No. 385.] EDITORIALS. 57 
so that lands once thought to be uninhabitable are now veritable 
gardens. One of the most forlorn-appearing regions is the Red 
Desert of Southwestern Wyoming, which has of late years become 
an important winter pasture ground for the herds and flocks which 
feed by summer in the adjacent states. A careful study of the for- 
age plants of the Red Desert, by Prof. Aven Nelson, has just been 
issued by the Department of Agriculture. It enumerates a large num- 
ber of salt sages, sagebrushes, grasses, and sedges found in the des- 
ert, and figures many of them. The work is important, not merely 
economically, as giving suggestions for agricultural plants adapted 
to desert regions, but also as a contribution to the knowledge of the 
adaptations of desert animals. 
Animal Photographs. — Photography is rapidly becoming in a 
variety of ways one of the necessary tools of a working naturalist, 
and one of its most important uses is in connection with the produc- 
tion of process figures to illustrate zoological works. The immense 
superiority of such figures over the conventional woodcuts could not 
be better shown than in Dr. R. W. Schufeldt’s article on “Some Char- 
acteristic Attitudes of the Red Squirrel,” in the June Photographic 
Times. A zoological text-book, illustrated by such figures as these, 
would be a pleasure to every lover of animals, as well as a source of 
information. 5 
We learn that entomological books of all kinds can be imported 
into Canada free of all customs duties. We, in the United States, 
have a tariff expressly designed for the protection of ignorance. 
Books in the English language can be imported duty free only 
when over twenty years old. 
