188 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 554. 



and wet the straw. Some of these ponds, of 

 very early date, perhaps Neolithic, are still in 

 working order. 



PILOT CHARTS OF NORTH ATLANTIC AND NORTH 

 PACIFIC OCEANS. 



There is much of interest to teachers of 

 physiography and of meteorology on the 

 monthly pilot charts of the Atlantic and 

 Pacific Oceans issued by our Hydrographic 

 Office. So far from containing only informa- 

 tion for the use of mariners, there is a large 

 amount of material which may easily be em- 

 ployed in school and college teaching. For 

 example, the conditions of prevailing winds 

 and calms ; the limits of the trades ; the inter- 

 action of general and local winds near the 

 coasts of continents and islands; the distribu- 

 tion of fogs and many other subjects of direct 

 meteorological interest are discussed, as well 

 as charted, on these publications. 



SUICIDE AND THE WEATHER. 



M. Denis has recently published, a study 

 entitled ' Le Suicide et la Correlation des 

 Phenomenes moraux en Belgique ' {Mem. 

 Acad. roy. Belg.), in which the relation of 

 suicide and the weather is considered. At 

 Brussels the number of suicides increases up 

 to July and August, and the minimum is 

 usually in December {Ciel et Terre, Vol. 26, 

 1905, No. 6). E. DeC. Ward. 



RECENT VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY. 



Parties are now in the field from the Car- 

 negie Museum, the Field Columbian Museum 

 and the American Museum of Natural His- 

 tory. From the last institution three parties 

 have been sent out, one to continue the work 

 of excavation in the ' Bone Cabin ' Quarry in 

 search especially for additional skulls of dino- 

 saurs ; the second to the Bridger Eocene basin, 

 in order to verify the stratigraphic explora- 

 tion which has been done there and to complete 

 our knowledge of certain little known forms; 

 the third to the Laramie or Upper Cretaceoxis 

 of northern Montana in search of dinosaurs. 

 In the absence of Professor Bashford Dean in 

 Japan, his assistant, Mr. Hussakof, is explor- 

 ing several of the type localities of Devonian 

 fishes. 



Much activity is also being displayed in the 

 arrangement of the collections in the various 

 museums. Mr. J. W. Gidley, who resigned 

 his position in the American Museum for an 

 appointment as preparator in the National 

 Museum, is completely overhauling and cata- 

 loguing the rich National Museum collection. 

 In the Carnegie Museura the specimens are 

 temporarily withdrawn from exhibition pend- 

 ing the completion of the new building. In 

 the American Museum of Natural History 

 the skeleton of the little Bridger armadillo 

 Metacheiromys has just been placed on exhibi- 

 tion, while the skeletons of the Pampean horse 

 Hippidium, of the Jurassic carnivorous dino- 

 saur Allosaurus and of the Pleistocene mam- 

 moth Elephas columbi, are being prepared for 

 mounting. Mr. Richardson, who prepared 

 such an admirable model of Stegosaurus for 

 the National Museum exhibit at the St. Louis 

 exposition, is now preparing for a life-size 

 reproduction of Allosaurus after a m.odel by 

 Knight from the skeleton in the American 

 Museum of Natural History, 



The principal researches in this museum at 

 the present time are the following: Dr, 0, P, 

 Hay is monographing the Testudinata on a 

 grant from the Carnegie Institution. Dr. E, 

 C. Case is writing a memoir upon the Permian 

 Pelycosauria, especially the great fin-backed 

 lizards Naosaurus and Dimetrodon, fine speci- 

 mens of which are preserved in the Cope col- 

 lection in this museum; the drawings for this 

 memoir are being made from a grant from the 

 Carnegie Institution, Dr, W, D. Matthew 

 has been revising the Bridger fauna, especially 

 the Carnivora and Insectivora, Mr. Barnum 

 Brown has completed a description of an im- 

 portant Pleistocene cave fauna of Arkansas. 

 Volume II. of ' The Fossil Vertebrates in the 

 American Museum of Natural History ' has 

 recently been issued, including forty-four col- 

 lected bulletins, from 1898 to 1903, by Osborn, 

 Wortman, Matthew, Hay, Granger, Gidley, 

 Loomis, Brown, Lull, Gregory. 



The status of the U, S, Geological Survey 

 monographs at present is as follows : The 

 monograph on the Ceratopsia by the late Mr. 

 J, B, Hatcher will be published first. The 



