568 Scientific News. [ September, 
PRACTICAL HISTOLOGY. — A good hand-book for students in the his- 
tological laboratory is the little publication of Outlines, by Dr. Ruther- 
ford, first issued in a journal some years ago, and lately enlarged and 
improved in an interleaved edition for laboratory use. 
SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 
— Near Gilroy, California, is a rose-tree of the cloth-of-gold variety 
twelve years old, the stock of which is seventeen inches in circumference, 
and, though closely pruned, the branches spread five feet on every side of 
the trunk. 
— In the museum of the California Academy of Sciences is a trans- 
verse section of a lemon verbena six inches in diameter. The wood is 
fine-grained, of a greenish-yellow color, and takes a good polish. 
— Our readers may remember a statement by Professor Snow in the 
NATURALIST, ix. 665, to the effect that the female of the white pelican 
has a horny crest on the mandible as well as the male. Mr. George B. 
Sennett, of Erie, Pa., writes us that in two females shot in Grant Co., 
Minn., the crest was as perfect in proportion to the size of the bill as in 
the males. 
— Mr. James T. Gardner, at present Secretary of the American Geo- 
graphical Society, has been appointed director of a proposed Geograph- 
ical Survey of the State of New York. 
— A Monograph of the Phalænidæ or Geometrid Moths of the United 
States, by A. S. Packard, Jr., forms vol. x. of the final reports of the 
United States Geological Survey of the Territories, F. V. Hayden m 
charge. Although a formal notice of this work would for obvious rea- 
sons not be in place in this journal, the author would beg leave to call 
the attention of naturalists to matter contained in the introductory por 
tion, especially to the chapters entitled Comparative Anatomy of the 
ead, Comparative Anatomy of the Thorax, Development of the Tho- 
rax of the Imago, Secondary Sexual Characters of the Imago, and to the 
essay on Geographical Distribution. The imagines of about four hun- 
dred species and the early stages of some are described and figured. 
— Professor Huxley, who is now on a short visit to this country, 
deliver three lectures in New York September 18th, 20th, and 22d, on 
the “ Direct Evidence of Evolution,” and also give an address at the 
opening of the Johns Hopkins University. j 
— It is well to signalize the close of a great work which has been 10 
progress for twenty-five years,—the Genera des Coléopteres of a 
cordaire and Chapuis. The work was first assigned to Lacordaire , 
Belgium and Carreño of Spain ; Carreño, however, died before the plan 
of the project was definitely settled, and Lacordaire undertook it a 
The first volume was published in 1854. At the death of Lacordaire, 1” 
1870, Chapuis took his place, and has now completed the work, which 
will 
