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1876.] Scientific News. . B9 
— Apropos of surveys, we trust that the friends of science and higher 
education in Massachusetts will vigorously urge the importance of a re- 
survey of the geology and biology of that State. The vote in the legis- 
lature last year was so decidedly in its favor that it would seem as if a 
second hearing and renewed effort on the part of men of culture might 
bring about the accomplishment of the plan urged last winter upon the 
attention of the legislature, and which came so near to definite and favor- 
able action. 
— Dr. Burmeister, of Buenos Ayres, is preparing for the Centennial 
Exposition at Philadelphia a work on the fossil horse of the Argentine 
Republic, to be published in large folio with eight plates. He is also 
just sending to press the first volume of his Physical Description of the 
Argentine Republic. 
— The Boston Society of Natural History proposes to send to the 
Centennial Exhibition an epitome of its museum, including plans of the 
building and cases. For this purpose fifteen cases, occupying one hun- 
dred and five feet of linear measure, will be needed. Besides this, a 
selected portion of the New England collection, now an attractive 
feature of the museum, will be placed on exhibition. It is estimated 
that this portion could be completely illustrated with selections occupy- 
ing twelve cases, extending eighty-four feet. Work has already begun 
under the direction of Professor Hyatt, the custodian. 
— The Monthly Weather Review of the Weather Signal Bureau at 
Washington, with its maps and quite full record of biological phenomena, 
will interest students and prove after a series of years of very consid- 
erable scientific value. With little effort more contributors might per- 
ps be enlisted, so that the connection of meteorological phenomena and 
the sudden appearan¢ée of swarms of grasshoppers, for example, could be 
traced, and possibly insect years be predicted, and thus farmers warned 
4 year in advance of devastations by insects. : 
_ — An excellent article on the wild grasses of Nebraska, by Professor — 
Samuel Aughey, appears in the New York Tribune for November 26th. 
— An elaborate quarto work on the amphipod crustacea (Gammaride) 
of the Sea of Baikal, by Dr. Dybowsky, illustrated by fourteen plates 
(in part colored), has lately been published by the Entomological Society 
of St. Petersburg. 
~e retriever dog, says Nature, whose owner was working in the 
garden of the Bath Institution, lately killed a favorite cat, a frequenter 
of the same grounds. Having committed this unprovoked murder, the 
dog deliberately took the cat in his mouth, carried it some distance, dug 
a deep hole behind some bushes, and, after depositing the cat therein, 
carefully replaced the earth; and had he not been observed there would 
have been no evidence of the crime. Shortly after, the dog lost his life 
by Poison, probably agpenalty for the offense. 
ad the dog lived, would he not, more canino, have exhumed the cat 
for dietetic purposes ?— Ep. NATURALIST. 
