682 Scientific News. [August, 
of natural history, the duties being instruction in botany. A 
generous friend of the University is also providing a roomy 
laboratory, lecture room, study and store room for the use of the 
professor of zodlogy and geology. At Bowdoin College, Mr. 
Leslie A. Lee has been appointed professor of geology and biol- 
ogy. Dr. S. F. Clarke, late Fellow of Johns Hopkins University, 
has been appointed professor of natural history at Williams Col- 
lege; an appointment for which the College is to be con- 
gratulated. 
— Professor Cope’s expedition to Paraguay, known as the 
American Naturalist Expedition, left New York for Para, May 
Ist. The survey has a wide scope, covering many of the natural 
features of the regions to be examined. It is under the direc- 
tion of Mr. Herbert H. Smith, formerly of the Geological Survey 
of Brazil, under Professor C. F. Hartt, and the author of a scien- 
tific volume on Brazil, published by the Scribners. The expedi- 
tion is the individual effort of Professor Cope. 
r. Smith will act as regular correspondent to the NATURALIST, 
describing the regions explored. We anticipate that his notes on 
the fauna and flora will be particularly interesting. The survey 
is fully equipped with means to preserve a full supply of material, 
which will be utilized upon reaching Philadelphia, and will throw 
much light on some little known regions of South America. 
— Holt & Co., of New York, have in press a book entitled 
The Structure and Life-histories of Butterflies, by S. H. Scudder. 
It relates particularly to American butterflies, and is mainly a 
reproduction of lectures given several years ago before the 
Lowell Institute. It deals with the general problems suggeste 
by a study of the structure, development, seasons, distribution 
and coloring of butterflies from an evolutionary point of view, 
and will discuss more fully than has heretofore been attempted, 
the ancestry of this group of insects. Nearly three quarters of 
the two hundred illustrations have been prepared for the work, 
while the others are borrowed principally from Harris and Riley. 
— A work of extensive anatomical research on the cerebellum 
in various animal species has been conducted recently by two 
Italians, Drs, Tenchini and Staurengi, From a résumé of it in the 
Archives des Sciences, we gather that it establishes three important 
features as the exclusive possession of man, viz., the valves of 
aria, a new tubercle in the arch of the fourth ventricle, and any 
ventricle of Verga. These are considered characters of prime 
importance as being related to the nervous system; and with 
others, they show, that if the anthropoid apes are the vertebrates 
nearest to man, the distance between man and the ape is still very 
great. ; 
—— A paper was read at a recent meeting of the Chemical 
Society on the action of compounds inimical to bacterial life, by 
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