January 17, 1890.J 



SCIENCE. 



41 



inonly done — freshers with " little-go " on the brain, are reported 

 to get in four or five before retiring for the night, but they gener- 

 ally learn in a term or two that it does not pay. Nine P.M. is the 

 orthodox hour for knocking. off work,,and for the more elaborate 

 forms of social intercourse, club meetings, occasional dances, small 

 debates, and so forth — above all, for the regulation formal tea- 

 party. There are certain points about this entertainment peculiar 

 to college life, if not to Girton, says the Women's ]Vorld, notably 

 the fact that the guests bring, not their own mugs merely, but a 

 whole trayful of refreshments. The college custom is to send to 

 all the rooms a tray, with a roll and butter, and the materials for 

 whatever beverage — tea, coffee, cocoa, or plain milk — is preferred 

 by each student, and this custom greatly facilitates the discharge 

 of the social duty. For it is understood that when a student gives 

 a nine-o'clock tea-party all the guests Jake their own trays, the 

 hostess providing only the hot water, and such luxuries as cake and 

 jam. Thus, at 9 P.iM., in all the corridors, is presented the striking 

 spectacle of students hurrying in all directions — sharp corners are 

 very dangerous at this time — to their respective entertainments, 

 balancing trays in one hand, and in the other, unless they are such 

 old hands as to know the college blindfold and avoid all pitfalls of 

 boots, water-cans, and unexpected angles, carrying candles in case 

 the festivities should outlast the college lights. It is at these 

 parties that new students are first initiated into college society, 

 and so strong is the instinct of hospitality that the " freshman " 

 must be of a remarkably gregarious disposition who does not find 

 tea-parties, which she experiences in their most formal tedious as- 

 pect, grow decidedly monotonous after a few weeks. 



— The high price of gum acacia has led Trojanowsky to seek 

 for a substitute, says an exchange, and this he believes may be 

 found in the mucilage of flaxseed. By boiling the seed with water 

 and precipitating the strained decoction with twice its volume of 

 alcohol, he obtained a substance which, after drying, consisted of 

 opaque, yellowish-brown irregular fragments, somewhat brittle, 

 but not easily reduced to powder, dissolving in water to a turbid 

 mucilaginous solution ; of this, five grains were sufficient to emul- 

 sionize an ounce of cod liver oil. The large quantity of alcohol, 

 however, required for the precipitation, and the difficulty of drying 

 the adhesive product being such serious objections, further experi-. 

 ments were made, and, by still employing flaxseed as the source of 

 the mucilage, and treating with sulphuric acid, a gum more closely 

 resembling acacia was obtained. His method is to boil one part 

 of flaxseed with eight of dilute sulphuric acid and eight parts of 

 water, until the mixture, which at first thickens, becomes quite 

 fluid ; this is then strained through muslin, and to the strained 

 fluid is added four times its volume of strong alcohol, the precipi- 

 tate being collected on a filter, washed with alcohol, and dried. 

 The gum is in the form of translucent, grayish-brown, brittle frag- 

 ments, easily pulverized, and without odor or taste, and thirty 

 grains will emulsionize an ounce of cod liver oil. 



— An insect destructive to wheat, but previously unknown in 

 this country, has appeared in considerable numbers on the Cornell 

 University farm at Ithaca. Mr. J. H. Comstock, professor of ento- 

 mology at Cornell, who has been making a study of the insect, 

 says that he does not know of its occurrence anywhere else in this 

 State ; but as it is extremely abundant on the University farm, it 

 is doubtless spread over a considerable area. It was first observed 

 there two years ago, by one of the students, the late Mr. S. H. 

 Crossman, while making an investigation of wheat insects. On 

 examining the stalks of wheat at harvest time by splitting them 

 throughout their length, it was found that some of them had been 

 tunnelled by an insect larva. This larva had eaten a passage 

 through each of the joints, so that it could pass freely from one 

 end of the cavity of the straw to the other. In addition to tunnel- 

 ling the joints, they had also fed more or less on the inner surface 

 of the straw between the joints. If infested straws be examined 

 a week or ten days before the ripening of the wheat, the cause of 

 this injury can be found at work within them. It is at that time a 

 yellowish, milky-white worm, varying in size from one-fifth of an 

 inch to half an inch in length. The smaller ones may not have 

 bored through a single joint ; while the larger ones will have tun- 

 nelled all of them, except, perhaps, the one next to the ground. 



