56 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST.. [VOL XXXIII. 
above rules meets with objection on the part of some, who claim that 
in the case of societies which publish irregularly and at long intervals, 
it seems wrong to withhold the extras until the whole volume is pub- 
lished. This frequently would result in a delay of months, or even 
of years. For instance, one volume of the Transactions of the Con- 
necticut Academy of Arts and Sciences has been kept incomplete for 
over a dozen years, awaiting the dilatoriness of an author who has 
failed to submit the manuscript of an article accepted for publication. 
All such difficulties, it seems to us, would be obviated by following 
the course adopted by several societies, among them the Boston 
Society of Natural History and the American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences, of issuing each paper separately as soon as it is ready. 
In regard to Article 4, we wish that the committee could have 
gone farther, and have expressed its opinion of a tendency to split 
up what should form a single article into a number of articles, each 
with its own heading. We recall one extreme case of a single vol- 
ume, in which an author had over a dozen articles upon the larval 
stages of as many different Lepidoptera, each with its own title, and 
each, by all rules of bibliography, entitled to rank as a separate 
article, while all might readily be embraced under a single heading. 
Similar cases abound in the literature of species describing; and 
their only excuse seems to be that the authors wished to have as 
many titles as possible to their credit (?) in the bibliographies. 
The sixth suggestion is one that if followed will eventually bring _ 
to an end a host of trials and tribulations of the systematist. Such 
names are almost sure to be lost for years. For instance, the late 
Dr. Haldemann years ago described the crustacean genus Abacura. 
How many carcinologists know of the description? Then, what 
shall be done with isolated descriptions in school books? And what 
with suggestions like the following? In Science, Vol. viii, No. 201, 
p. 613, Dr. Dall, in a notice of Bitners’s Lamellibranchs of the trias of 
St. Cassian, speaks of the preoccupied name Arcoptera and says, 
“We would suggest that the preoccupied name be replaced by Bitt- 
nerella.” This occurs in an article which would be apt to be over- 
looked by the systematist ; and again this able conchologist does not 
actually rename the genus but suggests that it be renamed, as if fully 
cognizant of the incongruity of time and place. 
The Utilization of Desert Areas. — With the increase of our pop- 
ee ulation the extent of our desert areas has constantly diminished - 
on. “aa the use o ere pae to the climate and by irrigation, 
