Notes and News 3ST 
be converted into tata-albumen, it thereby becoming doubled in 
bulk and glassy in appearance. It is eight or ten times more di- 
gestible, more stable, and allows the addition of any spice. 
“The Land of the Midnight Sun” must indeed be an interesting 
portion of the earth’s surface to visit if we may judge from the ex- 
tremely interesting and beautifully illustrated article about that 
region that appears in Demorest’s Monthly Magazine for July. 
The sound of the axe and the hammer, not only on the assem- 
bly grounds, but all around the lake is responded to by the people 
near and far in notes of preparation for the season’s great annual 
festival at Chautauqua. Fifteen years have passed since the 
opening of this summer school in the woods. Chautuaqua has 
ever refused to do any but thorough work, its power has become 
international, and it has bound friends by the thousand to itself 
All the year round, through its literary circles and otherwise, its 
influence is felt not only in every state in the union but beyond 
the sea and the great gatherings of the summer are but the logi- 
cal results of this vital under current. 
The botanist of our U. S. Department of Agriculture is referred 
to by an English contemporary as S77 George Vasey. His de- 
scriptions of grasses adapted to arid districts are widely copied. 
Lentils and tares are receiving considerable attention in South 
Australia, where they are cultivated for fodder, \ 
Rabbits, sparrows, kangarcos, paddymelens, hares, foxes and 
kangaroo ratsseem to be the more troublesome of the animals in 
Australia, on which the Government offers bounties. 
A thick shower of small frogs is reported in the ‘‘Western dis- 
trict’ by the Victorian Farmers’ Gazette, of April 29th. 
The rabbit diseases commission of New South Wales has re- 
ported unfavorably on M. Pasteur’s proposal to extirpate rabbits 
by means of chicken cholera. The commission finds that the use 
of the microbes in the food does not cause the disease to spread 
rapidly from infected to healthy rabbits. 
The latest maritime curiosity in British waters is a torpedo 
boat burning petroleum or tar refuse in place of coal. The ves- 
sel has made nineteen knots an hour without permitting any per- 
ceptible smoke, and is said to move quite noiselessly. She is 
137 ft. in length and her crew numbers only seven men. 
The wax-scale of Florida, (Ceroplastes floridensis) has been 
discovered in California, on trees imported this season from Flor- 
ida, according to a note in Jnsect Life. It is not noted as a pest 
in Florida, but occasionally it will increase upon an individual 
tree sO as to arouse apprehension. 
Samuel Lowell Elliot died February 12, aged forty-five years. 
He was a careful student of the habits of insects and very suc- 
