r881.] Editors Table. 125 
the great enlargement of the facilities for study abroad. In spite 
of considerable self-praise, the poverty of most of our museums 
is marked, and in proportion to our population and resources, | 
their number is probably smaller than in any other civilized 
nation. 
Precisely why congressmen should wish to tax bottled frogs and 
snakes we cannot clearly understand. It is true that these animals 
have a market value as food for man, but our government does 
not tax foreign meat or bread-stuffs. Nor has any one of our 
legislators announced his intention of fencing ina tract to be used 
as pasture for boas and anacondas, for it is generally believed that 
the breeding of these animals, though profitable, is not practica- 
ble in this country, owing to the antipathy to them of certain 
American citizens of foreign birth. Nor is there any fear of a dan- 
gerous foreign competition with their natural production here ; for 
although we were once informed by a Virginian mountaineer, 
that both “ the Bowling constrictor, and the Africanstrictor” were 
found in his neighborhood, we afterwards learned that he had 
been led into errof by confiding too implicitly in the representa- 
tions of a traveling showman. 
We may, however, be wrong in all this, for we have lately been 
taught by our rulers that a live hippopotamoid is merchandise. 
A specimen of the small hippopotamus-like Chewropsis liberiensis, 
having been imported from West Africa by Mr. Forepaugh for 
the instruction of American citizens, it became necessary to 
restrain this pandering to a corrupt taste, by imposing the duty 
ad valorem. It was hoped by the officers of the United States, 
that the beast had been obtained on the east coast of Africa, so 
that they might be enabled to levy 30 p., c. duty. But Mr. Fore- 
and our cutlery in Australia and Sheffield, our fossils are assum- 
ing a front rank in the markets of the old world, once the sole 
producers. And from still another stand-point, if some unwise 
legislator does not remove the duty all too soon, we shall undoubt- 
edly have a greater home production of fossils in all that relates 
to knowledge of the laws of nature than any nation on the globe, 
