Osburn, 

 M.S., professor of zoology; Professor K. 

 Tendo (Rigakushi), professor of algology 

 (Rhodopliycese) ; Miss Josephine E. Tilden, 

 M.S., professor of algology (Chlorophycese 

 and Cyanophycese) . 



The annual report of Will. C. Ferrill, 

 curator. State Historical and Natural History 

 Society, Denver, Colorado, shows the following 

 record for the past year. The additions to the 

 library and historical collections were 1,159, 

 and to the scientific collections, 3,425 speci- 

 mens, making a total for the year of 4,584. 

 This Society, which is both historical and scien- 

 tific in its scope, now occupies fourteen rooms 

 in the state house, and its museum was visited 

 during the past year by 156,148 people. A val- 

 uable addition to the museum during the year 

 was the Horace G. Smith Arapahoe County 

 collection of about 650 birds, obtained in the 

 vicinity of Denver. These, together with Colo- 

 rado specimens obtained by Curator Ferril in 

 field work, added to an older collection, now 

 give the department of ornithology about 2,500 

 specimens of Colorado birds. 



It should have been stated in the issue of 

 Science for Eebruary 14, page 269, that the 

 original journals of Lewis and Clark will be 

 published under the auspices of the American 

 Philosophical Society. 



A WRITEE in the New York Sun states that 

 the strange giant cactus, Gereus giganteus, is 

 being exterminated by irrigation, and that 



many years will not elapse before extinction 

 has taken place. This is probably an extreme 

 view of the case, for there must be niany lo- 

 calities, comprising vast areas of land, where 

 irrigation will not only not be attempted, but 

 be impossible, and here the weird-looking 

 plant may hold its own. The species attains 

 a height of sixty feet and, contrary to popular 

 belief, is short lived. Moisture is fatal to it 

 and as soon as it receives a constant supply 

 rapid decay sets in and destroys the plant. 



After being cut off from communication 

 with the outside world for two and a half years 

 in hitherto unexplored parts of mid-Asia, Dr. 

 Sven Hedin, the Swedish explorer, reached 

 India towards the close of December. In an 

 outline of his expedition the London Times 

 says that reaching Andijan by the Trans- 

 caspian Railway in the middle of 1899, he 

 traveled to Kashgar on horseback, and from 

 thence sailed down the river Tarim, or Tar- 

 kunddarja, to Lob Nor, in the heart of Eastern, 

 or Chinese, Turkestan. Making this place on 

 the shores of the lake of the same name his 

 headquarters, he took excursions of varying 

 length through the Gobi Desert and over the 

 great range of the Shian Shan mountains. 

 Out of the 6,000 miles thus traveled only some 

 500 miles were along the tracks of earlier wan- 

 derers, all the rest having been unexplored. 

 He discovered a series of ruined cities of Chi- 

 nese and Mongolian origin, about 800 years 

 old, and found in them some extraordinary 

 sculptures and some ancient manuscripts of an 

 extremely rare description. These cities would, 

 he said, throw an altogether new light on ques- 

 tions affecting the distribution of the various 

 human races and the migratory movements of 

 Asiatic peoples. He went through the whole 

 of the northern and central parts and a portion 

 of Eastern Tibet, and through the great Gobi 

 Desert in Western China. His last and most 

 prolonged journey was right across Tibet, first 

 from north to south and then from south to 

 west. He proposed to publish three 'rather 

 ponderous tomes of a scientific nature,' but he 

 would first compile a large book for popular 

 reading giving a description of his travels. 

 He had taken over 4,000 photographs and 

 numerous sketches. In scientific results this 



