764 : NOTES. 
Carolina and others, are making re-surveys. Such a survey, com- 
prehensive and thorough, embracing biology as well as physical 
geography and geology, can be done much cheaper than many 
may think. The work can be accomplished as in the past, largely 
by naturalists and students without pay. Many monographs on 
groups of animals and plants, private geological explorations and 
the coast survey triangulations already made can be worked in 
without cost. The final reports can be sold at cost, and thus 
repay the original outlay in printing them. Those of some states 
have already more than repaid the cost of publication. It is to 
be hoped that the biological side of the survey will be fully 
attended to. There is a pressing need among our agriculturists of 
a knowledge of our parasitic plants and injurious animals. 
The amount of produce annually raised in the United States is 
$2,500,000,000. It is estimated that we lose one-fifth of this 
amount, or $500,000,000, from the attacks of injurious plants and 
animals. Of this amount certainly one-tenth, or $50,000,000 
could be saved with a proper knowledge on the part of our agri- 
culturists of the forms and habits of the injurious species. In 
one year it is said that in the Eastern counties of Massachusetts 
_the farmers lost $250,000 worth of grass from the attacks of the 
army worm. In 1871, in Essex County alone, $10,000 worth of 
onions were destroyed by a minute insect; a loss that a slight 
knowledge might readily have prevented. We need state aid in 
affording the means of importing and raising certain parasitic 
insects which prey on the injurious forms. In a money point of 
view the natural history side of the proposed survey is fully as 
important as the geological or topographical. 
Moreover the biological department of the survey could be 
carried on at a slight expense compared with the topographical 
and geological; and the reports, if properly illustrated and com 
taining notes on the modes of living of injurious plants and cag 
mals, would, we doubt not, fully repay the original cost of printing- 
THE attempt to colonize the bay of San Francisco with lobsters 
seems to have met with success. Of a hundred large female lob- 
sters with eggs sent in June, 1873, from the eastern states, Seven 
survived, and were placed in the bay. Fifteen or twenty young 
were lately caught by a Chinese fisherman while casting his net 
for shrimp. i 
