560 
ants. During the last few years a number of 
species have become extinct, and other species 
are fast disappearing. Most of us, unfortu- 
nately, have never had the pleasure of seeing 
many of these birds, and I agree with Hudson 
as to the cause—the direct action of man, the 
greedy collector mainly, whose methods are 
as discreditable as his action is injurious. No 
one wishes to preserve birds which are really 
harmful, if such there be; but all birds which 
are merely curious and rare should be strictly 
preserved by the legislature. There must be 
a remedy for this state of things. In pointing 
out that the Wild Birds Protection Acts should 
be made general in terms, I beg to suggest that, 
if all birds cannot be protected, the right prin- 
ciple is to enumerate just those species which 
are to be outside the pale of protection, not 
those which are to be within it.”’ 
In Argentina, Cyprus and many other 
countries the locust is a formidable crop pest. 
A successful series of experiments carried out 
in Natal, a report of which has been published 
in that colony as a government notice, and is 
abstracted in the London Times, will prove of 
interest in many parts of the world. All at- 
tempts to suppress the locust scourge in Natal 
have proved only partially successful, with the 
exception of the plan of poisoning with arsenic, 
which, it is asserted, has met with absolute and 
unqualified success. The mixture used is pre- 
pared by heating four gallons of water to boil- 
ing point and then adding 1 pound of caustic 
soda. As soon as this is dissolved, 1 pound of 
arsenic is added, after which the liquid is well 
stirred and boiled for a few minutes, care being 
taken that the fumes are not inhaled. Being 
poisonous the mixture is kept under lock and 
key, but when required for use half a gallon of 
it is added to four gallons of hot or cold water, 
with brown sugar or treacle. Maize stalks, 
grass, etc., dipped in the mixture are placed 
along the roads and in the fields, and the ma- 
terial can also be splashed with a whitewash 
brush upon anything which the locusts are 
known to have a liking for. Attracted by the 
odor of the sugar or treacle over a distance of 
as much as 100 yards, the locusts will eat of the 
mixture and die. Arsenic is quite effective in 
destroying flying locusts, but as they come and 
SCIENCE. 
(N.S. Vou. VI. No. 145. 
go very suddenly, it is difficult to have the 
poison in readiness at the critical moment, and 
hence the most deadly blow can be dealt at the 
pest when it is in the hopper stage. 
A MESSAGE to all interested in promoting the 
education of the deaf in Europe has been sent 
from the officers and directors of the Columbia 
Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, at Washing- 
ton, signed by William McKinley, Edward M. 
Gallaudet and others. In the opening para- 
graphs it is stated that the oldest school for the 
deaf in the United States was established in 
1817, eighty years ago. In 1857 there were 
nineteen schools, the buildings and grounds of 
which had cost $1,371,736, the annual support 
of which involved an expenditure of $285,416, 
and in which 1,771 pupils were being educated. 
At the present time there are eighty-nine 
schools, with 11,054 pupils under instruction 
during 1896. Thirty-four of these schools are 
in private hands, or are day-schools connected 
with the common-school system of some city or 
town. No statistics are available as to the cost 
of buildings and current expenses of these. For 
the fifty-five public institutions more than $11,- 
000,000 have been expended on buildings and 
grounds,and nearly $2,000,000 are appropriated, 
annually, for current expenses. In every State 
of the Union public provision is made for the 
education of the deaf, thirty-nine States having 
schools of their own, and the six States without 
them providing for the education of their deaf 
children in the schools of the neighboring 
States. 
Iv is safe to predict that the forests of Alaska 
will be of greater value to the world than its 
gold. Garden and Forest devotes the leading 
article of the last issue to the subject, saying : 
“Trees cannot be cut lawfully in Alaska for 
timber or fuel, for there is no law which permits 
the sale of stumpage or timber-lands, and no 
law relating in any way to the forests but the 
one which forbids all shipment of wood from 
the Territory. There are afew sawmills in 
Alaska, however, and the number will soon be 
increased, and a large quantity of firewood is 
consumed at the salmon canneries and quartz 
mines, but the government gets nothing for it, 
and is powerless to preyent damage to the 
