468 Scientific News. [ June, 
and contains numerous articles on applied entomology, and a 
good deal of matter of general entomological interest-—In the 
Transactions of the California State Agricultural Society for 
1879, appears an article entitled, The Rocky. Mountain Locusts, 
their destructive power, how they eat, and breed, and bring ruin, 
mon; it contains a number of new facts regarding 
the native destructive California locusts, notably Gdipoda atrex, 
which was locally destructive in 1877, ’78 and ’79. 
— One curious effect of the eclipse in California on Sunday, 
January 11, 1880, about the time of the greatest obscuration, was 
the bewilderment of the wild game on the bay. Flocks of ducks 
flew into the ferry slips, thoroughly disorganized. Another 
strange result was that, as the darkness increased, a` valuable 
horse belonging to a gentleman at Alameda Point showed signs 
of great alarm which developed into madness as the gloom in- 
creased ; he bit and kicked at all who came near, rushed through 
a fence and the side of a barn, and had to be shot.— San Francisco 
all. 
— By the recent death of Snellen Van Vollenhoven, Holland 
has lost its most distinguished entomologist. Kiesenwetter, well 
known as a coleopterist, has also died. We failed to record the 
death of W. P. Schimper, March 20th. He was distinguished as 
a botanist and palzontologist, holding at the time of his death 
the professorship of geology and mineralogy in the University of 
Strasburg. John Carey, well known to American botanists, died 
near London, March 26, and W. E. Austin died in Closter, N. J» 
March 18, aged 49. His specialty was mosses, and he had in 
preparation a manual of N. A. Hepatic mosses. 
— A work by Keyserling on the spiders of North and South 
America is announced to be published in Nürnberg. It is a pity 
that a work of this sort should not be prepared by an American, 
who can study the spiders alive, become familiar with their young 
stages and with the variation of the species. A set of alcoholic 
specimens picked up here and there by mere collectors is apt to 
lead to the multiplication of “ species,’ and to long synonymical - me 
lists. The work announced treats of the laterigrade spiders, WIH 
have eight partly colored plates and will cost 40 marks. 
— Dr. August Weismann’s studies in the Theory of Descent, 
with a prefatory notice by Charles Darwin, translated and edited, 
with notes, by Raphael Meldola, will be published by Messrs. 
Sampson, Low, etc., in three parts. The first will be on the Sea- 
sonal Dimorphism of Butterflies. Part II on the Origin of the 
Markings of Caterpillars and on Phyletic Parallelism in Metamor- 
phic Species, and Part III on the transformation of the “ Mex- 
ican” Axolotl into Amblystoma and on the Mechanical Concep- 
tion of Nature. 
