June 29, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



983 



SERilONS IN STOMACH STONES. 



MoLiERE presents to us in one of his come- 

 dies the father of a dumb girl who wants to 

 know why his daughter is dumb. ' Nothing 

 is more easy to explain,' says the pretended 

 physician Sganarelle; 'it comes from her 

 having lost the power of speech.' ' Yes, yes,' 

 objects the father, 'but the cause, if you 

 please, why she has lost the power of speech ? ' 

 Sganarelle is at no loss for an answer : ' All 

 our best authors will tell you that it is the 

 impeding action of the tongue.' 



Somewhat similarly, if one asks the defini- 

 tion of a ' stomach stone,' one is told that it 

 is a ' gastrolith ' ; ' and our best authors de- 

 clare sapiently that gastroliths are pebbles 

 that have been swallowed by fossil reptiles of 

 ' liihophagoiis proclivities." Predilection for 

 this hard fare is accounted for by ascribing 

 to the reptiles in question a bird-like gizzard; 

 and the upshot of the matter is that we find 

 evidence ' of additional important structural 

 analogies with the birds,' quod erat invenien- 

 dum, lluch the same method of reasoning 

 led the jovial Tom Hood, in his ' Geological 

 Excursion to Tilgate Forest, a.d. 2000,' to 

 affirm that Mylodon subsisted upon a diet of 

 ' raw potatoes and undressed salads.' 



We have no wish to impugn the worth of 

 stomach stones, nor of related bodies known 

 as uroliths and coprolites, as a fit subject for 

 scientific inquiry, and as a means of satisfy- 

 ing hunger and thirst after knowledge. All 

 are capable of large returns, as witness, for 

 example, the fecund results of M. Bertrand, 

 whose memoir' of 150 odd pages, illustrated 

 by fifteen plates, is at once edifying, delect- 

 able and digne; that is, fully conunensurate 

 with the materials. The argumentation em- 

 ployed is informed with severest logic, in 

 which undisciplined imagination has no place ; 

 and the author seeks to test, verify, or at least 

 fortify, his conclusions as far as possible by 

 the experimental method. An evident long- 

 ing to get at the bottom of things is shown in 



1 Science, Vol. XXIII., p. 820. 

 = md., Vol. XX., p. 565. 



' ' Les coprolithes de Bernissart.' MSm. Mus6e 

 Roy. d'Hist. Nat. Belg., T. I., 1903. 



the sections entitled by him ' Etude de la 

 pate f ecale,' and ' Resume de quelques ex- 

 periences sur la destruction de divers types 

 de crottins,' the latter including a notable 

 category. Our foreign colleague is conspicu- 

 ous for his firm grasp of the subject-matter, 

 and his ornate handling of it sets an example 

 which might well be emulated by his brethren 

 on this side of the water. But then, as Seneca 

 observes, speaking with all due respect: 

 'Galium in suo sierquilinio plurimum posse.' 

 C. E. Eastman. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES. 



THE FUTURE OP THE CRAYFISH INDUSTRY. 



Crayfish in the United States form so small 

 a part of the food supply that we are apt to 

 rank them with mussels and snails as eaten in 

 Europe only. But while France so highly 

 appreciates them as to carry on the business 

 of rearing them to increase the natural supply 

 coming from her own waters and those of 

 neighboring countries ; there is actually a grow- 

 ing consumption of crayfish as food in the 

 United States. In New York, New Orleans, 

 San Francisco, Chicago and other cities cray- 

 fish are sold both as food and as garnish, as 

 bait and as material for school and college 

 courses in zoology. 



While the actual status of the crayfish in- 

 dustry is diificult to determine, the following 

 facts show that if a complete census were 

 taken it would show the existence of a much 

 larger use of crayfish than is at all suspected. 

 One small region, the Potomac from Wash- 

 ington to Fort Washington, was recently esti- 

 mated by one of the most intelligent fishermen 

 on the Maryland side to send annually to New 

 York a half million of crayfish, while the U. S. 

 Fish Commission publications in 1884 asserted 

 that Montreal and Milwaukee also shipped 

 crayfish to New York. More recent reports 

 of the commission state that in 1902 the cray- 

 fish catch in New Orleans County, Louisiana, 

 was 16,000 pounds, of a value of $615, and of 

 Monroe County, Florida, 55,664 pounds, of a 

 value of $3,282. 



All the above crayfish and many more 

 caught for the markets of Chicago and other 



