1878. } The Beneficial Influence of Plants. 793 
are others that are nearly related; it has two rows of teeth on 
each side of the mouth, so have all its family; there are ten teeth 
in the front row and nine in the back; this is characteristic, but 
it would puzzle the best Latinist to put it in one word; and it 
has eleven gill openings, and this might be expressed by a com- 
pound Latin name which would be awkwardly long, and after all 
would not mean with eleven gill openings, but simply with eleven 
openings, so that on the whole I prefer stowti ; and stoutii, with 
the doctor’s permission, it must be, unless some one has antici- 
pated me in describing the fish. 
Bdellostoma stout nov. sp. Eleven gill openings on each side ; 
ten teeth in the anterior and nine in the posterior series. 1514” 
long. Eel river, Humboldt county. 
It is rather singular that this fish, which is abundant in Eel 
river, and is sold for food, and also occurs in this harbor, should 
hitherto have escaped notice. I believe it to be the only species 
of its genus hitherto found on the Pacific coast of North America; 
and it differs from Bdellostoma polytrema, a species which occurs 
along the coast of Chili, both in the number of its gill-openings 
and that of the teeth, B. polytrema having fourteen of the former 
and twelve of the latter in each series. 
205 
THE BENEFICIAL INFLUENCE OF PLANTS. 
BY J. M. ANDERS, M.D., PH.D. 
GOOD deal of attention has recently been given to the sub- 
ject of the sanitary relations of plant life. Since plants 
constitute so great a factor in the organic world, a study of their 
functions necessarily becomes interesting and important. As 
every one knows, the knowledge of these processes is being rap- 
idly unfolded, and clearly, the way to render this most useful is 
to examine into their practical relations; for our appreciation of 
plants and flowers must, to a great extent, go hand in hand with 
the increase in knowledge concerning their influence on our 
health and welfare. As our information in this direction increases 
we shall be more ready to acknowledge how much we owe to 
vegetation ; still it is to be hoped that our ideas will never revert 
to the extravagant theories of the ancients, for we find that 
mythology credits trees with marvelous powers, such as their 
