94 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



be appointed to draft the Articles of Incorporation and then report to 

 the Board of Directors. Carried. 



The following Committee on Incorporation was appointed : Com- 

 stock, Knight and Davidson. 



Those present were : Comstock, Knight, Davidson, Parsons, Tabor, 

 Whiting, Dozier and Baumgardt. 



Adjourned. B. R. Baumgardt, Secretary. 



Notes. 



The County Supervisors report that lo.ooc acres in the neighborhood 

 that have been infested by the Russian thistle have been so vigorously at- 

 tacked that it is estimated that this plague will be stamped out in a year 

 from now. We may be allowed to doubt the probability of any political 

 body ever rooting out any pest in this county or any other. We called at- 

 tention to this pest in our county in 1892. Shortly afterwards there was 

 a spasmodic attempt to spend some money in the so called extermina- 

 tion of the thistle. A few years after 200 acres were reported to be afifected 

 near Redondo. This ground was gone over and subsequently reported 

 clean. A few years have passed and now 10,000 acres are infested. When 

 this pest was first discovered $100 judiciously expended might have saved 

 the country; now there is no limit to the money that may have to be 

 spent to save the farmer. 



Prof. Elwood Mead and Prof. J. M. Wilson, of the University of 

 California, and Prof. Stout of the University of Nebraska, have gone 

 to Fresno to investigate the alkali lands, with a view to improving the 

 condition of the soil. They will spend a portion of the $15,000, which was 

 appropriated by Congress upon the recommendation of President Benja- 

 min Ide Wheeler and Prof. Eugene Hilgard of the State University. 



The professors will endeavor to find a feasible system whereby the land 

 may be reclaimed from alkali deposits. 



The Academy of Sciences meetings will adjourn during the vacation 

 season and will resume in September. The section meetings, with the ex- 

 ception of the Botanical, will adjourn until that date. The botanical sec- 

 tion will meet as usual on the fourth Monday of each month. 



Prof. Dudley of Stanford, while botanizing in the mountains east 

 of Visalia, was bitten on the ankle, by a rattlesnake. The latest reports 

 of his condition are verv favorable. 



ASTRONOMICAL NOTES. 



By Mr. Wm. H. Knight. 



Sir Norman Lockyer has advanced the opinion that a careful examina- 

 tion of earthquake and volcano records will disclose a connection between 

 those phenomena and sun-spot minimums and maximums. He cites the 

 minimum of 1867 when Mauna Loa was active; the maximum of 1872 

 when the West Indies were violently disturbed; and the maximum of 1883 

 when the explosion of Krakatoa occurred. "At Tokio, in a country where 

 the most perfect seismological observatories exist, it is notable that at 

 periods near both sun-spot maximum and minimum the greatest number 

 of disturbances have been recorded." 



Richard Conrad Schiedt, Ph. D., professor of natural science 'it 

 Franklin and Marshall College, announces in the Philadelphia Times a 

 new theor}- of terrestrial construction and evolution. He thinks there 



