August 11, 1893. 



SCIENCE. 



75 



his, or its development, or its culture, before it invades 

 the race by the individual, that is, should create in the 

 organism such conditions, should produce such constitu- 

 tions, as would not allow of the existence of these micro- 

 scopical pestilences. That would be asepsis instead of 

 antisepsis. Here is what asepsis has to do. It stands at 

 the fountain head, its mission is to keep the spring of life 

 free from impurity. Let a commission, or whatever body 

 of scientific information and action, go to Russia, to the 

 original habitat of the typhus germ, oppose the devel- 

 opment of its colonies before they begin their trip around 

 the world. The first thing to do will probably be to im- 

 prove the condition of the Russian Jew. Prevent the 

 Hindoos from poisoning themselves with their holy water, 

 vfith which they drink the blessing of cholera. Enact laws . 

 to isolate the syphilitic and the tuberculous. Prohibit the 

 marriage of such. Let the eongenitally incurable die be- 

 fore puberty: it is better that the oif ending limb should 

 be lost than that tuberculosis, syphilis, leprosy, etc., 

 should spread through the whole body. Let the healthy, 

 the tamjoerate, the moral, alone have the inheritance. A 

 correct life is the most perfect asepsis, and insures an im- 

 munity with which the burnt infant's immunity, known as 

 such, cannot compare. 



THE "GOPHEE FROG.' 



frogs may be successfully angled for with a fishing line 

 and small hook baited with a grasshopper. 



In the fact that the burrows usually or always go down 

 to water, may be found an explanation of the frogs inhab- 

 iting them, and the facility of procuring insect food there- 

 in may be an additional inducement, as well as their be- 

 ing safe hiding places. Nothing seems to be known of 

 the habits of the other varieties of the species, of which 

 also but few specimens are known, Sana areolata areolata, 

 from Texas and Georgia, Bana areolata cajnto, from 

 Georgia, and Bana areolata circulom, the "Hoosier frog," 

 found in Indiana and Illinois. It is to be hoped that fur- 

 ther observations will be made upon this interesting 

 species, and additional sjpecimens collected. 



BY FREDERICK CLEVELAND TEST, U. S. NATION^VL MDSEUM, WASHING- 

 TON, D. C. 



Through the kindness of IVIr. H. G. Hubbard, of Crescent 

 City, Florida, I am enabled to make a note on the habits 

 of the "gopher frog," Rana areolata (jesopus, Cope. This 

 form seems to be so rare in collections that so far the 

 only specimen reported as having been identified with 

 this sub-species is the type in the National Museum, from 

 Micanopy, Florida, and described by Professor Cope in 

 ■ the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 

 for 1886. I have been unable to find any published men- 

 tion of its habits, which are peculiar. 



It appears to be almost entirely subterranean in its 

 habits, living in the holes and burrows of the "gopher" 

 turtle, Go^jherus pohjphenms, in conjunction with it, and 

 apparently on the best of terms. Roughly described, it is 

 grayish green, with thirty-five or forty ragged black spots 

 arranged in four or five irregular longitudinal rows on 

 the back, and grading off into smaller spots on the fianks, 

 while the legs are barred with about fifteen haK-rings of 

 black, from the thighs to the toes. Beneath it is white, 

 with the throat marbled with very dark brown. The body 

 is rather flat, with wide head and sharp-pointed snout, and 

 the two dorso-lateral ridges, together with indicated folds 

 between them, are greenish brown. The size is about 

 that of a small "leopard frog," Bana pipilufs, or the "swamp 

 frog," Bana paludris, to which last it is closely related, al- 

 though individuals are said to have been seen weighing 

 two or three pounds. But those must have been huge 

 toads, noticed by persons unable to distinguish between 

 them and the frogs, or too unobserving to make the dis- 

 tinction. Its food has not been ascertained, from dissec- 

 tion of the stomachs of freshly captured specimens, but 

 as these frogs are rarely seen away from the burrows, it 

 is probable that they feed on the insects living in the 

 burrows, for the holes jjossess a flourishing insect fauna, 

 to a great extent peculiar to them. 



On cloudy and rainy days the frogs sit at the mouths of 

 the burrows — as many as three have been found in a sin- 

 gle burrow — but on the approach of a human being dive 

 down out of sight, and as the holes are from 12 to 20 feet 

 in length, and 7 or 8 in vertical depth at the end, digging 

 the frogs out is no easy matter, especially as the sandy 

 soil has a tendency to cave in on the excavator. But the 



ALTITUDE AS THE CAUSE OF THE GLACIAL 

 PERIOD. 



■ BY WARBES TJPH.AM, S03IBRVILLE, MASS. 



Among the numerous difficult questions which are now 

 being investigated and discussed by glacialists, none 

 seems more important or worthy of attention than the 

 cause, or the causes and conditions, which j)roduced the 

 Glacial period, with its very excep)tional accumulation of 

 ice-sheets upon large continental areas in the north and 

 south temperate zones. Climatic conditions like those 

 to-day prevailing in Greenland and on the Antarctic conti- 

 nent, both now covered by ice-sheets whose central por- 

 tions are several thousands of feet thick, then x'l'evailed 

 in North America as far south as to Long Island, New 

 York, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Bismarck and Seattle, reach- 

 ing to a more southern latitude in the moist eastern half 

 of the United States than in its mostly arid western half. 

 Likewise Scandinavia, Great Britain south to London, 

 Germany south to Berlin, and the northwestern half of 

 Russia, were enveloped by ice. The glaciers of the Alps, 

 too, of other Eiu-opean and Asiatic mountain ranges, of 

 the Rocky Mountains, and of the mountains of New Zea- 

 land, were far more extensive than now; and in South 

 America a broad ice-sheet coveredPatagonia. 



Three chief theories have been proposed to account for 

 the great climatic changes made known to us by the ex- 

 tent of these areas of glacial drift. During the past 

 twenty years all glacialists have been greatly interested 

 in the astronomic theory of Dr. James Croll, so ably ad- 

 vocated by him in his volume, "Climate and Time," and 

 by Prof. James Geikie in "The Great Ice Age," attrib- 

 uting the ice accumulation to climatic conditions attend- 

 ant upon an epoch of maximum eccentricity of the earth's 

 orbit. American glacialists, like those of Great Britain 

 and contiuental Europe, were several years ago very gen- 

 erally inclined to think that this was a true and sufficient 

 explanation. At the present time, however, a majority of 

 the advanced students of this subject, at least in America, 

 doubt that this theory is applicable to the observed facts 

 of glaeiation. For, in accordance with Dr. Croll's view, 

 glacial periods should be recognizable with geologic fre- 

 cpieney through the earlier Tertiary and Mesozoic eras, 

 where", on the contrary, evidence of glacial conditions is 

 wholly absent or exceediugiy scanty, being wherever it is 

 known probably referable to Alpine rather than continen- 

 tal glaciers. Besides, it seems within the past ten years 

 to be fully ascertained that the time since the disappear- 

 ance of the ice-sheets of North America and Europe has 

 been only 6,000 to 10,000 years, whereas if they had de- 

 pended on the astronomic causes mentioned theii- dex^art- 

 ure must have occui-red some 80,000 years ago. 



A second theory, accounting for the Glacial period by 

 changes in the position of the earths poles, and conse- 

 quently iu the latitude of the countries glaciated, which 



