November 8, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



637 



in each separate series, and a title page, table 

 of contents, and complete index furnished 

 when the accumulated numbers warrant the 

 closing of a volume. 



It would be rash to anticipate a large sub- 

 scription list; it would be in the beginning at 

 least quite insignificant. But the stations are 

 under obligation (moral, if not legal) to 

 publish and publish properly what they do. 

 Publication is in fact the inspiration of the 

 investigator — the most precious part of his 

 reward. Whether station workers should re- 

 ceive copies of the published work in their 

 own lines free (and exchanges ivith scientific 

 journals inaugurated!) could be settled later, 

 but let us hope that the decision would not 

 be in the negative. 



Would this scheme of publication interfere 

 with the patronage of existing scientific jour- 

 nals? I can not for a moment think that 

 such would be the unfortunate case. On the 

 contrary, they are bound to gain with the 

 greater advance of scientific investigation in 

 this country. The work done by college pro- 

 fessors, students and independent investiga- 

 tors will not, under the circumstances, grow 

 less, but more — and they now furnish the 

 existing journals with the large proportion of 

 the copy. Even with the establishment of an 

 Adams Journal there would be, as now, some 

 things the station- workers would wish to pub- 

 lish, and could properly publish, in the exist- 

 ing periodicals. My own journal, so inti- 

 mately connected with one line of station 

 work, has been enriched heretofore by valuable 

 contributions on mycological taxonomy from 

 station workers, and I do not anticipate that 

 there will be any conflict or that loss of 

 patronage need be predicted. 



W. A. Kellerman 



Ohio State Univeesitt, 

 October 19, 1907 



A " CENSUS OF FOUR SQUARE FEET " 



To THE Editor of Science: The article by 

 Mr. W. L. McAtee in Science for October 4, 

 1907, " Census of Eour Square Eeet," is ex- 

 tremely interesting, but some of his deduc- 

 tions therefrom, as far as insect and arachnid 

 life are concerned, are wide of the mark. He 



concludes that insects are more abundant in 

 the meadows than in the woodlands. But he 

 has failed to take account of the trees and 

 their fauna in the woodland. In the meadow 

 the insect fauna is mostly concentrated on 

 or near the ground; in the woodlands, on the 

 contrary, the bulk of insect life is on the 

 trees. There are many families of insects 

 which rarely or never occur in meadows or on 

 the forest floor, but do occur abundantly in 

 trees. Eour square feet of some forest trees 

 would produce a great many specimens of in- 

 sects; for example, a tree infested by Scoly- 

 tids or with Coccidse. Four square feet of 

 foliage infested with Tingitids would have 

 hundreds of specimens; if infested with gall- 

 mites, would have millions of specimens. 

 Eour square feet of dog-wood blossom in the 

 spring, if shaken, would produce a thousand 

 minute Coleoptera. Eour square feet of tree 

 bark sometimes has hundreds of specimens of 

 Psocidffi. These are all groups of insects 

 practically unrepresented in meadows or on 

 the forest floor, and some of them are food 

 for birds. Even four square feet of forest 

 floor with a few decaying fungi would produce 

 hundreds of beetles and in some cases thou- 

 sands of mites. 



His figures for the meadow are not at all 

 large; there are many spots where the Thy- 

 sanura are much more numerous and where 

 the mites would swell the figures to many 

 thousands. 



Many samples of meadow taken at different 

 seasons would doubtless give an approximate 

 idea of the insect and arachnid fauna of 

 meadows; but no amount of samples of forest 

 floor can give an adequate idea of the sylvan 

 insect and arachnid fauna. Insects are more 

 easily discovered in meadows than in wood- 

 lands, but the two regions are so variable that 

 a comparison from selected spots has little 

 signiflcance. Nathan Banks 



THE OCCURRENCE OF HERDS IN YUCATAN 



In a recent paper by Mr. Thomas Barbour 

 and myself,' which reported upon a collection 



' Barbour, Thomas, and Leon J. Cole, " Verte- 

 brata from Yucatan: Reptilia, Amphibia and 



