86 Scientific News. ■ [January 



ies in the Permian and Mesozoic formations of the West. Nearly 

 a thousand species of Vertebrata will be described and figured in 

 these volumes. The Hayden series, when completed, will form a 

 monument to Dr. Hayden, who projected it, and will reflect credit 

 on the Government, which has sustained the publication. 



— Among recent publications of the Census Bureau is an ex- 

 tra Census Bulletin containing tables showing the approximate 

 areas of the United States, the several States, and their counties. 

 If has been prepared by Mr. Henry Gannett, the geographer and 

 special agent of the tenth census. It appears that of several States 

 a number of estimates of area have been in use, differing from one 

 another by thousands of square miles, and none of them perhaps 

 traceable to any authentic source; while many of the results are 

 palpably wrong, being so far from the truth that it is a source of 

 surprise that they were not corrected before. A map defining the 

 gross areas of the States and Territories accompanies this useful 

 Bulletin. 



— Mr. Allen Whitman, a native of East Bridgewater, Mass., died 

 recently in St. Paul, Minnesota, aged 45 years. He was a graduate 

 of Harvard, and while one of the best classical scholars in the coun- 

 try, was one of the most valuable assistants in the U. S. Ento- 

 mological Commission, having previous to the organization of the 

 Commission, published two valuable reports on the locust as it 

 appeared in Minnesota. 



— The University of Cambridge, England, has conferred the 

 honorary degree of Doctor of Laws upon Professor Thomas 

 Sterry Hunt, LL.D., F.R.S., a native of Connecticut, who was for 

 twenty-five years chemist and mineralogist to the Geological Sur- 

 vey of Canada.'and resigned that post in 1872 to accept the Chair 

 of Geology in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 



— Professor XV. N. Rice, and Mr. H. L Osborn, in their report 

 as curators of the Museum of Wesleyan University, gives a review 

 of the state of the museum. Many important additions have been 

 made, and the spirit and zeal shown by the curators should re- 

 sult in such pecuniary benefactions as would liberally endow that 

 department. 



— An autobiographical sketch by Rev. .Titus Coan, entitled, 

 " Life in Hawaii," is announced by A. D. F. Randolph & Co. It 

 includes accounts of the eruptions of the volcanoes in the Hawaiian 

 Islands, of which this missionary has been a diligent historian 



— The late John Amory Lowell bequeathed $20,000 1 

 ard College, for the botanical garden, on condition th: 

 ailed the " Lowell Botanic Garden," in memory of his 



