1882.] Scientific News. 43 5 



report) will be only six hundred dollars annually, but no part of 

 this is to be used for payment of the salary of the entomologist. 

 One valuable feature of this plan is its permanence when once 

 under way. 



Mr. Herbert Oshorn (now studying with Dr. Hagen) well 

 known in Iowa for his scientific and popular writings on insects, 

 a young man, and warm friend of the lamented Putnam, is the 

 teacher of entomology in Iowa Agricultural College, and it is to 

 be presumed that if this bill becomes a law, he will be the State 

 Entomologist of Iowa. 



— Professor C. V. Riley has deposited in the U. S. National 

 Museum his extensive private collection of insects. The collec- 

 tion comprises some 30,000 species and upward of 1 50.000 speci- 

 mens of all orders, and is contained in some 300 double folding 

 boxes in large book form and in two cabinets of eighty glass- 

 covered drawers. The specimens are all in admirable condition, 

 and the determined species duly labeled and classified. The col- 

 lection is chiefly valuable, however, for the large amount of ma- 

 terial illustrating the life-histories, habits, Snd economy of spe- 

 cies, 3000 of which are represented in one or all of the prepara- 

 tory states, either in liquid in separate boxes, or blown and 

 mounted dry with the imagines. Fifteen blank books are filled 

 with notes and descriptions of these species, most of them yet 

 unpublished. Though several special collections surpass it in a 

 single order, few, if any, general collections of North American 

 insects equal it, and perhaps none from the biological point of 



The Museum is now prepared to properly care for such collec- 

 tions, under direction of Professor Riley, who has been appointed 

 honorary curator of insects, and it is hoped that in time, with so 

 good a beginning a truly national exposition of the insect fauna 

 of the country will be brought together. The Museum building 

 is entirely fire-proof, and there is every facility for the safe pres- 

 ervation of specimens or collections that may be donated. He 

 requests that correspondents send the adolescent states in con- 

 nection with mature forms whenever possible, together with all 

 material exemplifying the transformations, architecture and econ- 

 omy of species. 



— Sir Charles Wyville-Thompson, who was well known as the 

 director of the ( 'ha!!, v.-vr Expedition, and author of the " Depths 

 °J the Sea," died at Edinburgh earlv in March, at the age of 51. 

 Professor E. Desor, of Neuchatel. Switzerland, well known as a 

 student of glaciers, of zoologv and anthropology, died last March. 

 He lived when a voung man'for several vears in this country, and 

 Paid a good deal of attention to American marine zodlogy, and to 

 glacial geology. Among botanists we have to record the death of 

 1 P. James, of Cambridge, Mass., who, at the time of his death 



