698 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. No. 25. 



ment of £4,334 to the common university 

 fund, a heading which practically did not 

 exist in 1883 ; while during these ten j-ears 

 contributions to the salaries of the profes- 

 soriate have increased from £12,840 to 

 £15,034. It seems pretty clear that the re- 

 sults of agricultural depression have fallen 

 almost solely upon the fellows, and upon 

 some of them hardly." 



Professor Bunsen celebrated his eighty- 

 fifth birthday on March 31st. 



At the last meeting of the Geological 

 Society, Prof. Judd drew attention to an 

 interesting series of photographs sent for 

 exhibition by Prof. Liversidge, of Sydney, 

 who has found that sections of gold nug- 

 gets, when etched with chlorine-water, ex- 

 hibit lines like the "Widman-Stetten figures 

 of meteorites, showing that the gold has a 

 crystalline structure, octahedi-al and cubic 

 forms being displayed. — The Academy. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 

 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



At the meeting held May 18th Dr. Mer- 

 riam spoke of the Mammals of the Pribilof 

 Islands in Bering Sea. Excluding Ceta- 

 ceans, eight mammals are known from the 

 Islands. Four of these are land mammals 

 and four amphibious or marine, as follows : 

 One, Arctic fox; two, brown lemming; three, 

 shrew; four, house mouse; five, harbor seal; 

 six, fur seal; seven, sea-lion; eight, walrus. 

 To these the sea-otter might be added, 

 though it is not a resident and visits the 

 islands very rarely. The house mouse was 

 introduced by the Eussians and has run 

 wild. The fox also is said to have been in- 

 troduced. The shrew has been found on 

 St. Paul only; the lemming on St. George 

 only. 



A paper entitled ' The Hares (genus 

 Lepus) of the Mexican Border ' was read by 

 Dr. Edgar A. Mearns, who stated that it 

 was written in the course of preparation of 



a report on the collections made bj' the 

 biological section of the recent re-survey of 

 the Mexican boundary line, of which expe- 

 dition Dr. Mearns was the surgeon and 

 naturalist from Januarj^, 1892, to Septem- 

 ber, 1894, with one intermission of a few 

 months. The doctor's field experience in 

 that general region covers in all a period 

 of seven years. The specimens of Lepus ac- 

 cumulated during that time amount to 288, 

 representing 15 species and subspecies, to 

 which material were added the collections 

 of the United States National Museum and 

 a portion of those of the American Museum 

 of Natural History in New York, making a 

 total of about 400 specimens examined. 

 The species of the Mexican border were 

 shown to represent three sections of the 

 genus Lepus, which might with advantage 

 be recognized as subgenera. These were 

 Hydrolagtjs Gray (Water Hares, repre- 

 sented by a single species, Lepus aquaiicus 

 Bachman); Sylvilagus Gray (comprising 

 (1) the Cottontails, 3 species and 3 addi- 

 tional subspecies, and (2) the Cactus Hare, 

 Lepus cinerascens Allen); and Macrotolagus 

 (a new subgenus created for the Mexican 

 group of Jackrabbits, of which 6 species and 

 3 additional subspecies were found on the 

 Mexican border). In all, 17 forms were 

 recognized as occurring on the strip of the 

 United States which borders on Mexico, of 

 which number seven were treated as sub- 

 species and the remainder as species, of 

 which latter there are eleven, Lepus sylvat- 

 icus being represented by (3) subspecies. 

 Two species and four subspecies were de- 

 scribed as new. Of these, Holzner's Cot- 

 tontail inhabits wooded mountains from 

 New Mexico and Arizona southward, and 

 the Lesser Desert Cottontail the region from 

 the upper Rio Grande of Texas westward 

 to the continental divide. The black-naped 

 Jackrabbit of the Lower Rio Grande was 

 named in honor of Dr. C. Hai't Merriam ; 

 and another species of Jackrabbit fi-om the 



