48 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 184. 



both sea and fresh- water, also are being studied ; 

 Mr. F. Grant records the occurrence of various 

 species not hitherto observed. Considerable 

 attention is also paid by members of the Society 

 to the Iiivertebrata of various Classes, though 

 naturally the land and fresh-water Mollusca 

 and the Lepidoptera come in for the giant's 

 share. The geologists have paid attention to 

 the exposures during the making of the Marine 

 Drive, but not many fossils have yet been 

 found. 



We learn from the Experiment Station Record 

 that Congress has continued and increased the 

 appropriation for investigations in Alaska with 

 reference to the establishment of agricultural 

 experiment stations there. Professor C. C. 

 Georgeson, formerly professor of agriculture in 

 the Kansas Agricultural College, has been 

 assigned to this ofBee as special agent in charge 

 of the Alaska investigations. He will make his 

 headquarters at Sitka, and will institute experi- 

 ments with cereals, vegetables and other crops 

 at a number of places in that vicinity. He will 

 also visit Kadiak Island, Cook Inlet and other 

 points north of Sitka, with reference to the se- 

 lection of land for experimental purposes and 

 the institution of experiments with the coopera- 

 tion of residents of Alaska interested in the 

 development of its agriculture. Questions re- 

 lating to the temperature, moisture and drain- 

 age of the soil, the curing and storage of forage 

 plants, and the shelter and care of animals will 

 receive early attention. The Weather Bureau 

 will also establish a special climatological ser- 

 vice in Alaska during the present season. A 

 meteorological station will be located at Sitka 

 and instruments will be furnished to voluntary 

 observers in different parts of Alaska. In this 

 way observations will be regularly made, which 

 it is hoped will be of much service in the solu- 

 tion of agricultural problems, as well as of great 

 importance to other interests in Alaska. 



LuMMEE AND Brodhtjn, the extreme accur- 

 acy of whose work in photometric investiga- 

 tions is well known, have studied Talbot's Law 

 by methods so exact that the mean error of ob- 

 servation is at most i fc , and find that the 

 departures from the law fall well within that 

 limit. They have before been found to fall 



within the limit of error, but when that limit 

 was three to eight per cent, the law could not 

 well be considered to be absolutely confirmed. 

 The present confirmation holds only for sectors 

 from twenty-five to ninety degrees in breadth ; 

 when the sectors are very narrow, diffraction 

 from the edges has to be taken account of. 

 As rotating sectors present the best method for 

 securing a measurable change of brightness 

 upon the photometric screen (it is easily com- 

 bined with any apparatus, can be introduced 

 anywhere in the course of the light rays, does 

 not change the character of the light, so that it 

 is not necessary to attend to conditions of 

 polarization, and diminishes all light rays 

 equally and in accordance with a simple law), 

 the authors have devised a very exact appa- 

 ratus by which the size of the sectors can be con- 

 tinuously varied during rotation ; this has been 

 in use for some time, and is found to work 

 well. 



Me. Newstead, Curator of Chester Museum, 

 England, who has made an exhaustive study of 

 the San Jose scale pest, has been lecturing on 

 the subject before the Zoological Section of the 

 Chester Society of Natural Science. Accord- 

 ing to the London Times Mr. Newstead, who has 

 had an interview with Mr. Long, Minister of Ag- 

 riculture, and his advisers at the Board, said he 

 had suggested that the government should en- 

 gage a staff of trained workers to detect sus- 

 picious imports of fruit and submit them for ex- 

 pert examination. The origin of the American 

 fruit pest scare was due to the action of Ger- 

 many in March of the present year. That 

 country had passed a law protecting itself from 

 the importation of infested fruit. The oyster 

 scale which infested some fruit trees resembled 

 the San Jose so closely that it was impossible to 

 distinguish one from the other except by 

 microscopical examination. If a tree was in- 

 fested by the insects a sort of scurfy material 

 would come away, which was really their wax- 

 like scales. The actual size of the insect was a 

 millimeter in length, which meant that it would 

 not cover the head of an ordinary pin. Mr. 

 Newstead explained the life-history of the in- 

 sect, showing that after two days of activity in 

 the larval stage it became an inert fixed mass, 

 living in the same place for the rest of its life 



