68 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 576. 



manufacturing. It goes witliout saying that 

 in so small a compass these subjects can not 

 be treated in detail. The book aims to answer 

 the question as to what determinations are 

 usually made in the examination of technical 

 materials. To the average student it would 

 be of little value, owing to the briefness of 

 its descriptions, but the chemist of some 

 training will find it excellent in pointing the 

 way to the proper procedures in technical 

 analysis. Charles William Poulk. 



A Handbook of the Trees of California. By 

 Alice Eastwood, Curator of the Depart- 

 ment of Botany, California Academy of 

 Sciences. San Francisco. 1905. (Occa- 

 sional Papers of the California Academy 

 of Sciences, IX.) Pp. 80. Plates 52. 

 This is a popular manual of the native trees 

 of California. The author's style is simple 

 and clear. There is no waste of words and 

 the descriptions of the species are in plain 

 English, omitting as far as possible the use 

 of latinized words so highly favored by some 

 systematists. An interesting and most useful 

 departure is the introduction of two artificial 

 keys, one based upon leaf forms, the other on 

 fruit forms. However, the prime excellence 

 of the work depends upon the illustrations. 

 Some of the illustrations are from the draw- 

 ings of Dr. A. Kellogg, one of the founders 

 of the California Academy of Sciences. The 

 half-tone work is excellent. The trees of 

 Washington and Oregon are included, as it 

 was found that there were only a few not rep- 

 resented in California. 



The trees of California are world-known 

 and botanists everywhere will welcome this 

 work. Albert Schneider. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OP WASHINGTON. 



The 406th regular meeting of the Biological 

 Society was held in the Assembly Plall of the 

 Cosmos Club, November 25, 1905, with Presi- 

 dent Knowlton in the chair and 69 persons 

 present. 



The first paper of the evening was by Dr. L. 

 O. Howard, presenting ' More Notes on the 

 Yellow Fever Mosquito.' He said that the 



next morning after presenting the former 

 communication on the same subject before the 

 society, he left Washington for New Orleans 

 and Texas. At that time (October 28) the 

 Texas quarantine against New Orleans had 

 not been relieved, so that he was obliged to go 

 to Texas first by way of St. Louis. He re- 

 turned to New Orleans from Texas on No- 

 vember 6 and spent some days in the city 

 studying the conditions that prevailed at that 

 time and talking with the men who had charge 

 of the victorious fight against the yellow 

 fever, then just concluded. He gave a num- 

 ber of observations made by Doctor White, 

 Doctor Richardson, Doctor Blue and other 

 surgeons in the Public Health and Marine- 

 Hospital Service who had been stationed in 

 New Orleans during the summer, relative to 

 the out-of-the-way breeding places in which 

 the yellow fever mosquito had been found, 

 and spoke especially of the new culicide dis- 

 covered during the summer and which seems 

 to be especially effective against mosquitoes, 

 without having the deleterious properties of 

 sulphur dioxid. Lantern slides were exhibited 

 showing New Orleans breeding places, meth- 

 ods of fumigating houses, and the general 

 characteristics of the portions of the city in 

 which the epidemic had been severest. He 

 also showed a few slides illustrating sanitary 

 conditions at Panama. 



In discussion of this paper. Dr. 0. W. Stiles 

 said that it is most interesting that our knowl- 

 edge of the disease 'includes the facts of its 

 transmission, but of its cause. The disease is 

 handled by methods of prevention. The 

 period of infection necessary to inoculation 

 is known. The female mosquito must trans- 

 mit the disease to man. In comparison, the ■ 

 best known ticks transmit disease to their 

 progeny, then through them to the human 

 patient. A recent German paper makes the 

 assertion that malaria is transmissible to the 

 offspring of the mosquito. A Paris paper 

 makes the same statement of Btegomyia. This 

 is doubted in this country. There are numerr 

 ous men working on the identity of the yellow 

 fever parasite. Many known Arthropoda are 

 necessary for the transmission' of certain dis- 

 eases. Cholera may be transmitted by flies. 