As the grain becomes ripe the larva works its way toward the 

 ground; and at the time of the harvest the greater number of them 

 have penetrated to the root. 



— The Boston correspondent of The Book Buyer quotes an 

 amusing letter sent by Mr. Aidrich to Professor E. S. Morse, ex- 

 president of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science. Professor Morse, it should be said, has a handwriting 

 quite indescribable in illegibility : " My Dear Mr. Morse : It was 

 very pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Per- 

 haps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to deci- 

 pher it. I don't think that I mastered any thing beyond the date 

 (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at). There's a 

 singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours ; it never grows 

 old, it never loses its novelty. One can say to one's self every 

 morning, ' There's that letter of Morse's. I haven't read it yet. I 

 think I'll take another shy at it to-day, and maybe I shall be able 

 in the course of a few years to make out what he means by those 

 t's that look like w's and those i's that haven't any eyebrows.' 

 Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours 

 are kept forever — unread. One of them will last a reasonable 

 man a lifetime." 



— No subject can be of more vital importance to the farmers of 

 Indiana than the economical utilization of their fodder crops, since 

 their success with live stock and in the dairy must be directly pro- 

 portional to the economy of this utilization and depend for success 

 or failure on the skill exercised in feeding. Careful inquiry and 

 observation extending over the entire State, by the State Agricul- 

 tural Experiment Station, of which Dr. H. E. Stockbridge is the 

 director, forces the inevitable conclusion that as much nutriment in 

 the form of fodder is wasted every year as actually finds it way 

 into the digestive systems of the farm animals of the State. The 

 two great fodder crops necessarily considered in this connection 

 are hay and corn stover. Though perhaps both are equally worthy 

 of consideration, and the utilization of each equally capable of im- 

 provement, the December bulletin, by J. Troop, pertains only to 

 the former. It is the intention of the station to devote special 

 attention to the production, curing, and feeding of hay during the 

 coming season. That the results of the work may be most effect- 

 ive, however, it seems necessary that a preliminary discussion of 

 the grasses of the State is called for, and to meet this demand the 

 present bulletin is issued. It does not purport to be a scientific 

 treatise on the grasses of Indiana ; its sole aim is to offer the 

 farmers of the State the briefest possible description of every grass 

 known to grow within its borders, together with the chief char- 

 acteristics and relative value for feeding purposes of each, in the 

 hope of placing the farmers in possession of such information as 

 will enable them to determine for themselves the character and 

 adaptations of grasses with which their experience may bring them 

 in contact. Recognizing the fact that plant determination by mere 

 description is necessarily attended by serious difficulties, a large 

 number of illustrations have been utilized as conveying the most 

 perfect impression possible of the actual appearance of the grasses 

 discussed. So far as the actual importance of the work thus be- 

 gun may become to the agricultural interests of Indiana, the rela- 

 tions existing between tilled land and grass land in the State must 

 be pertinent. The area of tilled land in Indiana is 56.4 per cent 

 of the area of the State, while the grass-land area is 11. 8 per cent, 

 the average for the entire United States being respectively 41.6 

 per cent and 1 1.5 per cent. The ratio existing between these two 

 varieties of farm land is, for Indiana, as i of grass land to 5.4 of 

 tilled land, and for the entire country, i of grass to 3.7 of tilled 

 land, — figures showing conclusively that Indiana can lay small 

 claims at present to either a grazing, stock, or dairy pre-eminence, 

 and that she falls far short of producing her best proportion of the 

 grass of the country, and fails in maintaining a just or most profit- 

 able relation bjetween these two staple divisions of farm lands. 

 Indeed, Indiana ranks in the second series of States in the produc- 

 tion of grass, and in the third series in average value of milch cows 

 and live stock, facts which must possess a definite relation to the 

 proportion existing between grass product and area of tilled lands, 

 and enforcing the proverb, '• the more grass the more stock, the 

 more stock the more manure, the more manure the more crops." 



