456 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



Fly-trap doses so rapidly on its victim as to almost invariably secure it ; then 

 opens in readiness for another unwary insect. Evolution at present is only a 

 thing, and whether a sufficient number of parts can ever be accumulated to prove 

 it, remains to be seen. The vegetable kingdom by its growth, purifies the atmos- 

 phere and renders animal life impossible. Animals can live only on the organ- 

 ized matter which plants produce. Carbon, which in some of its forms is coal, 

 diamond, etc., is the chief element of vegetable construction. Plants elaborate 

 all the food from the mineral kingdom upon which men subsist, and therefore it 

 is literally true that " all flesh is grass." The study of botany or any branch of 

 natural science is an excellent system of training for the mind. The science of 

 botany presents an ample field for research, and the period of a man's life is 

 far too short to go over all. Science has failed to explain why one extremity of 

 the young plant grows from the light and contrary to the laws of gravitation, while 

 the other shoots upward in the air. It has also failed to explain why sap flows 

 and rises in the trees ; also why the same soil can produce plants of such diversi- 

 fied natures as the night shade, rose, etc. 



At the conclusion of the lecture Prof. Lovewell announced the lecture for 

 'the following night, and the Academy adjourned to meet at the same place at 9:00 

 o'clock A. M. Thursday. 



The programme of Thursday opened with a paper from Prof, Carruth on 

 "Genesis and Geology." He fails to reconcile the records of the Mosaic and 

 geological history of the creation, and finds differences that he thinks will be set 

 aside by a fuller knowledge on the subject. 



The second paper was by Joseph Savage, on the "Agate Beds of Trego 

 County." The agate beds of Trego county, Kansas, were compared with the 

 chalk nodules in English strata, and much difference found in the character of 

 their values or concretions and he thinks they were from different causes. The 

 matrix contains no fine lime, but is composed of silicate of alumina. Some of the 

 agates are on the carnelian type, others opalized. The principal agate bed in 

 Trego county is found near Collier Station, and in a square of about two rods. 

 Other inferior beds are found in the counties north and east of there. The agates 

 are generally associated with jasper. This jasper shows the approach to the agate 

 form in dendritic impression. The paper was illustrated with a great many spec- 

 imens that Prof. Savage had secured. 



"Preliminary Stages of a Leaf-eating Lady-bird," by Prof. Popenoe, of 

 Manhattan, followed. The professor stated that while he was spending a few 

 days in collecting in Colorado, he happened at Trinidad during the early part of 

 August, and in collecting near that town found a species of Epilachna that he 

 then thought to be new. It attracted his attention by its abundance and by its 

 habits, which, like those of our northern lady-bird, Epilachna borealis, so strongly 

 separate this genus from the allied genera of lady-birds. The northern lady-bird 

 in question, as is well known to entomologists and horticulturists, is the only 

 common lady-bird whose habits are strictly herbivorous, the other species of this 

 considerable and widely distributed family being accounted in all stages active 



