436 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VIII., No. 197 



Listen to a pri^ who says he has worked himself 

 into a naturahst by means of the plan advocated in 

 most of the late books on botany and zoology. 

 "How did you become so great a naturalist?" — 

 " Why, you see, when I was about twelve years old, 

 I received a free ticket to a lecture on natural history 



by Professor , and, as it was free, I of course 



went, and there I heard how a beginner should start. 

 At this time I did not know the name of any animal. 

 I properly despised those who did. I did not know a 

 cat from a dog. When bitten, I simply cried, and 

 ran home. I did not ask, I did not care whether it 

 was a mosquito, a bumblebee, or a rattlesnake that 

 bit me. or by which end I was bitten. I went home 

 from the lecture, and purchased a compound micro- 

 scope, a dissecting microscope, a set of dissecting in- 

 struments, a set of injecting instruments, a micro- 

 tome, and forty bottles of hardening, staining, and 

 mounting fluids. On account of the discounts, I was 

 able to purchase them for two hundred dollars. Then 

 I went and gathered some Protomonas, amoebae, and 

 other protozoans, and from these I worked out the 

 whole problem of life. I was very careful to take 

 but little notice of the external organs, since great 

 harm always arises from looking at outside parts. 

 The proper way is always to begin with the insides. 

 After this good and proper beginning, I soon became 

 a great naturalist." This is all nonsense. No 

 naturalist ever began in this way. As well try to 

 make a child learn all about the letters and syllables 

 which form a word — its root, derivation, and his- 

 tory, and all its prefixes and suffixes — before allow- 

 ing him to use it, as to try the same plan in zoology. 

 Prof. L. Agassiz said that all the great naturalists he 

 ever knew, both in Europe and America, began their 

 work by making and naming collections. The critic 

 will say again ' that science had changed within the 

 last eventful quarter-century.' Some things cannot 

 be reversed, and this is one of them. Those who have 

 recently had so much to say about teaching beginners 

 are the ones who never have beginners to teach : 

 they are university professors, with plenty of time 

 at their command, scores of microscopes to work 

 with, and, as students, only those who elect to take 

 the subject because they have passed through all the 

 necessary preliminary stages. A Teacher. 



For what purpose mosquitoes were created. 



Your mention of Dr. Finlay's view that yellow- 

 fever may be propagated by mosquito bites reminds 

 me of the following : In 1839, during a yellow-fever 

 epidemic in Augusta, Ga., no case originated at Sum- 

 merville, a neighboring suburb among the sand hills. 

 There were then no mosquitoes at Summerville, 

 which was approached by a rather circuitous route 

 from Augusta. Some years after, a straight, broad 

 road was built through swamps directly to the sand 

 hills ; cisterns were also built, and mosquitoes ap- 

 peared and became an intolerable pest. During the 

 yellow-fever epidemic of 1854 a number of cases 

 originated at the sand hills, now abounding with 

 mosquitoes. Mosquitoes often invade sections where 

 they were previously unknown and make permanent 

 settlement. Mr. Mimms of Aiken, S.C., told me that 

 the first mosquito seen in that town came from the 

 cars on the South Carolina railroad. They are 

 abundant there now. Dr. I. P. Garrin satisfied the 

 medical faculty and authorities of Augusta that the 

 yellow-fever m 1839 reached the town in freight cars 



on this railroad. Dr. Roe, late of Alabama, in- 

 formed me that once when quarantined for yellow- 

 fever near Staten Island he collected a dozen or more 

 varieties of mosquitoes from the holds of as many 

 vessels there in quarantine from yellow-fever ports. 

 They had evidently taken passage from the infected 

 ports. I do not remember a locality subject to ma- 

 larial fever that is not infested with mosquitoes. 



Harry Hammond. 

 Beech Island. S.C, Nov. 3. 



A long skull. 



I was much struck with the very long and narrow 

 proportions of a skull in the collection of W. W. 

 Adams of Mapleton, N. Y., and which was exhumed 

 with others in Cayuga county. I had not time to 

 make a thorough examination of it, but Mr. Adams 

 has kindly sent me a photograph, and also an outline. 



The photograph shows what to him was the most in- 

 teresting feature, a circular hole, of a little over a 

 quarter of an inch in diameter, in the anterior sec- 

 tion, which he supposed to be made by a bullet, and 

 which was doubtless the cause of death, from its 

 general character. The proportions interested me 

 more, and these the photograph does not clearly 

 show. Impressed by the elongated character of the 

 cranium, I sent to Mr. Adams for accurate measure- 

 ments, and he gives the length as eight inches, and 

 the width four and a half. The narrowest skull 

 mentioned in Dr. Morton's ' Crania Americana ' is 

 that of a Cayuga chief, in which the longitudinal 

 diameter was 7.8, and the parietal 5.1 ; the cephalic 

 index being 65.4. In this Cayuga skull the cephalic 

 index would be 5.625, if the measurements are exact, 

 as I suppose they are. 



I announced some time ago my discovery of the 

 barb of a horn fish-hook, which supplemented the fig- 

 ure I furnished for Dr. Rau's 'Prehistoric fishing.' 

 It gives me pleasure to say that Mr. J. L. Twining of 

 Copenhagen, N. Y., has another of these rare 

 articles, found near Watertown. It closely resem- 

 bles Mr. Ledyard's specimen, but is more compressed. 



W. M. Beauchamp. 

 Baldwinsville, N.Y. 



